Journey
by
James A Michener


JOURNEY

James A. Michener

Seeker & Warburg London

First published in Great Britain in 1989 by

Martin Seeker & Warburg Limited

Michelin House, 81 Fulham Road

London SW3 6RB

Copyright 1988 James A. Michener

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Michener, James A. (James Albert), 1907-journey 813'.54[F]

ISBN 0 436 27972 X

Designed by T. M. Craan

Maps by James Loates Illustrations by Mark Summers

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham,
Kent

ONE

Hope

When on the seventeenth of July 1897 the steamship Portland docked at
Seattle bringing belated news and hard evidence that an enormously rich
strike of gold had been made the summer before along the Klondike River
on the extreme western border of Canada, the world was startled by a
felicitous sentence scribbled in haste by an excited reporter who
visited the ship.  Instead of saying that the miners had reached
Seattle with 'a huge amount of gold' or 'a treasure-trove of gold," he
wrote words that became immortal: "At 3 o'clock this morning the
steamer Portland, from St.  Michaels for Seattle, passed up the Sound
with more than a ton of solid gold on board."

Those sensational words, 'a ton of solid gold," flashed around the
world, evoking wild enthusiasm wherever they appeared.  Across the.
United States and Canada, men who had suffered sore deprivation during
the great financial panic of 1893 cried: "Gold to be had for the
picking!  Fortunes for everyone!"  and off they scrambled with no
knowledge at all of mining or metallurgy,

and very little sense of how, to protect themselves on a frontier.
Shifty manipulators, who realized that they would have little chance of
finding gold in riverbeds, nevertheless knew that, with the proper card
game or attractive young woman to lure those who did find nuggets, they
might win fortunes by mining the miners.  Proper businessmen also
smelled opportunities; actors out of work visualized theaters with
dancing girls, and a few born explorers of untested regions like Lord
Evelyn Luton and his military cousin Harry Carpenter of London made
immediate preparations to rush to the gold fields for the sheer
adventure.

But if the news of the strike could have such electric effect upon so
many, why had it taken almost a full year to travel the relatively
short distance from the Klondike to Seattle, less than thirteen hundred
miles as an eagle would fly?  The explanation must be carefully noted,
for it explains the tragic events that were about to destroy so many
lives.

The Klondike was a pitiful little stream, too small to admit a boat of
any serious size and hidden away in one of the most remote areas of the
world.  It emptied into the great Yukon River, which rose in the high
mountains of the northern coastal range and roamed through Canada and
Alaska for more than nineteen hundred desolate and uninhabited miles.
So if the big river was available, why had not the miners who found the
gold taken boats down the Yukon to bring the news to civilization?
Unfortunately the mighty river was frozen almost solid from early in
October through to the first weeks in June.  The men who had discovered
the bonanza and would profit from it had made their strike so late in
the summer of 1896 that they could not get down the Yukon until early
summer of the next year.  For nearly eleven months they had lived with
their great wealth and their explosive secret, but now the genie was
out of the bottle and chaos was about to ensue.

There were two other awesome facts about the discovery on the Klondike:
although the gold fields and they were unbelievably rich and extensive,
lay entirely in Canada, there was no practical way to get from the
principal settlements of Western Canada to the region; the only
feasible route was through Alaska, but anyone who tried that found
himself facing one of the most fearsome physical challenges in the
world, the dreaded Chilkoot Pass, at places almost straight up and
passing through snow fields and mountain defiles.  And if he did
negotiate Chilkoot or the neighboring and equally formidable White
Pass, which many failed to do, he then had to build himself a small
boat from felled timber, to negotiate a series of deadly rapids and
gorges and make a long, dangerous sail down the Yukon to approach the
gold fields from the south.  "In from the south, out to the north," was
the rule at Dawson City, the Canadian settlement that sprang up near
the spot where the little Klondike emptied into the wide Yukon.

It was this land of frozen rivers, tempestuous gorges, impossible
ascents through snow and ice, long sweeps of river through a thousand
miles of wilderness, that, in the late summer of 1897, attracted
adventurers from all parts of the world, and hardly one miner, when he
left Australia, or Indiana, or Ottawa or London, appreciated even a
fragment of the hardships he would have to undergo before he reached
Golconda.

In London, a few days after the news from Seattle appeared in national
newspapers, a rich uncle and his impecunious nephew, members of the
English noble family of Bradcombe, read of 'the ton of solid gold' with
considerable excitement.  The older man, Lord Evelyn Luton, was the
younger son of the redoubtable Marquess of Deal, eighth of that line
whose Bradcombe ancestors had helped Queen Elizabeth establish a
Protestant foothold in Catholic Ireland.  Luton was thirty-one,
imperially tall and slim, aloof, soft-spoken, unmarried and a man with
a sometimes insufferable patrician manner.  He despised familiarity,
especially from underlings, and whenever a stranger presumed to
approach him uninvited he tended to draw back, lift his nose as if he
smelled an unpleasant odor undetected by others, and stare at the
intruder.  A friend at Oxford had termed this "Evelyn's silent sneer,"
and when a listener had pointed out that all sneers are silent, the
first student had replied: "Look to your dictionary.  Anyway, when
Evelyn hits you with his silent one, it speaks volumes."

Another friend had argued: "His critics may be right when they call him
insufferable, but we suffer him because he's so ... well .. . correct,"
and the first man had agreed: "He is always right, you know."  But even
this concession did not satisfy the first man: "Thing I like about him,
when he embarks on any project, he's loyal to all who accompany him."

As a result of interminable practice when a boy he had, with only
meager athletic skills to begin with, converted himself into one of
England's finest cricketers.  When not playing for his county team or
representing England against Australia, he was an avid explorer, having
penetrated to the upper reaches of the Congo, much of the Amazon and,
of course, the Nile to a point well beyond the great temples at
Karnak.

Actually there was a solid reason for his wanting to leap into the
middle of what threatened to become a gold rush, since so many wished
to join, but he scarcely admitted this to himself and certainly not to
strangers.  Having already probed both Africa and South America on
daring expeditions, he fancied traveling next to the Arctic and later
to remote corners of Asia with the purpose ultimately of writing a
travel book perhaps to be called An Englishman in the Far Corners, in
which he would exhibit, as he explained to himself, 'how an ordinary
fellow with a bit of determination could follow in the footsteps of the
great explorers."  He patterned himself after notable prototypes who
had carried the British flag into the most dangerous parts of the
world: Sir Richard Burton, who had written about primitive India and
Africa, and Charles Doughty with his incredible Travels in Arabia
Deserta.

Of all the intrepid explorations that had fired the imagination of an
entire generation of Englishmen it was the expeditions to the high
Arctic in search of the fabled Northwest Passage that had most excited
Luton.  While up at Oxford he had read as many accounts as he could
procure of the brave men who had led these northern explorations: Sir
John Ross, Sir William Edward Parry, who had attempted to reach the
North Pole, Sir Robert McClure, the first to discover the passage
through the Arctic waters.  But none of these men's deeds had affected
Luton as much as that of the noblest and most tragic explorer of them
all: Sir John Franklin, who had perished with his gallant team in 1847
in his bold effort to discover the elusive passage.

Knowing intimately the travails of such Englishmen, Luton felt himself
adequately prepared to face whatever challenges a mere gold rush might
present.  He would be venturing near the lands these men had
discovered, perhaps even treading in the path of Sir John Franklin
himself who had once sailed the Mackenzie River in an early commission
to map the coastline of the Arctic Ocean.

Luton had no doubt that he could succeed on his far lesser mission.  On
several occasions he had demonstrated that he was fearless by
performing acts of some valor, but when asked about this he rejected
that word: "Fearless?  Who told you that?  Did they also tell you I was
so terrified I wet me britches?"  To him the fragmentary word that
reached London about the extensive dangers accompanying the gold rush
were an inviting challenge, but he would never have admitted that, for
he had cloaked his former adventures as a seeking after scholarship, a
thirst for knowledge, and this time he was already explaining to
himself and others: "What I'd like, you know, is to give me nephew a
spot of help."  He pronounced the word nev-ue.

This nephew, Philip Henslow, aged nineteen, was the son of Luton's
older sister and since this made him a grandson of the Marquess of
Deal, who was extremely wealthy, it might be supposed that young Philip
did not want for money, but that was not the case.  His mother, who as
the daughter of a marquess enjoyed the title of Lady Phyllis, had
displayed both temper and deplorable judgment in ignoring her father's
strictures and eloping with a young chap named Henslow, whom the
Marquess refused to accept for he was brash, liberal and Catholic.
Growled the old noblemen: "Henslow's the shifty type Queen Elizabeth
would have hanged, because he was plotting to remove her from the
throne in favor of Mary the Scot."

Both Lady Phyllis and her son Philip had been in effect disinherited by
the intractable Marquess, and since the amiable Henslow had precious
little money, the family was more or less strapped.  Of course, when
the Marquess finally died, if he ever did, Lord Luton would be in a
position to siphon off some of the Deal fortune to his sister and her
son Philip, but while the old man lived, funds were needed.

For these contrasting reasons, love of adventure on Luton's part and
need on his nephew's, the former dispatched his footman to Oxford to
detach Philip from studies he was conducting during vacation and fetch
him to his Lordship's club in Mayfair.  "Really Philip," Luton
explained to his nephew as they dined that July night in his club,
"It's a matter of patriotism."

"Why should one route to the gold fields be more patriotic than
another?"

"Have you no sense of geography?  Can't you visualize Canada?"

"I care little about Canada," the younger man confessed, 'and very
little about South Africa or India either."  He was not teasing, this
handsome nineteen-year old from Eton, about to go up to Oxford, with
his modest flair for the classics.

"Canada lies north of the United States, as I'm quite sure you know,"
Luton said, 'and that's the infuriating part."

"I do not understand."

With bread rolls and tumblers, his Lordship laid out North America,
with a teacup representing Alaska well off to the left: This cascade of
American gold we keep hearing about, it's all from Canada, you know.
Not a farthing in the American part."

And he used a small silver teaspoon to represent the Yukon as it wound
its way across the Alaskan border into northwestern Canada.  "Here's
where the gold is, totally on our side."

"What's deplorable about that?"  Philip asked, using one of the big
words to which he was addicted.

To reach the gold, which is all Canadian, you must thread your way
through this deplorable Alaska .. ."  He caught Philip smiling, and the
young man said: "You've picked up one of my words again."

"Did I?  Which one this time?"

"Deplorable."

"But damn me, it is deplorable to think that we're forced to pass
through American territory to reach what's ours to begin with."

For Luton, like most men of his upbringing, considered all those areas
on his globe which were shaded red to be British.  He cared little for
political matters and was oblivious of the self-government accorded
Canada in 1867 when he had barely taken his first steps across the
nursery.  India, South Africa, Canada: they were all part of the
unparalleled British Empire, unlike the American states which had
unwisely and rudely rebeled against England's civilizing rule.

Philip did not need his uncle's attitude explained and so he simply
asked: "Is there no other way?"

That's what we're here to find out, and we start our investigations
tomorrow.  We've got to put some funds in your exchequer."

Of course, Luton could easily have stayed home and sent his nephew to
look after his own money matters, but that was not his style.

He too had attended Eton, with no great distinction other than on the
cricket field, and had later jollied his way through Oxford with a
minimal degree.  In both schools he had done a bit of boxing 'to keep
me self fit," as he phrased it, and a modest amount of chasing after
young women prominent in the theater.

He was known to his friends as an advocate of the telling gesture, as
when he appeared dressed in full military regalia, but of the era of
William of Orange, to hear the public speech of a general who had won
minor honors in the Afghan War.  A handshake from Luton was better than
a contract attested by a notary, and his friends supposed that he would
soon offer such a handshake to one of the various young women of good
family whom he escorted to balls and Ascot, too.  Before he took this
extremely grave step, for the Bradcombes did not divorce, he was now
eager to lead a small group of like-minded Englishmen to adventure in
the gold fields

"I'll approach Harry tomorrow," he now told his nephew.  "If we go, and
I think we shall, I'd want him along."

"I, too," Philip said with unfeigned enthusiasm, for Harry Carpenter
was one of those Englishmen who seemed to do everything easily.
Thirty-seven and a graduate of a lesser school than Eton but a good
one, he had received his degree from Cambridge with commendable honors
but without much intense study.  He had played rugby both for the
university and his country and had served with his regiment on India's
northwest frontier.  He knew nothing of mining, nothing of Canada, but
everything about living arduously on whatever frontier he found
himself.  He had climbed in the Himalayas while on leave from his
regiment, but had stayed well away from the highest peaks: "I don't
like cold weather and I'm afraid of high places."  It was unlikely that
he was afraid of much except his wife one of the minor Bradcombes and a
most determined woman-for he had more than proved his valor by tramping
alone on a feckless scouting penetration from Peshawar on the Indian
border, through the Khyber pass and south into the markets of Kandahar
to collect intelligence for a later strike against Afghanistan.  He was
a formidable man, secretive, self-disciplined and always eager to
tackle the next assignment.  He was aware that in civilian life he had
performed only indifferently and that his place was with troops, but as
he approached his forties with slim or no chance of ever becoming a
colonel-he simply hadn't the private funds to support himself in a
position as head of a regiment-he had decided that he was too old to be
knocking about as a mere minor officer in some frontier unit in the
foothills of the Himalayas, so his cousin Luton knew that, for Harry, a
chance to try his luck on the gold fields would prove a godsend.

Next day, when Luton tentatively suggested a foray into the Klondike,
Harry, with his customary diffidence, affected to know nothing about
the gold there: "Is that the place they've been making a fuss over in
the papers?  Revolution or something?"

"Gold, Harry."

"Oh, yes.  That Yukon bit."

"I was thinking of taking a look.  Care to join me?

"Love to, old chap.  Anything to get away from London for a while.  But
I say, Esquimaux and all that.  Will we be eating blubber?"

