d noise"--he shook his head with an
expressive sound that ended in a hissing whistle. "But it missed the
canoe, and the wave it made lifted us and set us safe on top of a little
rocky island." He paused again, laughing softly. "I don't know how we kept
right side up, but we did. Weatherbee was great in an emergency."

A shadow crossed his face. He looked off to the end of the room.

"I guess you both understood a canoe," said Banks. His voice was still
high-pitched, like that of a man under continued stress, and his eyes
burned in his withered, weather-beaten face like the vents of buried
fires. "But likely it was then, while you was freighting the outfit around
to the glacier, you came across those ptarmigan."

Tisdale's glance returned, and the humor played again softly at the
corners of his eyes. "I had forgotten about those birds. It was this way.
I made the last trip in the canoe alone, for the mail and a small load,
principally ammunition and clothing, while Weatherbee and the Tlinket
pushed ahead on one of those interminable stages over the glacier. And on
the way back, I was caught in fog. It rolled in, layer on layer, while I
felt for the landing; but I managed to find the place and picked up the
trail we had worn packing over the ice. And I lost it; probably in a new
thaw that had opened and glazed over since I left. Anyhow, in a little
while I didn't know where I was. I had given my compass to Weatherbee, and
there was no sun to take bearings from, not a landmark in sight. Nothing
but fog and ice, and it all looked alike. The surface was too hard to take
my impressions, so I wasn't able to follow my own tracks back to the
landing. But I had to keep moving, it was so miserably cold; I hardly let
myself rest at night; and that fog hung on five days. The third evening I
found myself on the water-front, and pretty soon I stumbled on my canoe. I
was down to a mighty small allowance of crackers and cheese then, but I
parcelled it out in rations for three days and started once more along the
shore for Yakutat. The next night I was traveling by a sort of sedge when
I heard ptarmigan. It sounded good to me, and I brought my canoe up and
stepped out. I couldn't see, but I could hear those birds stirring and
cheeping all around. I lay down and lifted my gun ready to take the first
that came between me and the sky." His voice had fallen to an undernote,
and his glance rested an absent moment on the circle of light on the