treacherously glided.

Jacques Baptiste alone remained. Had he not sworn to travel even to the
never-opening ice? The lying charts, compiled in main from hearsay,
were now constantly consulted.

And they felt the need of hurry, for the sun had already passed its
northern solstice and was leading the winter south again. Skirting the
shores of the bay, where the Mackenzie disembogues into the Arctic
Ocean, they entered the mouth of the Little Peel River. Then began the
arduous up-stream toil, and the two Incapables fared worse than ever.
Towline and pole, paddle and tumpline, rapids and portages--such
tortures served to give the one a deep disgust for great hazards, and
printed for the other a fiery text on the true romance of adventure.
One day they waxed mutinous, and being vilely cursed by Jacques
Baptiste, turned, as worms sometimes will. But the half-breed thrashed
the twain, and sent them, bruised and bleeding, about their work. It
was the first time either had been manhandled.

Abandoning their river craft at the headwaters of the Little Peel, they
consumed the rest of the summer in the great portage over the Mackenzie
watershed to the West Rat. This little stream fed the Porcupine, which
in turn joined the Yukon where that mighty highway of the North
countermarches on the Arctic Circle.

But they had lost in the race with winter, and one day they tied their
rafts to the thick eddy-ice and hurried their goods ashore. That night
the river jammed and broke several times; the following morning it had
fallen asleep for good. 'We can't be more'n four hundred miles from the
Yukon,' concluded Sloper, multiplying his thumb nails by the scale of
the map. The council, in which the two Incapables had whined to
excellent disadvantage, was drawing to a close.

'Hudson Bay Post, long time ago. No use um now.' Jacques Baptiste's
father had made the trip for the Fur Company in the old days,
incidentally marking the trail with a couple of frozen toes.

Sufferin' cracky!' cried another of the party. 'No whites?' 'Nary
white,' Sloper sententiously affirmed; 'but it's only five hundred more
up the Yukon to Dawson. Call it a rough thousand from here.' Weatherbee
and Cuthfert groaned in chorus.

'How long'll that take, Baptiste?' The half-breed figured for a moment.
'Workum like hell, no man play out, ten--twenty--forty--fifty days. Um
babies come' (designating the Incapables), 'no can tell. Mebbe when
hell freeze over; mebbe no