"We'll be a thousand miles from the Esquimaux, if I calculate
correctly."  Luton closed the conversation with an invitation: "I say
Harry, I'm joining Phyllis's boy at the club tonight for dinner.  Care
to join us, to talk seriously about this?"

"I've found it dangerous to talk seriously about anything, but if you
do go to the Klondike, consider me part of your team."

That night as Lord Luton and Philip entered the club they seated
themselves in the foyer so as to keep an eye on the entrance, and it
was Philip who spotted Carpenter first: There he comes!"  and into the
vestibule where patrons deposited their cloaks to the care of an
elderly attendant stepped a man of medium height, sturdily built and
with a rather large military mustache that projected about half an inch
past the flare of each nostril.  It was neither a garish mustache nor a
flamboyant one; it was the rugged symbol of a rugged man, and opponents
on many playing fields had grown to respect it.

"I say, it's good to see you Philip.  How's the pater and all that?"
Carpenter was one of Luton's rare friends who always asked about
Henslow the Catholic interloper, and when he did it was with honest
affection, for he had always liked Philip's father.

"He told me to say hello," Philip replied.  "Said he wished he could
join us."

"In this Klondike business?  He'd better stay home and mind the
shop."

"No, he meant for dinner tonight."

After a congenial meal, at which they discussed only county cricket,
they wandered into the smoking room where Harry said: "I've brought
something you both must read, that is, if we're going to pursue this
gold foolishness," and he passed along a worthy book published in
London in 1868.  It was by the English explorer Frederick Whymper,
Travel and Adventure in the Territory of Alaska, and it recounted in
delightful style his fifteen-month trip to that region in 1866.

But after Luton had given the book only a cursory glance he shoved it
back: "Harry, the man was never in Canadian territory.  Our plan must
be to move only through Canada."

Before he could elaborate on the patriotic impulses that such a
statement inspired, a white-haired club attendant came to suggest that
since four members playing whist had protested the racket being made by
Carpenter's rumbling voice, would the gentlemen please move to another
room?  Both Luton and Carpenter bowed politely to the servant, then to
the whist players and retired.

"Now what we would do, assuming that I joined you," Harry said as if
there had been no rejection of his book, 'is hie ourselves to San
Francisco by one of the railroads they say they have, then catch a ship
to Petropavlovsk in Siberia and take some Russian steamer across the
Bering Sea to the mouth of the Yukon, and up we go to this place called
Dawson City, wherever it is.  It's certainly not on this map."

Lord Luton managed an icy laugh: "Harry, Whymper made his trip more
than thirty years ago.  If we wanted to go that route,

we'd take a train right out to this place called Seattle and find us a
big, comfortable ocean-going steamer straight to Alaska."

"Oh."

"But the whole purpose of our trip would be to make it exclusively on
Empire terrain.  Land in Montreal, go by train across Canada to a place
whose name escapes me, go up one of the Canadian rivers, perhaps the
Mackenzie, cross the Rockies and drift easily down to the gold fields
Simple."

"Can it be done?"

"Join me in the morning.  We'll visit the Canadian offices.  They must
have the information."

And as the summer evening passed, with fine cigars and ancient cognac,
Philip listened intently while Luton and Carpenter reviewed the reasons
why entering the Klondike by an all-Empire route was not only an act of
patriotism but also a most appropriate act for a son of the Marquess of
Deal: "Have you ever read, Harry, how my grandfather, the seventh
Marquess, was so badly treated by the Americans in that Oregon nonsense
years ago?  The braggarts chanted the jingle "Fifty-four Forty or
Fight," and my grandfather, who was in charge of negotiations for the
English, said in this very club: "Very well, if the scoundrels want a
fight, let's give it them," and he was prepared to lead volunteers into
Canada, from which base he was ready to invade New York and
Washington."

"What did the Americans do to humiliate him?"

That's the proper word, humiliate.  In the middle of the proceedings,
with war inevitable, they called the whole thing off, surrendered their
silly claim to what would have been half of Canada, and made my
grandfather look rather foolish.  Of course he was rather foolish, as
you know, but he didn't like to be exposed."

"What happened?"  Philip asked, and Luton said: "Nothing.  It's
sometimes advantageous when nothing happens."  But then he tightened
his lips and added: "It did leave our family with an abiding distaste
for what our relatives called their "ungrateful

American colony."  Even today the Bradcombes try to avoid Americans."

However, he could not help laughing at himself as he revealed one of
the trivial reasons why he was personally impatient with Americans:
"Anytime I meet one of them I have to explain my name.  To them Evelyn
can be only a girl's name, three syllables, rather 1840 you know.  I
have to tell them that in civilized lands it's an honored man's name,
two syllables, first one to rhyme with peeve or leave.  I have
sometimes thought that I would punch the next American who asks me
about it."

In the morning Harry Carpenter stopped by to pick up young Philip
Henslow after paying his respects to the boy's father.  They proceeded
to the club where Lord Luton was staying and then drove to the London
offices of the Canadian government, where a commercial attache awaited
them.  Taking them to his cluttered office, he sat them before a large
wall map containing names with which he was familiar and they were
not.

"Of course we've known for years about scattered gold in these regions
up here, but this Klondike thing is rather special, isn't it?"  When
Luton nodded, the attache said disparagingly: "Since these lurid
American newspaper stories we've been so deluged with inquiries that
Ottawa has had to cable us two pages of reliable information, which
I'll pass along later.  But for gentlemen of your standing I must say
our Government would be most honored to receive you .. . well, I should
think you ought to see a special cable which arrived only yesterday."

"We would profit from any information," Luton said, whereupon the
attache almost fell over himself to be gracious: "Could I have Miss
Waterson fetch you some tea?  Good."

With a pointer he reviewed what he called the 'rather simple problem of
getting from London to Edmonton."

"And why Edmonton?"  Carpenter asked and Luton interrupted: That's the
name I was trying to remember!"

"Your commodious Canadian steamer will disembark you at Montreal, a
port equal in every way to New York, where the fast trains of the
Canadian Pacific will carry you to Ottawa, Fort William and Winnipeg.
Miss Waterson is from Winnipeg, and she can assure you it's a splendid
stopover for a short rest before heading into the gold country."  Miss
Waterson did so assure them.

"And now we come to the exciting part of our trip, the journey through
the vast lands of the Northwest Territories.  Winnipeg across our
District of Saskatchewan ..."

"What glorious names!"  Philip Henslow cried and the attache nodded:
They are indeed.  Indian, too.  And then west to Calgary, from which a
spur runs north to Edmonton, the end of the railway and the beginning
of your great adventure."

"Where's Dawson City?"  Luton asked, and the Canadian said: "Well, Sir,
it's not on the maps yet.  It sprang up last year, overnight as it
were."

"But where is it?"  The attache explained: "I have a recent letter from
Ottawa which sketches the new developments, and it places Dawson right
about here," and he entered a dot on the map, siting it about a hundred
and fifty miles nearer Edmonton than reality would justify.

"So you see, gentlemen, when you leave the train in Edmonton you're
practically in the gold fields

"What gear should we take?"  Carpenter asked, for when frontiers were
involved he had a practical mind.

"Oh, Sir!  Only your traveling kit.  One bag, two bags.  Because
everything you could possibly need in the gold fields can be purchased
in Edmonton, and at prices considerably less than those being charged
in the United States where, if the truth be known, they're apt to prey
upon the traveler."  Luton said, as if making his goodbyes: "I can
believe that," but the young man had one more important caution.

"Milord, you really must get one fact burned into your mind, because a
great deal depends upon your understanding of it.  Here in England it's
July, glorious time of the summer, boating and croquet.  But in
northern Canada it's almost the beginning of winter.  If you're going,
go soon and go fast, because our northern winters can be terribly deep
and tediously long."

Luton nodded, but Carpenter felt that anyone with a respect for
geography and good sense would know what the young man had just said;
he was impatient to get down to business: "What was the cabled
information you spoke of?"  and the attache produced two extremely
reassuring typed documents.  The first had been issued by un designated
officials within the Edmonton Board of Trade, and it promised the
traveler from Europe that the only sensible way for him or her to reach
the gold fields was through Edmonton:

It is more direct, less tiring and cheaper.  You have seen pictures of
the dreaded Chilkoot Pass which only the bravest and strongest can
negotiate.  Avoid it if you can.  The ocean route to St.  Michael is
tedious and expensive and when you get there you still have to move
upstream along practically the entire length of the Yukon River.

Come to Edmonton.  Use the All-Canadian route.  And find yourself at
the gateway to the gold you seek.  From Edmonton you will have the
choice of four easy routes which will be outlined to you by local
experts, who will also provide you with guidebooks and maps.  Come to
Edmonton and make yourself a millionaire.

Both Luton and Carpenter dismissed this as an understandable effort by
the merchants of a provincial city to lure business their way, but they
were quite impressed by the cable which had arrived the day previous,
for it summarized the reasoned views of two experienced travelers who
had made the journey from Edmonton to Dawson and who assured
prospective adventurers that the trip was not only practical but in
certain respects pleasant.  The first expert was a man named Ludwig
Halverson who told how one could come to Edmonton, head over an easy
trail to the Peace River, cross a low divide, pick up the Liard River,
move quickly to the Pelly and drift comfortably down to a confluence
with the Yukon, from which the gold fields would be only a few more
miles, all downstream:

This route will prove both the easiest and quickest to the target.  Any
well-trained man with a good pack-horse and a light canoe should be
able to cover the pleasant distances in less than seven weeks, and the
vigorous experience of sleeping in the open and breathing the world's
freshest air will prepare him for the easy work of panning for gold.

Halverson provided the prospector with various useful hints.  One must
not buy inferior equipment but wait till one reached Edmonton, where
men long trained in frontier living would know what was best for travel
in the north.  Scurvy, which used to be a problem, was easily prevented
by a proper diet, which local grocers would be happy to provide.  When
one found a rich placer deposit, one should have the gold assayed as
promptly as possible and reduced to bricks for easier carriage.  In
fact, Halverson used the word easy so often that it became a kind of
refrain, but the substance of his article was that by leaving from
Edmonton and choosing one of the easy river routes to Dawson, the
prospector would reach the fields much sooner than those who went by
the American routes.  He would thus be in position to stake the best
claims.

Harry Carpenter, well versed in the difficulties of travel in harsh
places, knew intuitively that the trip might require somewhat more than
seven weeks, but since he did not trace out the distance on the map, he
visualized a trip not of twelve hundred miles but of something like
four hundred.  He said frankly that he, for one, would be more
interested in the other major route, the one that was downstream most
of the way, the one that focused on one of the great scarce-explored
rivers of the world, the Mackenzie.  It was a perplexing waterway,
because it bore many different names-Finlay, Peace, Slave-a result of
the fact that at different dates it had been discovered piecemeal and
always from the warm south, but always it was the same great river, two
thousand, six hundred miles in length from its birth in high mountains
near Alaska to its entry into the Arctic seas.  It was a river to
inspire the imagination of men, and Carpenter wanted to test it.

An explorer who had traveled it in both directions, Etienne Desbordays,
explained in the second half of his report how efficient and
awe-inspiring and, yes, even delightful the trip down the Mackenzie
could be:

Wild animals in great profusion feed along the river banks as your boat
or canoe glides past.  Tall mountains grace the distance, and every
turn in the river provides some new excitement, for you are traveling
through some of the wildest and most beautiful land in North America.

Swiftly, silently the vast river carries you to your destination, and
after a thousand miles of this effortless travel you approach the
Beaufort Sea, an arm of the Arctic Ocean, but you are not headed there.
Choosing any one of a dozen convenient rivers which feed into the
Mackenzie from the west, you head west along the pleasant waterways,
cross a low divide and find yourself in the headwaters of the Klondike
River itself, down which you drift, pausing to prospect at likely sites
as you go.

Desbordays concluded that there could not be a more pleasant or
effective way to reach the gold fields than to follow the Mackenzie.
"And one of the glories of this route is that it is entirely Canadian.
You pay no United States duties on your necessities when you come this
way.  You are on Canadian terrain all the way."  As with the other
route, there were a few facts of which he must have been aware but
which in the service of salesmanship he chose to disregard.

The Canadian office in London was so pleased with the specific data
provided by this long cable that steps had already been taken to
publish it as an instructive pamphlet with maps and quotations from
earlier correspondence, for as the attache reminded Lord Luton: "You
must remember, we've known about gold in Canada for the past six years.
It's just that this latest strike has gotten a little out of hand."

"Who are these Halverson and Desbordays?"  Carpenter asked the attache
who in turn asked Miss Waterson if she knew of them.  When she replied:
"I'm from Winnipeg.  That's more than six hundred miles from Edmonton,"
the Englishmen caught some sense of the vast distances involved.  Young
Philip, good at math as well as classics, studied the wall map for some
moments, then said: "You know, Uncle Evelyn, Edmonton to Dawson is a
long way, a very long way," but the impact of his discovery was blunted
by the attache who said enthusiastically: "Evelyn.  That's a fine
English name we rarely hear in Canada," and the conversation turned to
other matters.

It was decided that Lord Luton's team would be comprised of himself,
his cousin Harry Carpenter, his nephew Philip Henslow and an
adventurous friend of Philip's, an Oxford man of twenty-two named
Trevor Blythe whose frail build and sensitive manner belied his courage
and tenacity.  These four would form an admirable team; two older men
of mature judgment and great force supported by two younger gentlemen
who had done well in school and who promised to do just as well in
life.  All four were resourceful, educated and representative of the
best that their exalted class could produce.  On the night that they
met together at Luton's club for the first time, Luton had said with
reserved pleasure: "I say, if any four in this city stand a chance to
fight their way to the gold fields it would be us."  He saw his team as
the next group of highly disciplined Englishmen to follow in the steps
of the great explorers, who had all had backgrounds like theirs: a
distant boarding school at age seven, knocked pillar to post by older
boys at Eton or Harrow, rollicking through their university days at
Oxford or Cambridge, serving in the army or navy when required, and on
to a gallant life.  The four were terribly able but also terribly
deceptive; when you saw them move out as a group they might be headed
insouciantly either for an afternoon's punting on the Thames or to a
nine-month's probe of the headwaters of the Amazon.

