The Magnetic North | Page 5

had looked forward eagerly to the first encounter with their kind,
but this vision floating by on the treacherous ice, of men who rather
dared the current and the crash of contending floes than land where
they were, seemed of evil augury. The little incident left a curiously
sinister impression on the camp.
Even Mac was found agreeing with the others of his Trio that, since

they had a grand, tough time in front of them, it was advisable to get
through the black months ahead with as little wear and tear as possible.
In spite of the Trio's superior talents, they built a small ramshackle
cabin with a tumble-down fireplace, which served them so ill that they
ultimately spent all their waking hours in the more comfortable quarters
of the Colonel and the Boy. It had been agreed that these two, with the
help, or, at all events, the advice, of the others, should build the bigger,
better cabin, where the stores should be kept and the whole party
should mess--a cabin with a solid outside chimney of stone and an open
fireplace, generous of proportion and ancient of design, "just like down
South."
The weather was growing steadily colder; the ice was solid now many
feet out from each bank of the river. In the middle of the flood the
clotted current still ran with floe-ice, but it was plain the river was
settling down for its long sleep.
Not silently, not without stress and thunder. The handful of dwellers on
the shore would be waked in the night by the shock and crash of
colliding floes, the sound of the great winds rushing by, and--"Hush!
What's that?" Tired men would start up out of sleep and sit straight to
listen. Down below, among the ice-packs, the noise as of an old-time
battle going on--tumult and crashing and a boom! boom! like
cannonading.
Then one morning they woke to find all still, the conflict over, the
Yukon frozen from bank to bank. No sound from that day on; no more
running water for a good seven months.
Winter had come.
While the work went forward they often spoke of the only two people
they had thus far seen. Both Potts and O'Flynn had been heard to envy
them.
Mac had happened to say that he believed the fellow in furs was an
Englishman--a Canadian, at the very least. The Americans chaffed him,
and said, "That accounts for it," in a tone not intended to flatter. Mac

hadn't thought of it before, but he was prepared to swear now that if an
Englishman--they were the hardiest pioneers on earth--or a Canadian
was in favour of lighting out, "it must be for some good reason."
"Oh yes; we all know that reason."
The Americans laughed, and Mac, growing hot, was goaded into
vaunting the Britisher and running down the Yankee.
"Yankee!" echoed the Kentuckian. "And up in Nova Scotia they let this
man teach school! Doesn't know the difference yet between the little
corner they call New England and all the rest of America."
"All the rest of America!" shouted Mac. "The cheeky way you people
of the States have of gobbling the Continent (in talk), just as though the
British part of it wasn't the bigger half!"
"Yes; but when you think which half, you ought to be obliged to any
fellow for forgetting it." And then they referred to effete monarchical
institutions, and by the time they reached the question of the kind of
king the Prince of Wales would make, Mac was hardly a safe man to
argue with.
There was one bond between him and the Kentucky Colonel: they were
both religious men; and although Mac was blue Presbyterian and an
inveterate theologian, somehow, out here in the wilderness, it was more
possible to forgive a man for illusions about the Apostolic Succession
and mistaken views upon Church government. The Colonel, at all
events, was not so lax but what he was ready to back up the Calvinist in
an endeavour to keep the Sabbath (with a careful compromise between
church and chapel) and help him to conduct a Saturday-night
Bible-class.
But if the Boy attended the Bible-class with fervour and aired his
heresies with uncommon gusto, if he took with equal geniality Colonel
Warren's staid remonstrance and Mac's fiery objurgation, Sunday
morning invariably found him more "agnostic" than ever, stoutly
declining to recognise the necessity for "service." For this was an

occasion when you couldn't argue or floor anybody, or hope to make
Mac "hoppin' mad," or have the smallest kind of a shindy. The Colonel
read the lessons, Mac prayed, and they all sang, particularly O'Flynn.
Now, the Boy couldn't sing a note, so there was no fair division of
entertainment, wherefore he would go off into