“I’ll jest bet I’ll be in Paris in 1900,” the Eldorado king protested feebly.

But Jacob Welse did not hear.  There was a jangling of gongs as McGregor saluted him from the pilot-house and the Laura slipped out from the bank.  The men on the shore filled the air with good-luck farewells and last advice, but the three hundred grubless ones, turning their backs on the golden dream, were moody and dispirited, and made small response.  The Laura backed out through a channel cut in the shore-ice, swung about in the current, and with a final blast put on full steam ahead.

The crowd thinned away and went about its business, leaving Jacob Welse the centre of a group of a dozen or so.  The talk was of the famine, but it was the talk of men.  Even Dave Harney forgot to curse the country for its sugar shortage, and waxed facetious over the newcomers,—­chechaquos, he called them, having recourse to the Siwash tongue.  In the midst of his remarks his quick eye lighted on a black speck floating down with the mush-ice of the river.  “Jest look at that!” he cried.  “A Peterborough canoe runnin’ the ice!”

Twisting and turning, now paddling, now shoving clear of the floating cakes, the two men in the canoe worked in to the rim-ice, along the edge of which they drifted, waiting for an opening.  Opposite the channel cut out by the steamer, they drove their paddles deep and darted into the calm dead water.  The waiting group received them with open arms, helping them up the bank and carrying their shell after them.

In its bottom were two leather mail-pouches, a couple of blankets, coffee-pot and frying-pan, and a scant grub-sack.  As for the men, so frosted were they, and so numb with the cold, that they could hardly stand.  Dave Harney proposed whiskey, and was for haling them away at once; but one delayed long enough to shake stiff hands with Jacob Welse.

“She’s coming,” he announced.  “Passed her boat an hour back.  It ought to be round the bend any minute.  I’ve got despatches for you, but I’ll see you later.  Got to get something into me first.”  Turning to go with Harney, he stopped suddenly and pointed up stream.  “There she is now.  Just coming out past the bluff.”

“Run along, boys, an’ git yer whiskey,” Harney admonished him and his mate.  “Tell ‘m it’s on me, double dose, an’ jest excuse me not drinkin’ with you, fer I’m goin’ to stay.”

The Klondike was throwing a thick flow of ice, partly mush and partly solid, and swept the boat out towards the middle of the Yukon.  They could see the struggle plainly from the bank,—­four men standing up and poling a way through the jarring cakes.  A Yukon stove aboard was sending up a trailing pillar of blue smoke, and, as the boat drew closer, they could see a woman in the stern working the long steering-sweep.  At sight of this there was a snap and sparkle in Jacob Welse’s eyes.  It was the first omen, and it was good, he thought.  She was still a Welse; a struggler and a fighter.  The years of her culture had not weakened her.  Though tasting of the fruits of the first remove from the soil, she was not afraid of the soil; she could return to it gleefully and naturally.