That night Lord Luton started the next installment of the journal he
had kept on all his explorations against the day when he might want to
write of his adventures:

I doubt I could have put together a more trustworthy foursome: two
grizzled veterans like Harry and me, and two stalwart young fellows
just beginning to show their mettle, Philip and his friend Blythe.  We
understand the responsibilities of being Englishmen and I trust we
shall conduct ourselves according to the highest traditions of that
calling.

But it was clear both to Luton and Carpenter that a fifth man was
needed, someone to do the heavy manual work, and it was fortunate that
one of the country places pertaining to the Marquess of Deal was
located in Northern Ireland, where Lord Luton had spent many of his
summers.  During his visits to the area where his father had lived
before he inherited the marquisate, and where the old man had developed
his distrust of Catholics, Evelyn had come to know rather well a fellow
two years younger than himself who displayed a spirit and an ability
that anyone would have respected.  Timothy Fogarty was the son of poor
farmers whose land had been absorbed generations ago when Queen
Elizabeth moved Scottish crofters and English lords across the Irish
Sea 'to civilize," as she said, 'the people of that unfortunate
island."

An early Marquess of Deal had been one of her agents in this effort at
altering the character of a land, and he had been a holy terror,
rooting out priests and establishing in their stead reliable Protestant
ministers.  Subsequent members of the Brad-combe family had been more
conciliatory, but all had one propensity: they lived in Ireland as long
as they bore the subsidiary title Lord Luton, but once they inherited
the marquisate they moved promptly to one of their several senior
estates in England and rarely saw Ireland again.

The present Lord Luton, who stood no chance of inheriting the
marquisate, was not at all like that; he liked Ireland, its gentle ways
and lyrical manner; in particular he liked what he had seen of Fogarty.
From the brash young lad's first days on the Luton properties he had
displayed such an innate understanding of animals and fish that Evelyn
had quickly designated him an apprentice to the elderly Irish
gamekeeper who minded the wildlife on the estates.  He proved
exceptionally qualified to be a ghillie, the Scottish term that Luton
used for his field helpers and, in addition, he was well-mannered and
could sing like the paid choristers in a London church.  He was big of
chest, but not overly tall, and when he applied himself to a task he
could do prodigious amounts of work.  He had only a sparse education,
which he fortified with common sense, and if a group of traveling
Englishmen with money wanted a factotum they could find no one better
suited to this task than Tim Fogarty.  Married to a responsible lass
named Jenny, he was nevertheless always eager for a new challenge, and
since he had the native intelligence to attack it in a new way, he was
almost ideal for the job Lord Luton had in mind.  However, he did have
one weakness about which the noble lord did not know: Tim Fogarty,
though in training to become a traditional Irish gamekeeper, was one of
the canniest poachers in Ireland.  No trout stream was safe from his
attentions, and even those he was hired to protect fell prey to his
night-time explorations, for he was a master of the shaded light, the
well-cast line.  He did not consider his poaching criminal in any
respect, for as he confided to his priest: "A man cannot love horses
and roses and prize hogs unless he also loves fish .. . and I do love
them."

Lord Luton could not command his ghillie to accompany him to Canada-the
days of peonage were over-but he could make the trip so enticing that
the Irishman had to accept.  When Fogarty crossed the Irish Sea and
presented himself in London, he listened only a few moments to the
proposal before he said enthusiastically: "I'll go," and asked
forthwith for permission to return to Belfast for his kit.  Luton took
out his wallet and said: "Not necessary.  Take this, but buy only the
necessities this afternoon.  The rest we'll get in Edmonton."  Fogarty
demurred: "It's not only me kit.  It's me wife.  Jenny would be .. ."

Lord Luton stiffened and a foreboding scowl darkened his face: "Buy it
here, not in Ireland.  Each moment of summer is precious," and Fogarty,
accepting the proffered money, nodded.

Next day, when the Luton party entrained for Liverpool, Fogarty was
aboard, because English gentlemen and Irishmen could act almost
precipitately when they had to.  Since both Luton and Carpenter wanted
to reach the gold fields promptly, they booked passage on the first
ship bound for Canada.

When they embarked on the twenty-fifth of July 1897, they were
agreeably surprised to find themselves on one of the most elegant ships
to ply the North Atlantic: the Parisian, pride of Canada's Allan Royal
Mail Line.  Long and sleek, she boasted four towering masts from which
hung a forest of yardarms and a blizzard of white sails.  But the power
of this vessel was indicated by two big, blunt smokestacks amidships,
for the Parisian was powered by both sail and steam, which made her a
mistress of the seas.  The gentlemen's cabins were spacious and
comfortable and the saloon well appointed with oak and ash floors, its
walls and slender pillars decorated in leather.  Chairs of walnut
burnished to a soft glow offered a welcome seat after a bracing walk on
the promenade deck.

Their captain, at whose table they were seated that evening, commended
them on their discernment in choosing his ship.  The Parisian, he
explained, had been cleverly designed with saloon amidships which
dampened the pitch of the steamer in high seas and made dining on board
as tranquil as on shore.  The captain continued his proud description
with details of the innovative bilge keels that kept her steady in the
water and explanations of how he used both her steam and sail power to
best advantage but Luton, tiring of his boasts, distracted him with a
question: "Why the name Parisian if she's a Canadian ship?"  and the
captain replied: "It's a mark of the respect, Sir, that we Canadians
hold for France."  Luton bristled at his reminder of what his family
considered Canada's blemished past under French rule and quickly
changed subject: "How long d'you think before we see Montreal?  The
twelve days we were promised?"  and the captain said: "Aye, twelve
days, if the weather doesn't blow."

During their calm crossing one of the basic rules of the trip evolved,
and in a somewhat unpleasant way.  Trevor Blythe, whose family kept
seven servants, began summoning Fogarty, who slept on a lower deck, and
giving him orders as if the

Irishman were his assigned man-servant.  This had to be done
conspicuously, because the four gentlemen in Luton's party occupied
first-class quarters, while Fogarty shared a cramped cabin with two
other servants in steerage.  So when Blythe felt he needed Fogarty's
services he had to take obvious steps to summon him.

Fogarty did not complain; he knew he was a kind of servant, but Lord
Luton was distressed by Blythe's action, and after this infraction of
the tacit rules of such an expedition occurred for the third time,
Luton and Carpenter asked the two younger men to join them in a
secluded corner of the ship's luxurious saloon.

This isn't pleasant and it isn't crucial, so let's not make an affair
of it," Luton said after a deferential cough.  "But I think we must
understand certain rules.  Nothing in writing, no saluting or the
raising of voices."  He coughed again and was obviously uneasy: "Harry
and I've been through this often, and I'm sure you young fellows will
catch on immediately."

When Henslow and Blythe looked at each other in bewilderment, Luton
snapped: "Damn it, you make it difficult to say, but Fogarty is the
expedition's servant, not at the beck and call of individuals."

Now Blythe realized that he was the subject of the meeting, and before
either Luton or Carpenter could speak further, he apologized profusely:
"I say, I am most fearfully sorry.  It was thoughtlessness, Evelyn,
sheer thoughtlessness."

Luton, relieved to see that the young man was taking the admonition
properly, sighed, thrust out his hand and clasped Trevor's: "Thanks.  I
knew you'd understand.  Harry, lay out the rules."

"Quite simple.  It's as he said at the beginning.  Fogarty is the
servant of the party as a whole, never of an individual.  I think an
example will clarify it nicely.  When we're in camp and require wood
for the stove, it will be Fogarty's job to see that we get the wood,
but each of us in proper turn will help him do it.  And should he
suggest that Evelyn chop down that tree over there,

I would expect Evelyn to hop to it smartly and chop the thing down."

"Highly sensible," said Blythe without a sign of rancor.

"Now if young Philip here needs his socks washed because he's worn them
too long on the trail, he need not call for Fogarty.  He jolly well
washes them himself."

"Understood?"  Luton asked, and when the young men nodded, he added:
"Good.  But Fogarty has agreed to cut our hair during our long trip,
and for that each of us must pay him in cash.  Understood?"

Not once on their long journey together would anyone call the Irishman
anything but Fogarty, which was understandable, since none knew his
first name or showed any interest in learning it, but that night in his
notes Lord Luton did praise the ghillie:

There are few people in this world more pleasant to deal with than a
well' trained Irishman who knows his place, and our ghillie Fogarty is
one of the best.  I spotted him young and have had him work with our
finest hands.  In due course, fifteen, sixteen years, he'll be my
gamekeeper, and I doubt I'll ever have a better.

Harry and I have had to lay down the rules to our two young men.  How
could they know the niceties if we didn't tell them?  And I am proud to
say they snapped to and saluted like proper soldiers.  That's the way
to launch an expedition properly, and tonight I appreciate more than
ever the stalwart abilities of Carpenter.  I'd not like to go ahead
without him.

The latter part of the twelve-day crossing to Montreal established
patterns which would prevail during the months ahead.  Philip spent
long hours in the ship's library, which overlooked the saloon, reading
and then almost memorizing parts of Whymper's account of his journeys
in Alaska, and whenever the Yukon River was mentioned he took special
notice.  In time he knew that waterway as intimately as one could from
maps and a book, but his uncle almost ridiculed this effort: "The part
of the Yukon you're reading about is entirely in American territory,
and we're not going that way."  Nevertheless, the young man continued
his preoccupation with the river.

After some days browsing the ship's limited collection of books Trevor
Blythe concentrated his attention on one of the small volumes he had
borrowed from his mother, Palgrave's well-regarded Golden Treasury, the
1861 anthology of what was considered at that time the essence of
English lyrical poetry.  Trevor had, of course, made himself familiar
with most of the poems, but since he aspired to adding perhaps a lyric
or two of his own to the grand assembly, he wished to know the works
intimately.  On this excursion, through prolonged study of the more
gracious poems, he hoped to learn the secrets of effective prosody.

During his two years at Oxford, Blythe had attracted favorable
attention for his youthful poems and some university critics had gone
so far as to say that he had the authentic English voice.  He did not
think so; his reverence for the songs of Sidney, Herrick and Waller was
so profound that he doubted he could ever add to their flawless
statements, but he did want to understand the sorcery whereby they had
achieved their miracles.  So as the ship sliced through the North
Atlantic swells he would sometimes cry with the joy of late discovery:
"Philip!  Did you ever catch the felicity, there's no other word for
it, of Waller's cry?  I must've read it a dozen times but never before
.. ."  And as the ship plowed westward he would read those lines which
had for centuries tugged at the hearts of young men:

Go, lovely Rose!

Tell her that wastes her time and me That now she knows, ;

When I resemble her to thee

How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Lord Luton and Harry Carpenter were engaged in more practical matters;
endlessly they reviewed the technical aspects of the trip, and each
agreed that to purchase even a handkerchief prior to reaching Edmonton
would be unwise, for as Luton said: "Stands to reason, don't it, that
those chaps on the frontier will be better informed about Arctic
conditions than anyone in places like Montreal or Winnipeg."  They gave
much attention to modes of locomotion, and here Luton was determined:
"I'd say, get to the Athabasca River as soon as possible, no matter the
overland portage, and buy a boat there, or even build one, and start
floating downstream.  Cross the Great Slave and .. ."

Always Harry broke in at this point: "Let's look at this again, Evelyn.
Can we, in common sense, hope to get across the Rocky Mountains,
wherever we encounter them, this autumn?  I mean, before the rivers
freeze?"  While Luton restudied this, Carpenter would add: "I'm eager
too, you know."

But when pressed, Harry would state firmly: "Evelyn, it's nearly
August.  From what I've been reading .. . Whymper says the same .. .
these rivers start to freeze in late September, maybe earlier in the
far north."

Then you see no chance for this year?"

Carpenter was the kind of steady, careful man who disliked arbitrary
statements; too often he had seen men of great resolve contest the odds
and make their own rules, so he avoided giving a direct negative: "As
we go down the Mackenzie we might hear of some river we don't know
about coming in from the west, hooking up with the Yukon.  If we could
find that river we'd be drifting down the Yukon right into Dawson."

"You've ruled out overland?"

Now Harry had to be firm: "Evelyn, old friend, I've been looking at the
maps.  It's a far distance from Edmonton to Dawson overland.  More than
a thousand miles I calculate.  Could you and I haul our tons of gear on
sleds for that distance in the time available this year?"  Lowering his
voice, to indicate the gravity of the decisions he must share, he
whispered: "I doubt it."

Drawing upon his experiences with rough travel in Asia and Africa, he
knew it would be advantageous if members of the party memorized the
terrain between Edmonton and the gold-fields and to that end he
conducted study lessons on a table in a corner of the ship's card room.
Here he spread the team's various maps, and after he had summoned
Fogarty from below, the five men pored over sketchy and often
inaccurate maps depicting the recollections of former travelers.  As
Harry compared the maps he noticed one compelling fact: regardless of
which route the gold seekers elected, it would be impossible for them
to leave Edmonton and reach the Klondike without at some point climbing
and crossing the Rockies.  Whatever map he focused upon, it contained
that ominous black line coming down from the northwest and running
diagonally to the southeast.  Even on flat paper, those mountains were
a brooding, repellent barrier.

