went, dragging
the dogs behind, jerking them hither and thither over the glassy
surface. I saw the rocks towards which we were driving, but was
powerless to avert the disaster, and hung on in some hope, I suppose, of
being able to minimise it, till, with a crash that broke two of the
uprights and threw me so hard that I skinned my elbow and hurt my head,
we were once more overturned. Never since I reached manhood, I think,
did I feel so much like sitting down and crying. It seemed hopeless to
think about getting down that creek until the wind stopped, and one
doubts if the wind ever does stop in that country. But there was no good
sitting there like a shipwrecked mariner, nursing sores and misfortunes;
presently one would begin to feel sorry for oneself--that last resort of
incompetence. And the bitter wind is a great stimulus. It will not
permit inaction. So I was up again, fumbling at the sled lashings as
best I could with torpid fingers, when one of my companions, uneasy at
my delay, very kindly made his way back, and with his assistance I was
able to get the sled upright again without unloading and hold it
somewhat better on its course until another bend or two brought us to
the partial shelter of bluffs and, a little farther, to the cabin where
we were to spend the night. I understood now why my companions had a
sort of hinged knife-edge fastened to one runner of their sled. By the
pressure of a foot the knife-edge engaged the ice and held the sled on
its course. This is another Seward Peninsula device.

[Sidenote: THE KINDLY SWEDE]

I have it in my diary that "a Swede named Petersen was very kind to us
at the cabin, cooking for us and giving us cooked dog feed." Blessed
Swede named Petersen!--there are hundreds of them in Alaska--and I shall
never forget that particular one's kindness--the only man I met in the
Seward Peninsula who still persisted in cooking dog feed whenever he
could. He had cooked up a mess of rice and fish enough to last his three
or four dogs several days while he sojourned at this cabin, and he gave
it all to us and would take nothing for it. His language was what
Truthful James calls "frequent and painful and free." I ignored it for a
while, loath to take exception to anything a man said who had been so
kind. But at last I could stand it no longer--it took all the savour out
of his hospitality--and I said: "I hope you won't mind my saying it, for
I'd hate to give offence to a man who has be