“By the living Jingo, I will then!” says Potts, and helps himself under the Colonel’s angry eyes.

The other two conferred a moment, then drew on their parkis and mittens, and with great difficulty, in spite of yesterday’s work, got the door open.  It was pretty dark, but there was no doubt about it, the Little Cabin had disappeared.

“Look! isn’t that a curl of smoke?” said the Boy.

“Yes, by George! they’re snowed under!”

“Serve ’em right!”

A heavy sigh from the Colonel.  “Yes, but we’ll have to dig ’em out!”

“Look here, Colonel”—­the Boy spoke with touching solemnity—­“not before breakfast!”

“Right you are!” laughed the Colonel; and they went in.

It was that day, after the others had been released and fed, that the Boy fell out with Potts concerning who had lost the hatchet—­and they came to blows.  A black eye and a bloody nose might not seem an illuminating contribution to the question, but no more was said about the hatchet after the Colonel had dragged the Boy off the prostrate form of his adversary.

But the Colonel himself lost his temper two days later when O’Flynn broached the seal set months before on the nearly empty demijohn.  For those famous “temperance punches” the Colonel had drawn on his own small stock.  He saw his blunder when O’Flynn, possessing himself of the demijohn, roared out: 

“It’s my whisky, I tell you!  I bought it and paid furr it, and but for me it would be at the bottom o’ the Yukon now.”

“Yes, and you’d be at the bottom of the Yukon yourself if you hadn’t been dragged out by the scruff o’ your neck.  And you’d be in a pretty fix now, if we left you alone with your whisky, which is about all you’ve got.”

“We agreed,” Potts chipped in, “that it should be kept for medicinal purposes only.”

Sullenly O’Flynn sipped at his grog.  Potts had “hogged most of the hootch.”

* * * * *

“Look here, Boy,” said Mac at supper, “I said I wouldn’t eat off this plate again.”

“Oh, dry up!  One tin plate’s like another tin plate.”

“Are you reflecting on the washer-up, Mr. MacCann?” asked Potts.

“I’m saying what I’ve said before—­that I’ve scratched my name on my plate, and I won’t eat off this rusty, battered kettle-lid.”

He held it up as if to shy it at the Boy.  The young fellow turned with a flash in his eye and stood taut.  Then in the pause he said quite low: 

“Let her fly, MacCann.”

But MacCann thought better of it.  He threw the plate down on the table with a clatter.  The Colonel jumped up and bent over the mush-pot at the fire, beside the Boy, whispering to him.

“Oh, all right.”

When the Boy turned back to the table, with the smoking kettle, the cloud had gone from his face.  MacCann had got up to hang a blanket over the door.  While his back was turned the Boy brought a tin plate, still in good condition, set it down at Mac’s place, planted a nail on end in the middle, and with three blows from a hammer fastened the plate firmly to the board.