Once when he drew Blythe's attention to the forbidding line, he noticed
that the young poet studied with unusual interest the way it twisted
about as if protecting the gold fields from intruders, and later Harry
saw the young fellow scratching in his notebook.  Always interested in
what men younger than himself were engaged in, he asked politely: "I
say, Trevor, could I have a peek?"  and almost shyly the young man
shoved the little book forward with the brief comment: Toying with
words.  Idea for a poem, maybe," and Harry read:

In gathering darkness we pursue

A Grail of Gold protected by jealous elves

Who keep it rimmed by jagged mountains

"Fine conceit you have there, Trevor," Harry said approvingly.  "A
proper poet could make something of it ... polishing .. . simplifying..
. don't you know?  "After he had returned the book he said to the
others: "I hope the rest of us realize the aptness of what Trevor's
written.  He's got it just about right, you know.  We find no gold till
we penetrate those mountains.

"As I consult my maps, and they have a few good ones on this ship, I
grow most dubious about these two reports we saw in London."  He laid
before them his copy of the glowing statement by Ludwig Halverson
regarding the ease with which one could travel overland from Edmonton
to Dawson City and the later one by Etienne Desbordays describing the
floating comfort of a trip down the Mackenzie River.  "This one," and
he indicated the overland trail, 'seems absolutely impossible,
regardless of what Halverson says he did.  And this one," pushing aside
the Desbordays with contempt, 'has not a word of information that I
would consider solid."

"Where's that leave us, Harry?"  Luton asked, and Carpenter said: "In a
fix.  But not one we can't work our way out of.  After all, we know
that people are getting to the gold fields  The outflow of gold proves
that, and so shall we."

In cautious, statesmanlike terms Lord Luton stated what their strategy
must be: "Immediately upon docking in Canada we shall rush by train
across the continent to Edmonton and there make the most penetrating
inquiries as to the truth of the two routes.  Only when we have more
detailed and reliable facts in hand shall we decide our next step, but
I assure you of this.  We shall get to the gold fields  And the other
three supported this resolve, with Philip adding: "If Yankees can get
there in their fashion, we can certainly do the same in ours."

None of the team had ever been in Canada, nor had they read much about
it.  Lord Luton said he knew all that was needed: "When the Americans
broke away back there, Canadians had sense enough to stand firm."  By
that he meant that they had remained in the Empire, and he could not
for the life of him understand why the Americans had not.

"England had everything a man wants .. . good government ... a King we
love or a Queen we love even more .. . wealth .. . order .. .
membership in the best group of nations in the world.  It will take the
Yankees generations to catch up with what they already had, but tossed
away."

He was therefore disposed to like Canada, and when the Parisian started
picking its way through the clusters of big islands guarding the
entrance to the St.  Lawrence River, and then entered the spacious
river itself, he said approvingly: "What a splendid way to enter a
country!"  He felt even more encouraged when the ship passed by the
tall cliffs at Quebec City which were surmounted by the gracious
Chateau Frontenac, a new hotel whose reputation had already reached the
ears of London society.

"Marvelous beginning," he said, but when they docked at Montreal his
ardor diminished, for he saw that he was now in the middle of a society
that was completely French, and this he did not approve: "I could've
got to real France by crossing the Channel and saved a bundle.  I was
on a ship of the right name for that."  His day in the city was not a
happy one, for he felt as if he had been cut off from England and
thrust into an alien setting he had not anticipated: "Might as well be
Albania."

Trevor Blythe, listening with amusement to Luton's barrage of acerbic
comment thought: He's a young man with an old man's ideas, but since he
himself was a guest on the trip he deemed it best not to speak.

The Englishmen received their first indications of the gold mania that
had hit Canada when they hurried to the railway booking office to pick
up their tickets: "Oh, your lordship!  You were so wise to cable ahead
for reservations.  If you hadn't, I

don't know what we could have done.  Hundreds every day clamoring to go
west.  You'd have found every seat sold till well into next week."

"Even first class?"

"Especially first class.  Goldseekers are happy to pay a premium.
They're convinced that in six weeks they'll be millionaires."

Safely aboard the handsome new Canadian train that had recently begun
to run uninterruptedly from the Atlantic seacoast to the Pacific, the
four Englishmen again received the kind of joyous surprise that made
travel a pleasure, for a train of eleven cars, five of them luxurious,
was waiting to speed travelers along the first short leg of the
journey-Montreal to Ottawa- in maximum comfort.  The four Englishmen,
of course, were traveling first class, Luton and Carpenter in one
delightful bedroom saloon, Trevor and Philip in another, while Fogarty
had fairly comfortable sitting space in one of the less expensive
cars.

The saloons were handsomely appointed in heavy, dark red upholstery and
spacious let-down beds, but it was the long dining car that gained
accolades.  The compact galley, big enough for two cooks, was forward
to protect the car from intrusions by riders in the lesser seats, but
the remainder of the car clear to the rear door consisted of tables
handsomely draped in thick linen containing along the edges revealed to
the public the carefully embroidered initials CPR.  Tables on one side
of the carpeted aisle seated two, the chairs facing, but somewhat
larger tables on the other side were for four, and when Henslow first
entered the car his immediate impression was of endless white decorated
with sparkling glassware and gleaming silver.  "A car for gentlemen,"
Luton said as he surveyed the place and waited for the head attendant
to show him to a table for four.

It was a gala meal intended to display the riches of Canada: seafood
from the east coast, rich beef from the Prairies, fruits and vegetables
from Ontario, and desserts from French patisseries in Montreal, all
served by two professionally gracious white head waiters assisted by
blacks trained to show professional smiles.

"This is a grand introduction to Canada," Luton said.  "I hope it's an
omen."

But as he observed the other diners on this first night of his trip
across the continent, he saw so much that perplexed him, so many
different styles of dress and speech, that he became bewildered.  What
troubled him most was the breeziness of the people on the train, their
informality, their lack, as he expressed it, 'of any clear-cut social
structure."  He soon learned that he could not easily determine from
what level of society a man came: They all speak the same, bottom to
top, no differentiation at all, except for those who've obviously had
their education in England."  Men pushed and shoved and paid little
deference to those of obviously superior status, and when at Fort
William several American travelers boarded the train, even what few
proprieties the Canadians did observe seemed to fly out the window.

"At times," he told the two young men, 'you'd hardly know it was a
British colony, everything so jumbled."

Philip said he was pretty sure Canada wasn't a colony any longer:
"Didn't they have a dominion office in London and all that?  And their
own prime minister?"

"If it makes them feel good such concessions do little harm.  But when
an Englishman travels in India, for example, everything is so clear.
There you are, white skin and all, dress easily recognized, officers in
spanking new uniforms, women of all ages carrying on the best
traditions of the home country.  Sharing the place are the Indians. You
can't miss them.  Mind you, some of them can buy and sell the average
Englishman, Oxford and all that, and they've learned to fit into the
finest clubs.  But Indians are Indians, and no one ever forgets it,
isn't that right, Harry?"

Carpenter grunted agreement, then said that when he served in the
Punjab on the Afghan frontier there were no finer troops than Probyn's
Horse: "Mostly Indians, and I never fought with better."

"But of course they had English officers?"

"Yes.  But I'll tell you this, Evelyn, if push should come to shove in
Europe, and it might, I would expect a Canadian battalion to give a
good account of itself, very good indeed."  He was struck by the fact
that the average Canadian man they were seeing seemed an inch or two
taller than men of similar status would have been in England: "They're
stout chaps, Evelyn, a new type of Empire man," but Luton thought the
Canadian women dowdy and lacking in refinement.

Travel by these trains isn't cheap, I can tell you that," Luton said,
'so we've got to suppose we're seeing the best of the crop.  Not too
impressive, I'm afraid."

He feared that Canada had probably been corrupted by its proximity to
the United States, and whenever he spoke of that massive republic lying
just to the south he had ambivalent feelings: "Man would be an ass not
to recognize the accomplishments of those energetic people. Remarkable,
really.  Fine cities and all that, but you must remember we got them
off to a flying start during the hundred and fifty years we guided
them.  But I'm sure their effect on Canada has been destructive."

Carpenter, laughing at his friend's reluctance to accept Canada for
what it was, said: "Evelyn!  On this train you're enjoying a luxury not
surpassed anywhere in Europe.  Relax.  Enjoy it," and Luton raised his
glass: To Canada, such as it is!"

Tim Fogarty was having a less opulent trip for he was riding in what
the new railway called a Colonial Car, an ingenious affair containing
many little alcoves consisting of facing double seats, with between
them a wooden table which could when needed be dropped from its resting
place upright against the wall or returned there when the picnic-style
meal was finished.  But what pleased the Irishman most were the
arrangements for sleeping, for he had soon tired of the endless vistas
of lakes and trees his window afforded of the land north of the Great
Lakes.

At night the space where the table had been was filled in with a
structure that also came out of the wall, thus forming, with the facing
seats, a fine, level bed, upon which two passengers could sleep in
relative comfort, especially if they had been forewarned to bring
blankets of some kind.  And that wasn't all, because if four people
occupied the alcove during the day and only two could sleep at night,
two others were left standing, but they were cared for by an invention
which simply delighted Fogarty and which he occupied even during
daylight hours.

From a spot high up the walls of the Colonial Car came two strong link
chains which supported the outer edges of bed-like platforms.  These
were thus suspended as it were from the ceiling and passengers could
climb onto them with the aid of a little ladder.  There, high above the
others, they could stretch out, adjust their blankets if they had any,
and sleep their way across the continent.  What made these upper ledges
especially homelike was the fact that in the rear of the car stood a
well-designed wood-burning stove on which the travelers could cook such
food as they had either brought with them or purchased at one of the
many station halts.  This meant that there was throughout the car,
especially near the ceiling, a constant odor of the normal family
kitchen.

The only drawback to the Colonial Car that Fogarty could detect was
that the facing seats in which one rode during the day or slept upon at
night were upholstered in the hardest, shiniest, most unforgiving mock
leather, only slightly more resilient than a board, and after even one
day's travel, this unrelenting hardness began to tell.

The trip from Montreal to Edmonton traversed an awesome distance broken
into four distinct segments: Montreal to Fort William at the head of
Lake Superior, 995 miles in 32 hours; Fort William to Winnipeg, capital
of western Canada, 427 miles in 14 hours; Winnipeg to the interesting
frontier town of Calgary, 840 miles in 30 hours; and Calgary due north
to Edmonton, 192 miles in 11 hours.  The trip would thus cover 2,454
miles in 87 hours, without allowance for time in the station, time for
refueling and taking on water.  Since passengers were eager to avail
themselves of hotel or inn accommodations at the terminal points of
each segment, the journey took at least six days.  This was fortuitous,
because it enabled Canada to introduce itself by conditioning stages;
to have thrown the Englishmen direct from French Montreal to frontier
Edmonton would have been too disorienting.  To break the journey at
little Fort William was advantageous, and the Englishmen noted that in
a sense the gold rush began here, for this was the beginning of the
western reach of the national railroad, and to it had come prospectors
from all parts of Canada and especially from the little feeder
railroads that came into Canada from the United States.  Here also the
big ships that plied the Great Lakes terminated their long runs; the
traveler could, if he had the time and money, deviate from the normal
rail route which traversed northern Ontario, go instead to Toronto and
onwards to Windsor on the Detroit River, board a luxurious steamer and
spend several delightful days transiting Lakes Huron and Superior,
disembarking at Fort William to resume the rail trip west to the
Pacific.

In the summer of 1897 a constant horde of gold seekers boarded the
trains at Fort William for Winnipeg and Calgary, and the Luton party,
seeing such men close up for the first time, judged them to be an
ungainly lot, single men mostly, although some came in groups of three
or four from some small town in places like Ohio or Michigan, with an
occasional man and wife, the woman always big and strong and capable. A
surprising number of the Americans who joined the caravan had been in
the United States only briefly; they were really Germans and
Scandinavians with now and then an Irishman and very rarely an
adventurous Frenchman.  They were men on the move, most of them in
their late twenties or early thirties with always a few in their
grizzled forties and fifties.  In their rough clothes, pasteboard
suitcases and blunt language they were not an appetizing lot.

Some hours before the Englishmen arrived in Winnipeg, where they rested
overnight, their train finally emerged from what had seemed to them an
endless landscape of dark trees, still lakes and rock, brightened only
by the flash of a silver birch tree and an occasional waterfall.  Even
Blythe, enamoured at first with the wildness of this vast forest, had
tired of it during the second day.  Now the forest had stopped and the
prairie stretched unbroken to the far horizon and they began to
comprehend fully both the immensity of Canada and its radical
difference from any other part of the British Empire.  "It really is a
continent," Trevor said as he pored over maps, 'and we're barely half
way across," but Luton dampened this uncritical enthusiasm by asking:
"Does a thousand miles of empty prairie with no history, no culture,
equal a hundred miles in an historical corner like Germany, Holland and
Belgium?"  He could express little interest in the vital sprawling new
capital of Manitoba, and was unimpressed by the new electric streetcars
which rumbled through the city to the evident pride of its citizens.

West of Winnipeg, when the train halted at towns with names like Moose
Jaw, Swift Current and Medicine Hat, the Englishmen saw that the
passengers who now boarded the cars bore almost no similarity to types
they had known in England and little to those in eastern Canada.  Here
no one spoke French, and English seemed no more commonly spoken than
the foreign tongues of Baltic nations.  There were no men's suits from
fashionable London shops.  These were men who plowed the prairie,
tended cattle and ran small country stores.  Their women looked as
capable as their husbands, with a surprising number traveling alone or
in pairs.

Adding to the jumble of nationalities already on the train were the
large numbers of gold seekers who had come north from the western
United States, big uncouth men with squarish faces indicating Slavic
origins, or light blond hair indicating northern Europeans.  Now every
car in the train was crowded with would-be miners, many carrying with
them all their family goods; the white-and-gold dining car was filled
with dialects not heard before, and Fogarty's Colonial Car was so
jammed that he had to share his bed aloft with a Swede who said he came
from Montana.

