The Boy roused himself, but only to persist in his misinterpretation.

“You ain’t different to hurt.  If I started out again tomorrow——­”

“The Lord forbid!”

“Amen.  But if I had to, you’re the only man in Alaska—­in the world—­I’d want for my pardner.”

“Boy——!” he wrestled with a slight bronchial huskiness, cleared his throat, tried again, and gave it up, contenting himself with, “Beg your pardon for callin’ you ‘Boy.’  You’re a seasoned old-timer, sah.”  And the Boy felt as if some Sovereign had dubbed him Knight.

In a day or two now, from north or south, the first boat must appear.  The willows were unfolding their silver leaves.  The alder-buds were bursting; geese and teal and mallard swarmed about the river margin.  Especially where the equisetae showed the tips of their feathery green tails above the mud, ducks flocked and feasted.  People were too excited, “too busy,” they said, looking for the boats, to do much shooting.  The shy birds waxed daring.  Keith, standing by his shack, knocked over a mallard within forty paces of his door.

It was eight days after that first cry, “The ice is going out!” four since the final jam gave way and let the floes run free, that at one o’clock in the afternoon the shout went up, “A boat! a boat!”

Only a lumberman’s bateau, but two men were poling her down the current with a skill that matched the speed.  They swung her in.  A dozen hands caught at the painter and made fast.  A young man stepped ashore and introduced himself as Van Alen, Benham’s “Upper River pardner, on the way to Anvik.”

His companion, Donovan, was from Circle City, and brought appalling news.  The boats depended on for the early summer traffic, Bella, and three other N.A.T. and T. steamers, as well as the A.C.’s Victoria and the St. Michael, had been lifted up by the ice “like so many feathers,” forced clean out of the channel, and left high and dry on a sandy ridge, with an ice wall eighty feet wide and fifteen high between them and open water.

“All the crews hard at work with jackscrews,” said Donovan; “and if they can get skids under, and a channel blasted through the ice, they may get the boats down here in fifteen or twenty days.”

A heavy blow.  But instantly everyone began to talk of the May West and the Muckluck as though all along they had looked for succour to come up-stream rather than down.  But as the precious hours passed, a deep dejection fastened on the camp.  There had been a year when, through one disaster after another, no boats had got to the Upper River.  Not even the arrival from Dawson of the Montana Kid, pugilist and gambler, could raise spirits so cast down, not even though he was said to bring strange news from outside.

There was war in the world down yonder—­war had been formally declared between America and Spain.

Windy slapped his thigh in humourous despair.