When the W.H.  Willis pulled into White Horse, it was learned that the Flora had waited three days over the limit, and had departed only a few hours before.  Also, it was learned that she would tie up at Tagish Post till nine o’clock, Sunday morning.  It was then four o’clock Saturday afternoon.  The pilgrims called a meeting.  On board was a large Peterborough canoe, consigned to the police post at the head of Lake Bennett.  They agreed to be responsible for it and to deliver it.  Next, they called for volunteers.  Two men were needed to make a race for the Flora.  A score of men volunteered on the instant.  Among them was Churchill, such being his nature that he volunteered before he thought of Bondell’s gripsack.  When this thought came to him, he began to hope that he would not be selected; but a man who had made a name as captain of a college football eleven, as a president of an athletic club, as a dog-musher and a stampeder in the Yukon, and, moreover, who possessed such shoulders as he, had no right to avoid the honor.  It was thrust upon him and upon a gigantic German, Nick Antonsen.

While a crowd of the pilgrims, the canoe on their shoulders, started on a trot over the portage, Churchill ran to his stateroom.  He turned the contents of the clothes-bag on the floor and caught up the grip with the intention of intrusting it to the man next door.  Then the thought smote him that it was not his grip, and that he had no right to let it out of his own possession.  So he dashed ashore with it and ran up the portage, changing it often from one hand to the other, and wondering if it really did not weigh more than forty pounds.

It was half-past four in the afternoon when the two men started.  The current of the Thirty Mile River was so strong that rarely could they use the paddles.  It was out on one bank with a tow-line over the shoulders stumbling over the rocks, forcing a way through the underbrush, slipping at times and falling into the water, wading often up to the knees and waist; and then, when an insurmountable bluff was encountered, it was into the canoe, out paddles, and a wild and losing dash across the current to the other bank, in paddles, over the side, and out tow-line again.  It was exhausting work.  Antonsen toiled like the giant he was, uncomplaining, persistent, but driven to his utmost by the powerful body and indomitable brain of Churchill.  They never paused for rest.  It was go, go, and keep on going.  A crisp wind blew down the river, freezing their hands and making it imperative, from time to time, to beat the blood back into the numb fingers.  As night came on, they were compelled to trust to luck.  They fell repeatedly on the untraveled banks and tore their clothing to shreds in the underbrush they could not see.  Both men were badly scratched and bleeding.  A dozen times, in their wild dashes from bank to bank, they struck snags and were capsized.  The first time this happened, Churchill dived and groped in three feet of water for the gripsack.  He lost half an hour in recovering it, and after that it was carried securely lashed to the canoe.  As long as the canoe floated it was safe.  Antonsen jeered at the grip, and toward morning began to abuse it; but Churchill vouchsafed no explanations.