The effect of this flood of newcomers on Lord Luton amused the other
Englishmen in his party: "My word, they're a vigorous lot!  No wonder
they wanted to steal Oregon from us and half of Canada.  Wonder the old
Marquess was able to hold them off, because these chaps could fight if
they had to."  Studying the Americans aloofly, he thought: They're
either brash and forward with no sense of proper social distinctions or
they're brutish clods recently arrived from some minor European
country, little better than the peasants you'd find in any French
village.  And it irritated him to think that these latter Americans in
their rough country clothes were presuming to occupy first-class
accommodations, the only ones they were able to obtain on the crowded
trains.  You'd not find them doing this in England, he thought, and he
was increasingly pleased that he had engineered it so that his team
could avoid America completely, knowing he'd not feel at ease spending
an extended period among such people.

The two young Englishmen, forced to accept what seats were available in
the crowded dining car, struck up an easy conversation with their table
mates  "I say," Trevor asked, 'where do these people come from?" and
one of the men sharing the table pointed to one pair of diners after
another: They're German, I happen to know them.  That group I would
judge to be from a Russian religious group who found refuge near here.
The next?  They could be anything," and he leaned out from the table to
ask: "Where would you be from?"  but as soon as the man began to speak,
Trevor cried: "Scandinavian aren't you?"  and the man said:
"Norwegian."

When Luton's party disembarked from the main line of the Canadian
Pacific in Calgary in order to catch the train to Edmon-ton, everything
changed, for nearly a thousand gold seekers from all parts of the
United States had crowded in to augment the hordes who had streamed in
from Eastern Canada.  When the smaller train started due north to
Edmonton, every seat was taken, so three cars normally used for cattle
transfers were attached,

and more than a hundred gold seekers rode the hundred and ninety-two
miles to Edmonton standing up, and happy to be doing so.

Lord Luton, surveying this crush of humanity, said: "It's been like the
meander of a major river over a long course.  Smaller streams keep
feeding into it from distant points until the thing becomes a flood."
He had scarcely uttered these words when someone heard Fogarty address
him as "Milord."  Word flashed through the mob that a real British lord
was traveling north.  Soon gawking Americans were pushing in to see how
a British nobleman looked and more experienced Canadians watched
approvingly from a distance.

Seeking refuge, Luton fled to his private saloon, but at dinner several
strangers stopped by his table to pay their respects and wish him well.
He was so distressed by this that he drew back, took refuge in his
silent-sneer and prayed that the trip would end quickly.  Eleven hours
later he heard cheering coming from the three cattle cars and looked
out to see Edmonton,which had exploded from less than five hundred
people last year to more than two thousand in the period since those
fatal words were shouted in Seattle: "Ship's in with a ton of solid
gold!"

Luton's first impression of Edmonton was of a city of tents, for the
gold seekers had thrown up thousands of temporary canvas dwellings
along the flats of the North Saskatchewan River.  Shops of every
description had mysteriously appeared, most with some bold sign
assuring the newcomer that inside these doors he would find all he
needed for his forthcoming journey to the Klondike.  The burghers of
Edmonton reveled in its sudden notoriety while hawkers pestered
strangers on its impromptu streets, seeking to' guide them to this shop
or that.  One man dressed like a carpenter with overalls and bib
containing six pockets for nails, harangued the travelers, and handed
out leaflets warning them not to go north without the necessary
hardware.  He said that a minimal kit could be purchased at his
brother's store for $43, which provided basics such as shovel, pick,
whipsaw, hammer, rope, axe, drawknife, chisel, bucket and gold pan.
However, he recommended what he called 'the complete kit, listed here
in detail, more than a hundred and ten necessities, only $125."  This
contained such useful items as a brace and bit, a block and tackle, a
magnifying glass and a Dutch oven.

Philip accepted one of the leaflets and when he returned to the hotel
he recommended to his uncle that they buy the $125 assortment, but
Luton said: "Harry's doing the buying, and he's much more practiced in
outfitting expeditions than your carpenter friend."

While the four gentlemen attended to such matters as hardware, Fogarty
moved quietly among the Americans and Edmon-ton shopkeepers, and as he
talked with clerks he began to uncover disquieting news.  When he asked
who the expert was who had prepared that pamphlet his team had acquired
from the Canadian office in London, one sharp-minded fellow working in
an outfitting shop asked: "What expert?"  and Fogarty said: "I think
his name was Halverson."  The clerk sniggered: "Oh, him?"  and when
Fogarty named the expert on the Mackenzie River, Desbordays, the clerk
laughed outright: They're the same man.  Peter Randolph.  He works at
the newspaper."

"Has he ever been to Dawson?"

"He hasn't been as far north as the Athabasca River."

"What did he do, ask a lot of questions?"

"About what?"

"You know, talk with the other men who had been there."

"Nobody from here has been anywhere.  I mean, down the Mackenzie River
a short ways, maybe.  On fishing trips, yes."

"But to the gold fields

"Nobody.  At least not yet.  There's talk that a government expedition
might set out next year.  But not now, with winter heading in."

Fogarty, loathe to accept such disheartening information, quietly left
the outfitter and strolled from one shop to another, asking not
proprietors but minor clerks about the trails to the Klondike, and
consistently he heard that Peter Randolph had never been out of
Edmonton and that no one at present in the town had made the trek to
Dawson, for as several pointed out: "Dawson wasn't even there till all
this started."

"But could they have been to the Klondike?"

"There was no such place till last year when those Americans gave it
that name."

When Fogarty walked down the dusty back streets of Edmonton, trying to
digest his disturbing discoveries, he saw that he must do two things:
try to speak with this man Peter Randolph who had written the spurious
documents and then inform Lord Luton of his findings.  At the office of
the town's newspaper, he asked for Randolph and was told: "He doesn't
work here anymore."  When Fogarty asked: "What's he doing?"  he was
told: "He's taken a job giving advice to prospectors at a store that
opened last week."

It took Fogarty some time to find which of the many new businesses had
hired this imaginative man, and when he did he presented himself as a
solitary would-be prospector.  "Yes indeed!"  salesman Randolph said
enthusiastically.  "You can get to the fields before the ice freezes
everything.  We'll provide you with the best clothing and equipment
possible, food supplies, too, and with one horse, which you supply, you
can make it."

Fogarty talked with him for some time and began to suspect that not one
word of what he said was true.  The whole Edmonton operation could be a
gigantic fraud engineered by a few rapacious businessmen and a group of
inattentive town fathers.  It looked' as if no one, when these pleasant
days of summer were still long, stopped to reason that in sending lone
travelers north into the teeth of the oncoming winter a sentence of
death was being pronounced, and that in dispatching even carefully
prepared teams like Lord Luton's, disaster was being invited.

With his partial but frightening information Fogarty returned to the
hotel and told Luton: "If you'll excuse me saying so, Milord, we better
get the others."  When they assembled he said: "I think we're in a
trap.  The two men who wrote those reports you mention so much, they're
one man, a fellow who's never been out of Edmonton, not even as far as
the Peace River.  I've been told by many men in town that there's no
way people starting now can get to the gold fields before winter."

"Fogarty," Luton said, with just a show of irritation, 'are you telling
us the truth, or just a batch of village rumors?"  and when Fogarty
protested that he had checked the veracity of his informants as
carefully as possible, Lord Luton cut him short and snapped at
Carpenter: "Harry, go out there and find out what's happening."  While
Lord Luton was looking the other way, Fogarty slipped up to Carpenter
and whispered: "His name's Peter Randolph, he wrote them all and he's
been nowhere.  You'll find him tending shop in that place with the
stuffed bear in the window'; and Harry went in search.

He found Randolph eagerly selling equipment to strangers who had no
conception of the dangers they would be facing, and he was repelled by
the young man's brazen lies.  For nearly half an hour he hung about the
edges of the crowd that was eagerly buying Randolph's gear, listening
to the deceptions and correcting them to himself: "Dawson's just to the
north, three, four hundred easy miles."  Must be twelve hundred of
hellish difficulty.  "Seven pleasant weeks before the snow falls should
get you there."  More like seven months, with snow most of the way.

What really terrified him was the information quietly passed him by an
Edmonton man who said he was ashamed at what was happening: "You look a
proper sort.  England?  I thought so.  Believe not a word that one
says.  He's never been north of this town.  Only one man in history has
completed the journey from here to Dawson, trained scout familiar with
our climate.  Powerful chap, top condition, had the help of Indians,
too."

"How long did it take him?"

"A year and two months.  Arrived nearly dead."

Then it's criminal ta send these unsuspecting people along such a
trail."

"It's worse.  It's murder."

Rushing back to where Luton waited, Harry said bitterly: "Everything
Fogarty said is true, Evelyn, except that he discovered only half. Even
to attempt an overland trip from here to Dawson would be suicide. And
Fogarty was also correct about Randolph.  His forged reports are
founded on nothing, not a single trip to anywhere, just dreams and
wilful delusions.  Evelyn, this deception is so shocking I do believe
we must warn those gullible fools out there not to attempt such folly."
He was so statesmanlike, never raising his voice and thinking only of
others, that Luton was persuaded that an alarm must be sounded.  Before
this could be done a wild noise of cheering and whistling flooded their
quarters, and all turned out to watch not a tragedy, nor a comedy
either, but merely the latest in line of the Edmonton insanities.

A farmer named Fothergill from Kansas, who had made not a fortune but a
competence raising corn and feeding it to his hogs, had arrived some
days earlier on the train, bringing with him some two dozen large
pieces of cargo that he had assembled into what he called 'the Miracle
Machine," which would carry him to the Klondike.  Basically, it was an
agricultural tractor, heavily modified for the gold rush, and on the
flat fields of Kansas it might have been a sensation, for it consisted
of a sturdy iron-strapped boiler which, when heated by wood chopped
along the way, would activate four giant wheels.

"You'll notice," Fothergill told the admiring crowd, 'that the wheels
are pretty big across.  That's to help them roll over obstacles.  You'd
be surprised how that helps."  But then he showed them the secret of
his success: "Maybe you didn't notice at first,

but look at those spikes fitted into the wheels, and these three-dozen
extras in the box back here in case one breaks.

"What do they do?"  a suspicious Canadian asked, and Fothergill
explained: They dig into the soil.  Give the contraption a footing and
send it forward as neat as you please."  As he spoke, his eyes shining
with expectation of the gold he was going to find, it became obvious to
the Englishmen that he had pictured the trail from Edmonton to Dawson
as an American prairie, flat and easily negotiated but with a necessary
tree here or there, for when one Edmonton man asked: "How you goin' to
get it through forests?"  the American replied: "We may have to avoid a
tree or two, go around maybe."

And now the time had come to start his drive of more than a thousand
miles with few spare parts, only one axe to cut the needed wood and no
map.  Lord Luton, watching this tremendous folly, whispered to his
nephew: "Someone ought to halt this madness."  As the fire below the
boiler began to flame, the already heated water started to produce
steam, and with a violent creaking of parts the huge machine, capable
of carrying twenty men, inched forward, felt its power and struck out
for the modified Edmonton prairie and moved quite splendidly forward
with Fothergill in the driver's seat waving to the cheering watchers.
But when, one hundred yards later, the huge spiked wheels encountered a
stretch of flat earth where rains had accumulated, the contraption did
not proceed forward; instead the wheels dug themselves ever more deeply
into the swampy soil, the big spikes cutting powerfully down and not
ahead, so that soon the entire body of the vehicle was sinking into the
mud, with all forward progress halted.

Before the confused farmer could halt the supply of power to the four
huge wheels, they had dug themselves into a muddy grave from which six
mules would not have been able to dislodge them.  Dismayed, Fothergill
climbed down from his perch, looked at the laughing crowd and asked:
"How am I going to get this to Dawson?"  By chance he directed this
question to Lord Luton,

who drew back as if the man and his stupidity were distasteful and
said: "Yes, how indeed?"

Back in quarters, Lutoh resumed the point that Carpenter had been
making when the launching of the miracle machine had interrupted: "We
must alert these fools to the perils they face if they attempt such
nonsense ... or even attempt to leave on foot ... or with horses."

For an entire day the four moved among the gold-crazy hordes, warning
them that the Halverson and Desbordays documents were fraudulent, but
they found themselves powerless to dissuade the starry-eyed travelers.
They met two men and a woman who had bought a pony which was supposed
to carry their entire pack to Dawson: "Please, please!  Don't try it!"
Carpenter urged, but even as he spoke the trio set off for a journey
that would take them at least a year, if the pony lived, but since he
would die before the week was out, Harry supposed his three owners
would also perish.

When he encountered a fine-looking woman in her late thirties who
proposed making the entire overland trip on foot, by herself, with a
small packet of dried fruits, he lost all patience, and scolded her:
"Madam, you will be close to death at the end of the first week, and
surely dead by the second."  When she explained, tearfully, that she
must have the gold since she had two children in Iowa to support, he
made a move which astonished both her and him: He took her in his arms,
pushed his heavy mustaches against her face and kissed her soundly on
the cheek: "Madam, you're a handsome woman.  And a wonderful mother,
I'm sure.  But for God's sake, go back to Iowa.  Now!"  And before she
could protest he had given her fifteen Canadian dollars and taken her
by the arm to the depot from which she could start her journey home.

Philip Henslow was having an experience that was somewhat similar, but
with a surprisingly different ending.  He was strolling idly, asking
questions of any strangers who looked as if they might be informed
concerning the various routes to Dawson, when he came up behind a
woman, probably a good deal older than himself, he thought, who was
conspicuous for her outstanding mode of dress.  It looked like a
modified military uniform made from some sturdy, tightly woven dark
cloth: ample skirt but not long, soldier-type jacket but puffy at the
shoulders, visored kepi-like cap worn at a jaunty angle, heavy, durable
shoes and, even though the weather was warm, stout gloves.

He was so taken by this unusual garb that he did something he would
never have dared back in England, but the free and almost wild spirit
of Edmonton that summer emboldened him: Hurrying ahead to pass her, he
turned to ask politely: "Ma'am, are you headed north?"

