snow
fell away, straight down toward the heart of the world.

'Had we not been sailormen our heads would have swung round with the
sight, but we stood on the dizzy edge that we might see a way to get
down. And on one side, and one side only, the wall had fallen away till
it was like the slope of the decks in a topsail breeze. I do not know
why this thing should be so, but it was so. "It is the mouth of hell,"
he said; "let us go down." And we went down.

'And on the bottom there was a cabin, built by some man, of logs which
he had cast down from above. It was a very old cabin, for men had died
there alone at different times, and on pieces of birch bark which were
there we read their last words and their curses.

'One had died of scurvy; another's partner had robbed him of his last
grub and powder and stolen away; a third had been mauled by a baldface
grizzly; a fourth had hunted for game and starved--and so it went, and
they had been loath to leave the gold, and had died by the side of it
in one way or another. And the worthless gold they had gathered
yellowed the floor of the cabin like in a dream.

'But his soul was steady, and his head clear, this man I had led thus
far. "We have nothing to eat," he said, "and we will only look upon
this gold, and see whence it comes and how much there be. Then we will
go away quick, before it gets into our eyes and steals away our
judgment. And in this way we may return in the end, with more grub, and
possess it all." So we looked upon the great vein, which cut the wall
of the pit as a true vein should, and we measured it, and traced it
from above and below, and drove the stakes of the claims and blazed the
trees in token of our rights. Then, our knees shaking with lack of
food, and a sickness in our bellies, and our hearts chugging close to
our mouths, we climbed the mighty wall for the last time and turned our
faces to the back trip.

'The last stretch we dragged Unga between us, and we fell often, but in
the end we made the cache. And lo, there was no grub. It was well done,
for he thought it the wolverines, and damned them and his gods in one
breath. But Unga was brave, and smiled, and put her hand in his, till I
turned away that I might hold myself. "We will rest by the fire," she
said, "till morning, and we will gather strength from our moccasins."
So we cut the tops of our moccasins in strips, and boiled them half of
the night, that we might chew them and swallow them.