“Pirate; eh?” the boatman soliloquized.  “Who?  Me?”

Mr. Thurston waved his hand appeasingly at the red-faced man, and turned to the girl.  “I’d like to go ashore with you, and as far as the store, but you see how busy we are.  Good-by, and a lucky trip to you.  I’ll tell off a couple of men at once and break out your baggage.  Have it up at the store to-morrow morning, sharp.”

She took his hand lightly and stepped aboard.  Her weight gave the leaky boat a sudden lurch, and the water hurtled across the bottom boards to her shoe-tops:  but she took it coolly enough, settling herself in the stern-sheets and tucking her feet under her.

“Hold on!” the officer cried.  “This will never do, Miss Welse.  Come on back, and I’ll get one of our boats over as soon as I can.”

“I’ll see you in—­in heaven first,” retorted the boatman, shoving off.  “Let go!” he threatened.

Mr. Thurston gripped tight hold of the gunwale, and as reward for his chivalry had his knuckles rapped sharply by the oar-blade.  Then he forgot himself, and Miss Welse also, and swore, and swore fervently.

“I dare say our farewell might have been more dignified,” she called back to him, her laughter rippling across the water.

“Jove!” he muttered, doffing his cap gallantly.  “There is a woman!” And a sudden hunger seized him, and a yearning to see himself mirrored always in the gray eyes of Frona Welse.  He was not analytical; he did not know why; but he knew that with her he could travel to the end of the earth.  He felt a distaste for his profession, and a temptation to throw it all over and strike out for the Klondike whither she was going; then he glanced up the beetling side of the ship, saw the red face of Thad Ferguson, and forgot the dream he had for an instant dreamed.

Splash!  A handful of water from his strenuous oar struck her full in the face.  “Hope you don’t mind it, miss,” he apologized.  “I’m doin’ the best I know how, which ain’t much.”

“So it seems,” she answered, good-naturedly.

“Not that I love the sea,” bitterly; “but I’ve got to turn a few honest dollars somehow, and this seemed the likeliest way.  I oughter ’a ben in Klondike by now, if I’d had any luck at all.  Tell you how it was.  I lost my outfit on Windy Arm, half-way in, after packin’ it clean across the Pass—­”

Zip!  Splash!  She shook the water from her eyes, squirming the while as some of it ran down her warm back.

“You’ll do,” he encouraged her.  “You’re the right stuff for this country.  Goin’ all the way in?”

She nodded cheerfully.