When she looked up to see him, he almost gasped at the total charm of
her appearance.  She was, as he had guessed, in either her late
twenties or earliest thirties, but she had the lithe figure of a teen.
Her face was not beautiful in an ordinary sense of flawless complexion,
prominent cheekbones and perfectly harmonized features; it was more
like that of an eighteenth century Italian statue of some distinguished
matron: gracious, appealing, yet carved from timeless marble and
somehow as hard.

She seemed in that first enchanted glance to come from some foreign
country, neither Canada nor America and certainly not England, for her
hair, which showed handsomely beneath the odd tilt of her kepi, was so
light a straw color that it could almost have been called beaten
silver.  But her salient characteristic was a slow-forming smile which
seemed to deliver contradictory messages: "Come closer so we can talk,"
but also: "Stand back so I can calculate who you are."

From that first brief question of Philip's she had made the same
deduction as he: this one is a foreigner, and in a voice remarkably low
and soft she asked in an accent he could not identify: "From where do
you come?"

"London."

"Heading for the gold fields yes?"

"Like everyone else."

She said: "You look like a boy.  Too young to be making such a trip,"
but when she saw him wince she quickly added like a mother wanting to
reassure a child: "Maybe you have more courage when you're young."

"Have you heard any reports about the overland route to Dawson?"

When she heard these words she actually sucked in her breath and drew
back: "You're not thinking of trying that route, are you?"  and when he
replied: That's why our team is out asking questions," she actually
grabbed his right hand with her two gloved hands and said with a voice
of deep concern: "Oh, young man!  Don't let them drag you along that
path!"

She was so agitated that when Philip asked: "Did something rotten
happen to you?"  she did an unexpected thing: Turning away from him,
she raised her right arm and signaled a group of three men clustered
some distance away.  Catching the wave of her gloved hand, they hurried
to her.

"He do something to you?"  one of the men, chunky, swarthy looking
fellows in their thirties, asked menacingly, and she held them back
with a disarming laugh: "No, no!  A nice young man from London.  He's
asking about going north."  She introduced the three men: "Steno
Kozlok, my husband, his brother Marcus, my brother Stanislaus.  All
farmers from North Dakota, and that includes me."

"Why did you call us?"  Steno asked, and from his heavy accent and
dark, squarish face Philip deduced that he and the two other men must
be immigrants from one of the Slavic countries or perhaps from Russia.
The three looked as if they had been hewn four-square out of some
Middle European oak tree and Philip thought: I'm certainly glad that I
didn't offend her, because if these three came at me ... "My name is
Irina Kozlok," she said in softly accented words that seemed to sing.

"Where are you people from?  I mean, before North Dakota?"

"Ah," she laughed, 'you'd never guess," And she said that her husband
Steno and his brother Marcus had come from a distant corner of the
Austrian Empire.  "His proper name, Kozlowkowicz, but when we marry I
find that no one can spell it or say it, so I made him change it to
Kozlok.  Now everybody can spell my name."

"But you .. . and your brother?"  Philip asked, and she replied almost
teasingly: "You would never guess," and he said: "Well you do have
light hair.  His is even lighter.  Swedes?"  and again she laughed:
"Everyone says that.  No; we come from a place you never heard of.
Estonia."

"Ah!  But I have heard of it," he cried like a child who has solved a
puzzle.  "It's part of Russia."

Her smile vanished: "It's Estonia, a part of nothing else.  Just
Estonia."  Then afraid that she had seemed harsh, she said brightly:
"Men, I want you to tell this nice young Englishman who's thinking
about risking the land route what it would be like."

Philip noticed that as soon as she said this, her three companions
stepped close, all wanting to speak at once, and from the jumble of
their words he knew he was receiving just the kind of information Lord
Luton sought: "Murderous .. . they should shoot the son-of-a-bitch sent
us that way ... no marked trail .. . you wouldn't believe how many dead
horses rotting in the sun .. . and look, you got to ford a dozen
streams, pretty wild .. . snow comes, everyone on that trail freeze to
death."

The young woman broke the flood of accusations: "They're telling only
half."

"You people actually tried the trail?"

"We did," Steno said and his brother added: "But we smart enough to
turn back."  Irina broke in: "If your team even thinks about going that
way, stop them now."

"If we'd a tried to push on," Steno said, 'we'd a been snowed in,
proper, all winter."

"And without heavy clothes or food," his wife added.

"What now?"  Philip asked.  "Back to North Dakota?"

"Hell no!"  the three men said almost together.  "We came for gold.  We
gonna get it."

"How?"

"Only sensible way.  Right down the Mackenzie, haul our boat over the
Divide, and into Dawson."

At this firm point, Irina grasped Philip's hands again and stared deep
into his eyes as she said softly: "I'm so glad you stopped me .. .
asked me those questions.  Please, please, listen to them.  Don't take
that route.  If you do, you'll die."

This was said with such gravity that Philip realized the conversation
had ended, so he added with a slight bow to each of his informants: "I
hope you reach the gold fields you kind and helpful people from North
Dakota," and Irina spoke for all when she replied: "We intend to." Then
in a gesture of the brotherhood that linked all gold seekers that
summer in Edmonton, she astonished him by gripping his hand tightly in
her gloves, smiling at him momentarily, then saying in a voice as cold
as steel exposed in winter: "Do not go the overland route.  You're much
too young to die," whereupon she reached up and kissed him.

Half expecting her husband to come flying at him, Philip instead heard
Steno saying: "Listen to her, young fellow.  We do," and the four
trailed off to start their journey to the Mackenzie.  As they
disappeared in the lingering twilight, Philip, still dazed by that
farewell kiss, thought: Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a wife like
that, so daring, so quick to laugh, so generous toward other people?  I
wonder if all women in America are like that?

When Lord Luton's four investigators reassembled to report their
findings he listened firm-lipped to their distressing news and
interrogated each: "Did you reach the conclusion by yourself?"  and
each told him of the shocking facts that had become so apparent under
questioning.  Satisfied that they had been honest in their seeking and
in their decision that any version of overland travel was insane, he
rose abruptly, nodded and stalked from the room: "I've got to hear this
for me self and into the warm night air he disappeared.

Tall, thin, carefully dressed, with his acquiline nose slightly lifted
as if he wished to avoid the smell of the rabble, he poked his way
about, remaining aloof from the gold seekers who had been unable to
find quarters and were sleeping on the ground, their gear piled about
them. With brief and restrained questioning he satisfied himself that
in all this rabble no one knew anything, and a profound sadness
overtook him: They're fools who have been deluded by fools, and they're
doomed." When he came upon two men from a small Canadian village who
were going to attempt the overland route on bicycles, dragging behind
them little wheeled carts holding their gear, he stopped to ask them:
"And what will you use for greatcoats when the blizzards hit?"  They
replied smartly: "Oh, we'll be in Dawson by then," and he did not try
to enlighten them, but his depression increased.

Still moving slowly among them like a recording angel, wise, just and
impartial, he muttered again and again: "Doomed!  That trio won't
survive even into November," and he formed a sound resolve that his
expedition was not going to plunge blindfolded into such folly: "We are
men of sound sense, damn it, and we'll not comport ourselves like
idiots."

He had barely uttered these words when he saw an older man who seemed
to be moving with some purpose, as if he had serious business to
attend, even though it was now close to eleven at night, and Luton
accosted him: "My good fellow, can you help me bring some reason into
this madness?"

"Madness it is," the man replied in a heavy Scottish brogue as he
surveyed the people sleeping on the ground.  "What is it you seek?"

"Answers, answers.  How can I and my party get from here to the gold
fields and escape the certain devastation that faces these blundering
idiots?"

"You've come to the right man," the Scot said.  "I work for the
Hudson's Bay Company and I'm the only one around here who's made the
trip, and because I could rely upon my company's various caches of
supplies, I traveled extremely light.  Almost no gear.  And I had
Dogrib Indians to help part of the way."

"How was it?"

"Wretched.  It's a crime to send untested men north at this time of
year.  Many will die."

"What would you advise?"

"You look strong and sensible.  What of the others in your party?"

"Young, able."

"If I were you I'd stay here in Edmonton till next June when the ice
melts.  Then sail down the Mackenzie, a majestic river if ever I saw
one and stay with it almost till it empties into the Arctic Ocean.  But
stay out of the delta"I  It's a wilderness of interwoven streams and
small islands.  As the delta begins, you'll find the Peel River
entering via the left bank of the Mackenzie.  Paddle up it ten or
fifteen miles, and you'll come to the Rat River, feeding in from the
west.  Go clear to its headwaters, portage over the mountains, not easy
but it can be done.  There you'll find the Bell.  Drift down it, easy
paddling, and in due course you'll hit the Porcupine, a grand river.
Turn right.  Keep going downstream and with no trouble, little
paddling, you'll reach Fort Yukon.  And, as the French say, "Voila!"
you're on the Yukon River where you catch an upriver steamboat which
carries you direct to Dawson."

This good man was so eager to correct the errors perpetrated by other
Canadians that with his forefinger he drew in sand a map of the many
twists and turns he recommended: "It'll be demanding, but relatively
easy doing it this way.  Portages, yes, and some paddling upstream, but
not excessive."

When Luton looked down at the map he scowled: "We shouldn't care to use
the Yukon steamers.  We've decided to do it on our own.  The challenge
and all."  Then he pointed to the mark that represented Fort Yukon:
"And under no circumstances would I consider entering the gold field
through American territory."

The Hudson's Bay man contemplated this rejection, checked his temper,
and said quietly: "Sir, you interpose conditions that make no sense in
this part of the north.  I would accept a push from a crippled old
woman if it would enable me to complete a difficult journey."  He bowed
stiffly and disappeared into the starry night.

As Luton started back toward his hotel he was diverted by a light in
the distance.  He moved toward it hearing a rumble of low voices as if
many men were conversing, neither in anger nor jubilation.  When he
drew closer he saw that it was a large group of Indians, men and women
together, engaged in a midsummer ritual dance, their heads tilted back
as if imploring the moon to appear, their feet occupied in a formless
shuffle, their arms limp at their side as if semi-detached from their
bodies.  It was neither an exultant dance, nor one of leaping and
shouting, but the number of dancers, their steady shuffling movement
and their low whispering song was almost narcotic, both to themselves
and to those watching.

For many minutes Luton remained in the shadows, unperceived by the
dancers but participating through the swaying of his own body in their
quiet dance.  Even as he followed the rhythm he muttered: Savages! I've
seen them in Africa.  And along the Amazon.  Same the world over.
Halting his dance he brought his right thumbnail to his teeth where he
gnawed at it for some moments as he contemplated the hypnotic dance:
How many generations before these savages evolve a decent
civilization?

His reflections were broken by a man who sidled up from the rear,
speaking in broken French: "Blackfeet.  Most powerful Indians on
frontier.  Don't let dancing fool you.  Start a fight, two hundred
knives at your throat."

As a cultured Englishman Luton, of course, spoke French with only a
slight accent, and although he resented the Frenchmen of Montreal, he
welcomed this man in the wilderness, where, he thought, it was proper
for him to be: "Why are they in Edmonton?  The Indians, I mean?"

They've been coming here for centuries, they claim.  You built Fort
Edmonton on their dancing ground, they claim."

"Are you a Blackfoot?"

"Metis.  Long time ago, maybe grandfather Blackfoot, father Scotch,
they claim."

"Your name?"

"Simon MacGregor."

"Scotsman."  The two watchers fell silent as they watched the
monotonous drag-foot dancing of the Blackfoot braves, then Luton asked:
"Does anything happen in the dance?  Should I wait, perhaps?"

"Just same thing, maybe five hours," the Metis said in English.

When Luton whistled at this surprising information, two Indian men he
had not seen before heard him and came almost diffidently to ask in
broken French: "You like dance?  You want to join?"  and when he failed
to state strongly that he had no desire for such meaningless posturing,
they interpreted this as agreement.  Politely, almost gravely, they
took positions beside him, edging him not toward the large group of
shuffling dancers but to a flat area close to where he had been
standing, and there they led him in steps which imitated those of the
larger group.

Since the men were dressed in full Blackfoot regalia-decorated deerskin
jackets, tight trousers with brightly colored leather tied below the
knee, streaks of red and blue down their cheeks and since Luton's
magisterial bearing showed to advantage between the two braves, they
formed a handsome trio.  The light from a central fire cast deep
romantic shadows across their aquiline faces prompting the Metis to
break into soft applause: "Tres bien!  Les danseurs magnifiques!"

Luton, astonished at what he had let himself into, attempted a few
additional movements, but when the men actually laid hands on him,
trying to guide him into other proper steps, he pushed them away and
fled the scene.  Startled, the Indians stared at his departing figure,
interpreted his rejection as one more evidence of white man's ill will,
shrugged and moved off.  Luton, once more alone, could think only of
other savage dancers he had seen along the Congo, and his unease
regarding the Indians of Canada increased.  If he did not relish his
imaginary view of the United States, he felt a similar dislike for
Canada's Indian lands, and with confused reactions to what he had
witnessed under the stars he returned to his hotel.

Although it was late when he reached his quarters, he routed out his
three companions and dispatched Philip to fetch Fogarty.  When all were
present he directed Harry to unfold his big map and proceeded in low,
masterful accents to line out a chain of decisions, and as an augury of
the good luck he trusted would attend him, the short, crisp directives
he issued were exactly right: "Under no circumstances will we attempt
the overland route and I wish never again to hear a word about it. That
leaves us with two alternatives, and I will ask Harry to present them,
for on this you have the right to influence the decision.  I can
survive with either choice."

