Now Captain Scott had a remarkable voice, and the “Shut up!” he launched at the crowd on deck and on shore could have been heard at the top of Moosehide Mountain and as far as Klondike City.  This official remonstrance from the pilot-house spread a film of silence over the tumult.

“Now, what do you want to say?” Captain Scott demanded.

“Tell Fred Churchill—­he’s on the bank there—­tell him to go to Macdonald.  It’s in his safe—­a small gripsack of mine.  Tell him to get it and bring it out when he comes.”

In the silence Captain Scott bellowed the message ashore through the megaphone:—­

“You, Fred Churchill, go to Macdonald—­in his safe—­small gripsack—­belongs to Louis Bondell—­important!  Bring it out when you come!  Got it?”

Churchill waved his hand in token that he had got it.  In truth, had Macdonald, half a mile away, opened his window, he’d have got it, too.  The tumult of farewell rose again, the gongs clanged, and the Seattle No. 4 went ahead, swung out into the stream, turned on her heel, and headed down the Yukon, Bondell and Churchill waving farewell and mutual affection to the last.

That was in midsummer.  In the fall of the year, the W.H.  Willis started up the Yukon with two hundred homeward-bound pilgrims on board.  Among them was Churchill.  In his stateroom, in the middle of a clothes-bag, was Louis Bondell’s grip.  It was a small, stout leather affair, and its weight of forty pounds always made Churchill nervous when he wandered too far from it.  The man in the adjoining stateroom had a treasure of gold-dust hidden similarly in a clothes-bag, and the pair of them ultimately arranged to stand watch and watch.  While one went down to eat, the other kept an eye on the two stateroom doors.  When Churchill wanted to take a hand at whist, the other man mounted guard, and when the other man wanted to relax his soul, Churchill read four-months’-old newspapers on a camp stool between the two doors.

There were signs of an early winter, and the question that was discussed from dawn till dark, and far into the dark, was whether they would get out before the freeze-up or be compelled to abandon the steamboat and tramp out over the ice.  There were irritating delays.  Twice the engines broke down and had to be tinkered up, and each time there were snow flurries to warn them of the imminence of winter.  Nine times the W.H.  Willis essayed to ascend the Five-Finger Rapids with her impaired machinery, and when she succeeded, she was four days behind her very liberal schedule.  The question that then arose was whether or not the steamboat Flora would wait for her above the Box Canon.  The stretch of water between the head of the Box Canon and the foot of the White Horse Rapids was unnavigable for steamboats and passengers were transshipped at that point, walking around the rapids from one steamboat to the other.  There were no telephones in the country, hence no way of informing the waiting Flora that the Willis was four days late, but coming.