It was the base Byron, tipping the wink to Mac out of the back of the bunk, that betrayed Kaviak.

It became evident that “Farva” began to take a dour pride in the Kid’s perseverance.  One morning he even pointed out to the camp the strong likeness between Kaviak and Robert Bruce.

“No, sah; the Scottish chief had to have an object-lesson, but Kaviak—­Lawd!—­Kaviak could give points to any spider livin’!”

This was on the morning that the Esquimer thought to escape scrubbing, even at the peril of his life, by getting up on to the swing-shelf —­how, no man ever knew.  But there he sat in terror, like a very young monkey in a wind-rocked tree, hardly daring to breathe, his arms clasped tight round the demijohn; but having Mac to deal with, the end of it was that he always got washed, and equally always he seemed to register a vow that, s’help him, Heaven! it should never happen again.

After breakfast came the clearing up.  It should have been done (under this regime) by the Little Cabin men, but it seldom was.  O’Flynn was expected to keep the well-hole in the river chopped open and to bring up water every day.  This didn’t always happen either, though to drink snow-water was to invite scurvy, Father Wills said.  There was also a daily need, if the Colonel could be believed, for everybody to chop firewood.

“We got enough,” was Potts’ invariable opinion.

“For how long?  S’pose we get scurvy and can’t work; we’d freeze to death in a fortnight.”

“Never saw a fireplace swalla logs whole an’ never blink like this one.”

“But you got no objection to sittin’ by while the log-swallerin’ goes on.”

The Colonel or the Boy cooked the eternal beans, bacon and mush dinner, after whatever desultory work was done; as a matter of fact, there was extraordinarily little to occupy five able-bodied men.  The fun of snow-shoeing, mitigated by frostbite, quickly degenerated from a sport into a mere means of locomotion.  One or two of the party went hunting, now and then, for the scarce squirrel and the shy ptarmigan.  They tried, with signal lack of success, to catch fish, Indian fashion, through a hole in the ice.

But, for the most part, as winter darkened round them, they lounged from morning till night about the big fireplace, and smoked, and growled, and played cards, and lived as men do, finding out a deal about each other’s characters, something about each other’s opinions, and little or nothing about each other’s history.

In the appalling stillness of the long Arctic night, any passer-by was hailed with enthusiasm, and although the food-supply in the Big Cabin was plainly going to run short before spring, no traveller—­white, Indian, or Esquimaux—­was allowed to go by without being warmed and fed, and made to tell where he came from and whither he was bound—­questions to tax the sage.  Their unfailing hospitality was not in the least unexpected or unusual, being a virtue practised even by scoundrels in the great North-west; but it strained the resources of the little camp, a fourth of whose outfit lay under the Yukon ice.