Clearing his throat in the deferential manner he affected, Carpenter
said: "Men, you've heard what Evelyn says.  The choice is up to us.  We
can remain here in this bleak outpost village that strives to become a
town for seven long months waiting for the Mackenzie to thaw ... no
libraries, no theater, no music, no decent food ... or we leave for the
Mackenzie tomorrow, get us a boat, sail her down as far as we can get
before it freezes over and, when it is about to freeze, head her into
some protected cove and see if we are men enough to brave an Arctic
winter north of the Circle, hibernating like bears.  Let me hear which
do you prefer?  Edmonton for seven months?"  The groans, except from
Fogarty, were so loud they were almost palpable.  "Sail north to the
Arctic Circle and test our courage?"  Cheers, to which

Lord Luton added: "How I would have deplored it if you had voted
otherwise."

Then, asking Harry to move aside, he resumed command of his expedition:
"Gentlemen, you have chosen a difficult way, but the only way.  It can
succeed only if we discipline ourselves rigorously.  When we are iced
up, we scout the land for what timber we can find, driftwood perhaps,
and build a kind of hybrid tent-cabin.  Total usable space, about like
that corner over there.  We shall all have tasks.  And if we do not
have respect, one for the other, we shall fail."

After the four listeners had applauded quietly he gave final orders:
"Up at six tomorrow to make your last purchases to sustain us for a
year, in case trouble strikes, and each man to provide two good
books."

As the men began to bask in the euphoria of a well-made decision,
Carpenter, long trained in subduing alien terrain, felt obliged to
bring the team back to reality.  Relying upon his map to fortify his
points, he reminded everyone of the terrible contradiction of the
Mackenzie River: "This river, which will hold us prisoner, runs
parallel far to the east of the Yukon River, which we want to be on. If
we stay on the Mackenzie long enough, we end up in the Arctic Ocean and
no good done.  We'd be nowhere.  So our problem is: At what point
heading north do we escape the tyranny of the Mackenzie and head west,
to seek the benevolence of the Yukon?"

"I've asked about that, Harry," Luton said evenly, 'and the map is
clear.  On our way we will pass a score of rivers coming in from the
gold field territory.  All we have to do is go up one of them till we
encounter a river heading down the other way, and it will carry us
right to the Yukon and the gold fields

Harry was not finished, for after dipping his finger in a glass of red
wine-"It's not fit to drink," he apologized he drew a bold line from
farthest north in Canada, right on the Beaufort Sea, down into the
first shadow of the United States.  When he was done he stepped back so
that all could see: "The Rocky Mountains.  High here, low there, very
high here, but always present, never to be avoided, not by men or
rivers or eagles."  Looking intently at each of the other four, he said
almost ominously: "No matter where we go, or how, if we want to reach
those gold fields at some point we must climb with all our gear and
maybe even our boats, and cross the Rocky Mountains.  There is no
avoidance, unless we want to turn back and go in the way the others go,
through Alaska."

Lord Luton, standing very erect, his arms folded behind his back,
assumed a posture of command and said softly: "We shall sail north on
the Mackenzie, find the likeliest river heading west, and the lowest
stand of the mountains and cross over to our target."  That said, he
folded the map and advised his men: "Thanks to your common sense,
yours, too, Fogarty, we have avoided the deadly errors of the land
route.  May God direct our proper choices on the river."

In the morning the five men fanned out through the shops of Edmonton,
picking up last-minute requirements, including a shovel, two axes and
extra ascorbic acid.  Two of their purchases would prove significant.
Harry Carpenter, having been on safari and trek, sought a store that
sold books where he purchased three volumes, whose covers he promptly
tore off, to the dismay of the clerk: Great Expectations, the poems of
John Milton and a Bible.

Philip Henslow went to the store with the bear in the window, and there
the imaginative Peter Randolph was clerking.  The author of the
pamphlet for stampeders convinced him he must acquire a special pair of
boots for the north.

They were rubber, heavy enough to keep out the cold, Randolph said, and
tall enough to reach well above the knee.  They were finished in high
polish and created a pleasing seventeenth-century impression when worn
with trousers tucked in, but when Carpenter saw them he grew angry:
"Who sold you such boots?"

Philip would not reply, and Harry became stern: "Son, rubber boots like
that are for farmers who work in muck.  What you need are stout, heavy
leather boots like mine, with high lacing."

"I like mine," Philip said, whereupon Harry took another tack: They do
look stout.  But one doesn't wear rubber boots on a journey like
this."

"They're waterproof.  The man said so.  And we'll be in water a lot,
the way we plan to go."

Carpenter referred the problem to Luton, who chided his nephew: "If you
want to drag around boots that heavy, so be it.  But never say we
failed to warn you."

In the middle of August 1897, when from all over the world adventurers
were heading toward the Klondike, Lord Luton, his three friends and the
Irishman Fogarty rode north in two rented Red River carts to intercept
the Athabasca River, some ninety miles away.  Down this river they
would sail in the boat they would order built when they reached the
waterway, and because of careful planning by Luton and Carpenter, they
would have a fighting chance of reaching the gold fields next June, if
they selected wisely among the various rivers leading in from the
west.

At about the time they set forth, three men from Australia departed by
the overland route, as did a dentist from Salt Lake City and three of
his companions.  A Frenchman, a Norwegian, two Germans and some fifty
men and women from various parts of the United States, as well as many
Canadians and two other parties of Englishmen departed shortly
thereafter.  None of these adventurers using the land route came
anywhere near the Klondike.

One man who left Edmonton in that euphoric summer did so on a farm
wagon with huge wheels pulled forward by two pairs of goats which he
proposed to feed on the browse they would encounter on the way.  His
effort would end the second week when there was no browse.  Another man
intended to be hauled along by dogs, and another left Edmonton with
only a knapsack and a supply of specially prepared nuts and fruits which
he claimed would sustain him till he reached the gold fields in early
September.  Seventy like them who either had left or were about to
leave would perish en route, sad proof that this was a time of general
insanity.

Lord Luton realized that if his party could cover the relatively easy
ninety miles to the Athabasca River, they would find themselves well
launched on the great Mackenzie River system, so they were anxious to
waste not even one day of summer.  Luton, never parsimonious, was
willing to hire dray men to haul his party to Athabasca Landing, but
only if they could do it speedily, for he was determined to be among
the first to sail north.  "We really must," he told the dray men 'put
ourselves well down the Mackenzie before it freezes."

"It's ninety-four miles overland, Guv'nor and at twenty miles a day ..
. you can figure for yourself .. . more than four days."

"Make it three and a half, there's an extra quid for each of you."

"In dollars?"

"Five Canadian," and it was a deal.

In this way they found themselves among the hordes speeding out of
Edmonton, and it seemed strange to be so attentive to the freezing of
rivers, for this was still summer and they traveled these first miles
in their lightest hunting dress.  As they passed through lonely
settlements the inhabitants, accustomed only to hunting parties,
called: "Are you after moose or gold?"  and Philip always cried back:
"Gold!"

On the layover during the third night, Harry Carpenter unfolded the
modern map of the Mackenzie he had purchased in Edmonton and with the
ruler he had contributed to the expedition made careful calculations of
what lay ahead for them once they entered upon the Mackenzie system at
Athabasca.  Since he insisted that all members of the team understand
the task they were about to attack, he recited mileages carefully: "If
we can buy a boat of some kind tomorrow, August eighteenth, start
sailing immmediately and keep our minds to it, we'll have sixty-four
days till the start of normal freeze-up of the Mackenzie.  From here to
Fort Norman, a probable target, is only eight hundred and sixteen miles
as the crow flies, but .. ."

Philip completed the sentence: "We ain't crows."

Harry nodded in his.  direction and said: The winding way we'll have to
go looks to be just over twelve hundred miles," and Philip whistled.

"But wait.  If you divide twelve hundred miles by sixty-four days, you
get an average distance to be covered of under nineteen miles, and
that's possible."

Now Luton took over: "We have three enormous advantages in our favor.
We're going downstream all the way on a steady and sometimes swift
current which would carry us quite a distance each day, even if we did
nothing to help.  And most of the way we'll sail with a wind behind us.
Most important of all, once we get into our boat, and under sail, we
could move north twenty-four hours a day, every day till the freeze."

"On those terms we could get to China," Philip continued, and his uncle
said: "The great advantage in our favor is that we don't have to reach
Fort Norman, or any other arbitrary point, for with the careful
planning Harry started in London and completed in Edmonton, we can halt
wherever we please, erect our cabin, and face the winter with
impunity."

"Then why hurry so?"  Philip asked, and his uncle had the answer that
motivated all the gold seekers leaving Edmonton in those late days of
summer: "Because we want to be far down the river next spring when the
ice melts and we're free to travel again.  Gentlemen, the excitement of
this trip starts tomorrow, but also the hard work.  This will be your
last night in a comfortable bed properly made in a very long time. Make
the most of it."

At Athabasca Landing, a collection of several permanent frame houses
and an equal number of storage barns belonging to the trade companies,
they came upon scores of white tents, indicating that other prospectors
had come here for similar purposes.  Luton, seeing the disarray which
offended him, told Carpenter and Fogarty: "We know nothing about boats
suitable for the Mackenzie.  Circulate among these people and determine
which would be better, to have a new boat built for us or to buy one
already built."  The two had made only a few inquiries when they found
that everyone they asked was directing them to a shack occupied by four
hard-working German brothers, the Schnabels, who were whipping out most
of the boats going down the Mackenzie that summer.

"We can build you a sturdy boat for two .. ."

"We're five, bound for Dawson," Carpenter said.

"Just as easy for us."

"Have you any already built?"

"Them two," and Luton's men saw tied to trees along the shore two
radically different craft, one a fine big boat about thirty-seven feet
long, ample in width, and with a small cabin-like shack aft big enough
to sleep two.  The other was a small, compact craft not half as large
as the first.

"Are they both for sale?"  Carpenter asked, and one of the Germans
said: "In a manner of speaking."

"What do you mean?"  and the German explained: "The big one has been
ordered by a group of men from Saskatoon who want to trade up and down
the Mackenzie.  The small one has been built to the specifications
mailed us by a dentist from Detroit."

Then they're both sold."

"Not really.  We're ahead of schedule, so if you want them, you get
them.  We can replace them before the owners get here."

"We'll take the big one," and all the Schnabels who heard this decision
broke into laughter.

"Just a minute.  Two different boats, two different purposes.  Like I
explained, the big one is for navigating the Mackenzie .. ."

"That's what we'll be doing."

Schnabel ignored him.  "Only the small one is for going down the
Mackenzie and then getting across the Rockies to the gold fields

"What's the difference?"  Carpenter asked, and when Schnabel replied
with only one word: "Portage," Harry slapped his leg and uttered a
self-deriding laugh: "How stupid of me.  Of course it would be
impossible to lug that huge thing anywhere."

Now he and Fogarty turned their whole attention to the smaller boat and
Harry asked the Germans: "Give me honest advice.  Would we be better
off if we waited till you built us one exactly suited to our purposes?
Five of us?"

"It would be better by this much," and when one of the builders
indicated with a thumb and forefinger a difference so small it was
hardly detectable, Harry said: "I'm sure we'll want this one intended
for the dentist, but I must consult with Lord Luton ..."

"A real lord?"

"Yes, and a fine gentleman," and he sent Fogarty running to fetch
Evelyn.  When Luton arrived the four Germans clustered about him and
one said: "We don't get many real lords up this way," and another said:
"We don't ever get any," and quickly they reviewed for him the crucial
difference between buying a big heavy boat intended for permanent duty
up and down the Mackenzie and a small, sturdy boat for getting to the
gold fields  Before they were finished Luton broke in: "We'll take the
small one," but then he repeated the question Carpenter had asked:
"Would we gain anything if we waited for you to build us exactly what
we wanted?"  The oldest of the Germans stepped forward: "I know what's
in your mind, Sir.  You think we may be trying to sell this one because
we have it already on our hands."  He chuckled: "Look at that crowd.
More coming in every day.  We can get shed of everything we have by
nightfall.

"And.  this one will do us?"

"It will," and the deal was made.  But the Germans were honest

workmen and they wanted Luton to be satisfied with his purchase, so
they sprang about adding small grace notes to an already fine job-an
extra inch of coaming all around, double reinforcement for the housing
into which the mast would be stepped when the wind made the use of two
small sails practical-and when this was done one Schnabel appeared with
a brush and a bucket of paint: "Now what's her name to be?"  Lord Luton
looked about with his two hands raised palms up as if seeking counsel,
so Trevor Blythe offered a felicitous suggestion: "It must be properly
English.  Perhaps Sweet Afton, in hopes the Mackenzie will flow
gently."  When everyone applauded, Luton was inspired to invite
onlookers in the area to a christening spread of wine, cheese, cigars
and such sweetmeats as could be purchased at the Landing.  Cracking a
bottle of wine against the prow of the little craft, he intoned: This
may not be champagne, but I christen this ship Sweet Afton, and may God
protect all who sail in her."

It was the kind of craft the Schnabels had found adapted to the
Mackenzie system: flat-bottomed for negotiating rocky rapids,
relatively light in weight for the brutal task of portaging, and
high-st raked to repel waves that often swept the bigger lakes.  Well
aft, the Schanbels had erected a small, low shack intended primarily
for the stowing of gear but also big enough to sleep two, not in
comfort.  To port of the shack ran a wooden bench providing a position
from which the steersman could operate a long sweep to swing the boat
from side to side while avoiding rocks in the rapids or the floating
logs which menaced ordinary stretches of the river.

The Afton was a craft which summarized much Mackenzie lore and when the
Schnabels turned her over to her new owners, she was about the best
that could have been devised for tackling the great, wild river.

As they prepared to embark, Luton was perplexed to find that in
addition to the bright-red name of his boat, the Schnabel with the
paintbrush had added, at the halfway mark, a thin red line running
vertically right across and around the boat, inside and out: "What's
that for?"  and the painter explained: "To guide you when you're
sawing."

"And why would I be sawing?"  and the painter called his brothers: Tell
him."

