He tried to drag him out, but the man struck at him savagely and held back.

“How one collects the vernacular,” he confided proudly to Frona as they hurried on.  “Twist!  It is a strong word, and suitable.”

“You should travel with Del,” she laughed.  “He’d increase your stock in no time.”

“You don’t say so.”

“Yes, but I do.”

“Ah!  Your idioms.  I shall never learn.”  And he shook his head despairingly with both his hands.

They came out in a clearing, where a cabin stood close to the river.  On its flat earth-roof two sick men, swathed in blankets, were lying, while Bishop, Corliss, and Jacob Welse were splashing about inside the cabin after the clothes-bags and general outfit.  The mean depth of the flood was a couple of feet, but the floor of the cabin had been dug out for purposes of warmth, and there the water was to the waist.

“Keep the tobacco dry,” one of the sick men said feebly from the roof.

“Tobacco, hell!” his companion advised.  “Look out for the flour.  And the sugar,” he added, as an afterthought.

“That’s ’cause Bill he don’t smoke, miss,” the first man explained.  “But keep an eye on it, won’t you?” he pleaded.

“Here.  Now shut up.”  Del tossed the canister beside him, and the man clutched it as though it were a sack of nuggets.

“Can I be of any use?” she asked, looking up at them.

“Nope.  Scurvy.  Nothing’ll do ’em any good but God’s country and raw potatoes.”  The pocket-miner regarded her for a moment.  “What are you doing here, anyway?  Go on back to high ground.”

But with a groan and a crash, the ice-wall bulged in.  A fifty-ton cake ended over, splashing them with muddy water, and settled down before the door.  A smaller cake drove against the out-jutting corner-logs and the cabin reeled.  Courbertin and Jacob Welse were inside.

“After you,” Frona heard the baron, and then her father’s short amused laugh; and the gallant Frenchman came out last, squeezing his way between the cake and the logs.

“Say, Bill, if that there lower jam holds, we’re goners;” the man with the canister called to his partner.

“Ay, that it will,” came the answer.  “Below Nulato I saw Bixbie Island swept clean as my old mother’s kitchen floor.”

The men came hastily together about Frona.

“This won’t do.  We’ve got to carry them over to your shack, Corliss.”  As he spoke, Jacob Welse clambered nimbly up the cabin and gazed down at the big barrier.  “Where’s McPherson?” he asked.

“Petrified astride the ridge-pole this last hour.”

Jacob Welse waved his arm.  “It’s breaking!  There she goes!”

“No kitchen floor this time.  Bill, with my respects to your old woman,” called he of the tobacco.

“Ay,” answered the imperturbable Bill.

The whole river seemed to pick itself up and start down the stream.  With the increasing motion the ice-wall broke in a hundred places, and from up and down the shore came the rending and crashing of uprooted trees.