Daylight found them at Caribou Crossing, the wind dying down, and Antonsen too far gone to dip a paddle.  Churchill grounded the canoe on a quiet beach, where they slept.  He took the precaution of twisting his arm under the weight of his head.  Every few minutes the pain of the pent circulation aroused him, whereupon he would look at his watch and twist the other arm under his head.  At the end of two hours he fought with Antonsen to rouse him.  Then they started.  Lake Bennett, thirty miles in length, was like a millpond; but, half way across, a gale from the south smote them and turned the water white.  Hour after hour they repeated the struggle on Tagish, over the side, pulling and shoving on the canoe, up to their waists and necks, and over their heads, in the icy water; toward the last the good-natured giant played completely out.  Churchill drove him mercilessly; but when he pitched forward and bade fair to drown in three feet of water, the other dragged him into the canoe.  After that, Churchill fought on alone, arriving at the police post at the head of Bennett in the early afternoon.  He tried to help Antonsen out of the canoe, but failed.  He listened to the exhausted man’s heavy breathing, and envied him when he thought of what he himself had yet to undergo.  Antonsen could lie there and sleep; but he, behind time, must go on over mighty Chilcoot and down to the sea.  The real struggle lay before him, and he almost regretted the strength that resided in his frame because of the torment it could inflict upon that frame.

Churchill pulled the canoe up on the beach, seized Bondell’s grip, and started on a limping dog-trot for the police post.

“There’s a canoe down there, consigned to you from Dawson,” he hurled at the officer who answered his knock.  “And there’s a man in it pretty near dead.  Nothing serious; only played out.  Take care of him.  I’ve got to rush.  Good-bye.  Want to catch the Athenian.”

A mile portage connected Lake Bennett and Lake Linderman, and his last words he flung back after him as he resumed the trot.  It was a very painful trot, but he clenched his teeth and kept on, forgetting his pain most of the time in the fervent heat with which he regarded the gripsack.  It was a severe handicap.  He swung it from one hand to the other, and back again.  He tucked it under his arm.  He threw one hand over the opposite shoulder, and the bag bumped and pounded on his back as he ran along.  He could scarcely hold it in his bruised and swollen fingers, and several times he dropped it.  Once, in changing from one hand to the other, it escaped his clutch and fell in front of him, tripped him up, and threw him violently to the ground.