“It’s the kind of thing that gets on a fella’s nerves,” said the Colonel.  “I don’t know as I ever felt helpless in any part of the world before.  But a man counts for precious little up here.  Do you notice how you come to listen to the silence?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve noticed.”

“Stop.”  Again he lifted his hand, and they strained their ears.  “I’ve done that by the hour since you left and the daft gold-diggers went up trail after you.  The other fellas feel it, too.  Don’t know what we’d have done without Kaviak.  Think we ought to keep that kid, you know.”

“I could get on without Kaviak if only we had some light.  It’s this villainous twilight that gets into my head.  All the same, you know”—­he stood up suddenly—­“we came expecting to stand a lot, didn’t we?”

The elder man nodded.  “Big game, big stakes.  It’s all right.”

Eventless enough after this, except for the passing of an Indian or two, the days crawled by.

The Boy would get up first in the morning, rake out the dead ashes, put on a couple of back-logs, bank them with ashes, and then build the fire in front.  He broke the ice in the water-bucket, and washed; filled coffee-pot and mush-kettle with water (or ice), and swung them over the fire; then he mixed the corn-bread, put it in the Dutch oven, covered it with coals, and left it to get on with its baking.  Sometimes this part of the programme was varied by his mixing a hoe-cake on a board, and setting it up “to do” in front of the fire.  Then he would call the Colonel—­

  “’Wake up Massa,
     De day am breakin’;
   Peas in de pot, en de
   Hoe-cake bakin’’”—­

for it was the Colonel’s affair to take up proceedings at this point—­make the coffee and the mush and keep it from burning, fry the bacon, and serve up breakfast.

Saturday brought a slight variation in the early morning routine.  The others came straggling in, as usual, but once a week Mac was sure to be first, for he had to get Kaviak up.  Mac’s view of his whole duty to man seemed to centre in the Saturday scrubbing of Kaviak.  Vainly had the Esquimer stood out against compliance with this most repulsive of foreign customs.  He seemed to be always ready with some deep-laid scheme for turning the edge of Mac’s iron resolution.  He tried hiding at the bottom of the bed.  It didn’t work.  The next time he crouched far back under the lower bunk.  He was dragged out.  Another Saturday he embedded himself, like a moth, in a bundle of old clothes.  Mac shook him out.  He had been very sanguine the day he hid in the library.  This was a wooden box nailed to the wall on the right of the door.  Most of the bigger books—­Byron, Wordsworth, Dana’s “Mineralogy,” and two Bibles—­he had taken out and concealed in the lower bunk very skilfully, far back behind the Colonel’s feet.  Copps’s “Mining” and the two works on “Parliamentary Law” piled at the end of the box served as a pillow.  After climbing in and folding himself up into an incredibly small space, Kaviak managed with superhuman skill to cover himself neatly with a patchwork quilt of Munsey, Scribner, Century, Strand, and Overland for August, ’97.  No one would suspect, glancing into that library, that underneath the usual top layer of light reading, was matter less august than Law, Poetry, Science, and Revelation.