“Have I not said I was a servant to the Government?  If not, it is well that ye know.  So I was taken on a warship, sleds and dogs and evaporated foods, and with me came Passuk.  And we went north, to the winter ice-rim of Bering Sea, where we were landed,—­myself, and Passuk, and the dogs.  I was also given moneys of the Government, for I was its servant, and charts of lands which the eyes of man had never dwelt upon, and messages.  These messages were sealed, and protected shrewdly from the weather, and I was to deliver them to the whale-ships of the Arctic, ice-bound by the great Mackenzie.  Never was there so great a river, forgetting only our own Yukon, the Mother of all Rivers.

“All of which is neither here nor there, for my story deals not with the whale-ships, nor the berg-bound winter I spent by the Mackenzie.  Afterward, in the spring, when the days lengthened and there was a crust to the snow, we came south, Passuk and I, to the Country of the Yukon.  A weary journey, but the sun pointed out the way of our feet.  It was a naked land then, as I have said, and we worked up the current, with pole and paddle, till we came to Forty Mile.  Good it was to see white faces once again, so we put into the bank.  And that winter was a hard winter.  The darkness and the cold drew down upon us, and with them the famine.  To each man the agent of the Company gave forty pounds of flour and twenty of bacon.  There were no beans.  And, the dogs howled always, and there were flat bellies and deep-lined faces, and strong men became weak, and weak men died.  There was also much scurvy.

“Then came we together in the store one night, and the empty shelves made us feel our own emptiness the more.  We talked low, by the light of the fire, for the candles had been set aside for those who might yet gasp in the spring.  Discussion was held, and it was said that a man must go forth to the Salt Water and tell to the world our misery.  At this all eyes turned to me, for it was understood that I was a great traveler.  ’It is seven hundred miles,’ said I, ’to Haines Mission by the sea, and every inch of it snowshoe work.  Give me the pick of your dogs and the best of your grub, and I will go.  And with me shall go Passuk.’

“To this they were agreed.  But there arose one, Long Jeff, a Yankee-man, big-boned and big-muscled.  Also his talk was big.  He, too, was a mighty traveler, he said, born to the snowshoe and bred up on buffalo milk.  He would go with me, in case I fell by the trail, that he might carry the word on to the Mission.  I was young, and I knew not Yankee-men.  How was I to know that big talk betokened the streak of fat, or that Yankee-men who did great things kept their teeth together?  So we took the pick of the dogs and the best of the grub, and struck the trail, we three,—­Passuk, Long Jeff, and I.