"Oh, Sir, even though you will be sailing down the Mackenzie, your main
job will always be to get over the mountains and into the Yukon .. ."

"I've heard that before," Luton said, half smiling at Carpenter.

"So you must choose one of the rivers that come into the Mackenzie from
the west."

"I'm aware of that, too."

"They're all serviceable.  Liard is quite usable.  Gravel can be
excellent.  But whichever you choose .. ."

"I was advised last night by a Hudson's Bay official to avoid those
early rivers and head straight for the delta, and take ..."  Here he
produced from his pocket a notebook in which he had written down the
complicated tangle of rivers in the extreme north: "Peel to the Rat,
portage to the Bell, and on to the Porcupine."

"The wise ones, old-timers, seem to choose that route.  But when you do
get safely into the Rat you face situations which force you to saw your
boat in half.  The little rivers are too winding for the full-length
boat to get around the corners.  You just cannot manage it, but half a
boat twists and turns nicely.  And before long, especially with the
Rat, the water grows so shallow that you can no longer sail or pole.
Then you attach hauling ropes, leave your boat, walk along the bank and
pull her upstream."

Luton interrupted: "But what do we do if there is no bank to walk
on?"

"Then you catch your breath, step down into the cold mountain water,
and hike right up the middle of the Rat, hauling your boat behind you.
And at that moment you'll thank us for telling you to saw it in
half."

76,

Another brother said: "And of course, when you reach the end of the
Rat, you must haul your boat on land over the mountain pass, portage we
call it, to the headwaters of the Bell.  You do this by hand .. .
strength of your arms and back .. . and when you're draggin' her up
that last half-mile ascent, you'll be damned glad you sawed her."

Departure was somewhat disrupted by the arrival on horseback from
Edmonton of the Detroit dentist who, when he saw his boat sailing down
the Athabasca River galloped along the bank shouting: "Pirates!  That's
my boat!"  but he was mollified by Harry Carpenter who called back:
They'll build you a better!"

The sail down the three hundred and fifty miles of the Athabasca
established a pattern for the entire trip, with Lord Luton,
passionately eager to reach some spot far down the Mackenzie before the
winter freeze imprisoned his boat, driving his men relentlessly.  At
the various portages around rapids, where the laden boat had to be
hauled over uneven ground, he employed waiting Indians to help, but he
himself pulled from the lead position, setting a pace that his four
followers sometimes found difficult to match.  However, if the distance
overland was extensive, it was Fogarty's dogged strength which kept the
Afton crawling forward.

But the regimen that enabled them to cover extraordinary distances,
once sailing again, had been established that first night out of
Athabasca Landing when Luton refused to pull into shore: "Starlit
night.  Good omen.  Keep sailing."  And they did, with him at the
tiller, and thereafter, except when storm prevented, the Sweet Afton
forged ahead day and night, piling up remarkable distances.  During one
spell, an unusually swift current combined with a stiff breeze to push
the Afton along at a steady four miles an hour for a day's run of
ninety-six miles.  "We're flying!"  Philip cried.  But of course, there
were those other days at the portages when they were lucky to cover one
mile.

The other regimen he established was that on these night expeditions
either he or Carpenter must be in charge, with one of the younger men
or Fogarty in assistance.  By a process of natural selection his
partner became Trevor Blythe, and in the dark passages of the night
they discussed those things which interested Luton: courage,
deportment, sportsmanship, cricket, the responsibility of Englishmen to
hold the world together, provided they received occasional help from
Germany or Russia.  He had little respect for France and practically
none for the United States, which as he explained to Blythe.  "Lacks
every virtue we've been discussing."

During daylight runs the travelers learned a great deal about this part
of Canada, because what they saw was an endlessly repeated landscape
with almost no redeeming features: formless hills, vast expanses of
graceless forest, bogs with stagnant water.  "Not one of my favorite
trout streams," Luton said as the dismal landscape continued, not for
miles but days, without showing signs of improvement.  But when they
reached the Slave River on the second of September they faced not
boredom but real problems, for this short stream contained many rapids,
some difficult to navigate, others so impassable as to require
exhausting portages.  And as each of the wasted days grew markedly
shorter, the men had sobering proof that winter was crowding in.
However, they were about to encounter a problem of such magnitude that
these petty annoyances were promptly forgotten.

The Great Slave Lake, which those unfamiliar with northern Canada had
never heard mentioned, was immense, larger than either of two renowned
Great Lakes-Erie and Ontario-and when the Sweet Afton blithely swung
into it, the passengers had in mind a pleasant day's sail, or perhaps
two, because the map showed that they would be skirting no more than
the southern edge.  "We won't see the lake, really," Luton told his
men, 'and that's a pity because it does look a bit of something,
doesn't it?"

They spent six anxious days on the vast lake, covering one hundred and
twenty miles, hugging the shore and cringing as sudden gales out of the
northwest whipped up waves that should have been expected only in
mid-ocean.  Navigation became so perilous that only Luton or Carpenter
was allowed to steer, but with sails furled they frequently had to seek
safety in coves or behind some headland.

Luton was in charge one afternoon when he heard Carpenter shout from
his position forward: "Evelyn!  My God!"  and down upon them crashed a
monstrous wave which engulfed everything and required frantic baling.
The Afton pitched and rolled through a nasty six minutes with everyone
grabbing for whatever he could reach, but Luton refused to panic, and
soon had his little craft righted.

But they had been so beat about that all agreed they should find some
projection of land behind which to shelter, and as night approached
they spotted a cove protected by spindly trees, and when they neared
the shore they saw that another craft, less fortunate than theirs, had
been swamped by the storm and thrown upon the rocks, a shattered
wreck.

"No one can be alive," Luton said as he surveyed the mournful scene,
but when they drew closer they saw one lone figure standing beside the
wreckage, signalling frantically, and as the prow of the Afton beached
itself, Philip uttered a joyous cry: "It's the girl from Dakota!"  and
he leaped ashore to rush toward her as she stood shivering in her
drenched uniform.  Distraught, she did not recognize him, but realizing
that he had come to save her, she threw herself into his arms.

When Lord Luton gently took her away, she told in sobs and whimpers of
the disaster that had overtaken their craft: "Two long days ago .. .
fearful storm .. . worse than today .. . Steno guided well but we
didn't know .. . when the boat started to break up their first shout
was "Save Irina" and they threw me ashore .. . none of them made it ..
."  her voice trailed off and, despite the fact that Luton was trying
to hold her, she slipped through his arms and onto the beach, all
fortitude gone.

Harry took charge, washing her stained face with lake water while she
was still unconscious, then drying her forehead with his sleeve.  He
directed the others to search the beach to see if any bodies or gear
had washed ashore, but there were none.  Even before she revived he had
the others considering what garments of their own they could lend this
castaway, and by the time he had gently slapped her back into
consciousness he had arranged for her rejuvenation.  When she saw the
gifts and realized that she was indeed saved, she broke into tears and
asked: "How can I dress?"  and she indicated the five men clustered
about her, and Harry said in a fatherly voice: "I'm married.  I have a
daughter.  I'll ask the others to go over there," and he helped her
slip into dry clothing.

When she moved to the beach fire that Fogarty had started, she clasped
with two pale hands the mug of tea Trevor Blythe prepared and told her
pitiful story: "Little money, great hopes.  Farming in Dakota poor,
poor.  "A ton of gold!"  we saw it in the paper and went crazy."

"You mean," Luton asked interrupting, 'you were on the beach alone for
two nights?"

"Yes."

"The bodies?  Did they wash ashore?"

Terrible storm.  Everything lost, you can see that."

"How did you get to Edmonton in the first place?"  Harry asked, but she
avoided the question: "At Athabasca those four nice Germans.  We hadn't
much money, but they let us have a boat.  Not a big one.  None of us
had ever sailed a boat before, they gave us lessons, and they sold it
to us for almost nothing."  She hesitated.  "One of the Germans begged
me not to go.  Said it would be too rough.  Told me to go back home and
when we sailed away he crossed himself."

"What did you do when you found yourself alone?"  Luton asked, always
concerned with human response to disaster, and she said: "I cried, I
prayed for Steno, I realized I had no dry clothes, no food and was
completely alone."

"I mean, what did you do then?"  and she said with that solidity of
character Philip had noticed that first night when he saw her steel-set
eyes: "I told myself "Don't panic.  Either they'll find you or they
won't."  And I jumped up and down trying to keep warm."

"Did you panic?"

"About dawn today.  Night didn't scare me, but when I saw daylight and
realized that no one knew where I was I thought maybe I'd go crazy .. .
nobody .. . nobody."

Lord Luton, as head of his expedition, was capable of making swift
decisions and without consulting the others said: "We must move forward
before the ice catches us.  You can join us, but not stay with us.
We'll try to intercept a trading boat heading south and send you to
safety."

"What will I do?"

"In Edmonton, I'm sure they'll find a way to get you back to Dakota."

They were astounded by what she said next: "No!  I came to find gold
and I'll find it," and Luton was so appalled by such a statement at
such a time that he confronted her fiercely.

"We'll have none of that.  You escaped death only because we came
along.  Next time you'll find it."  When she lamented the loss of her
dreams, Carpenter comforted her, but Luton put a stop: "Ma'am, you'll
be on your way back on the first riverboat we intercept, and now I
would be obliged if my nephew would utter a brief prayer of thanks for
our salvation from the dreadful storm and your rescue from a certain
death."  The storm-tossed gold seekers bowed their heads as Philip
whispered: "Dear God, like Peter whom You saved from that storm on the
Sea of Galilee, we give thanks for Thy saving us on Great Slave."  He
hesitated: "And we give special thanks for saving Thy heroic daughter
Irina who survived only because of Thy miracle.  Guide us to the safety
of the Mackenzie."

After the amens, Carpenter lifted the young woman into the Sweet Afton,
which proceeded without further incident to the exit from the lake.  As
soon as they were upon the river again, the condition that Philip had
alluded to in his prayer took effect: they felt safe and once more in
proper hands.

Irina Kozlok remained with them for several troublesome days.  Because
Lord Luton was determined to forge ahead against the coming of winter,
they traveled continuously and this presented problems about going to
the bathroom with a woman aboard.  Previously the men had adopted
simple, sanitary systems, and now they were inhibited, but the ice was
broken by Fogarty who, after he could control himself no longer,
finally blurted out: "Madam, will you please look the other way?"  and
with the quiet ease of a duchess she replied: "Gentlemen, I've been
married.  I have brothers.  This is no problem," and then she added,
flashing the first smile since the wreck of her boat: "And I'll expect
the same courtesy from you."

Philip was mortified by this discussion, for like any young romantic he
had to believe that it had been more than accident that Irina saved his
life in Edmonton, for that is how he now thought of her caution against
the overland route, while he had saved hers on the shore of the Great
Slave.  To himself he mumbled: "It was fate," and the more he saw of
her courageous resolve, and the handsome appearance she made when her
uniform was dried and she could wear it again, the more he was reminded
of his reaction on that night of their first meeting in Edmonton:
"Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a woman like that, so quick to
laugh?"  and by the end of the second day with her he found himself a
confused mixture of pity, admiration and deep attraction.  In his
infatuation he interpreted her slightest gesture of politeness as
reciprocation of his feelings.

The first of the other four team members to recognize that young Philip
was falling in love with a woman much older than

himself was Lord Luton, and like a traditional Bradcombe he stiffened,
summoning all the fortitude of his ancient and distinguished family.
The Bradcombes had survived when many other families had crumbled, he
reminded himself, because through the centuries they had consistently
protected their young men from the snares of attractive French women,
and English commoners, and pert Irish lassies and, in recent decades,
from the daughters of aspiring American millionaire families.  With
unerring rectitude they had allowed marriages only with the safest
young women from the best English families, and although Luton himself
was not yet married, he felt certain that when the time came the elders
of his family would identify some young woman of impeccable
qualification.  He never visualized himself as 'falling in love' but
only as 'getting married1 in the pattern established long ago by the
cautious men of his family.

In this context Irina Kozlok was a threat, an uneducated girl from
where was it?  He did not care to remember a name like North Dakota.
And it was his inherited obligation to see that his nephew, a
Bradcombe, did not become entangled with her to any degree more
complicated than unlucky chance had already provided.  He must be
prevented from repeating the grave mistake the boy's mother had made.
Since Harry was also more or less a Bradcombe, being married to one,
Luton enlisted him in his schemes: "Harry, we've got to get that woman
off this boat.  To protect young Philip."

"Highly sensible, Evelyn.  You've spotted a real danger."

"How far is it to the next settlement ... of any kind?"

"If I recall, Fort Norman.  We might make it before the freeze."

"And if we don't?"

"Seems obvious.  We'd be stuck with her through the winter."

"Oh, my God!"

And that afternoon they had real cause for worry, because they heard
Irina tell Philip: "Those are handsome boots, really, but with that
polish they're more suited for an expensive fishing trip than for
mucking about in the Arctic."

"Do you think so?"  he asked, all eagerness to please, and she said:
"Indeed I do.  What you need are heavy leather boots like mine," and
when, some time later, he asked his uncle and Carpenter: "D'ya think
that perhaps I ought to wear leather boots?"  they could scarcely hide
their irritation, for back in Edmonton they had lectured him on this
very matter and he hadn't listened.  Now this American girl was
delivering the same caution but with a smile, and the ninny was beside
himself.

Disgusted with his nephew, Luton whispered: "Damn me, Harry we've got
to do something," but what he did not know.  During one conversation he
told Carpenter: "When the others aren't looking, we could shove her
overboard," but as the last word left his lips he felt his arm caught
in a tight grip and heard Harry's voice coming at him with
unprecedented force: "Evelyn!  Even to think such a thing in jest is a
mortal sin."  Then, asserting his elder status for the first time on
the journey, he said almost menacingly; "We'll have none of that,
Evelyn.  None, I warn you."

Shaken by the fury of Harry's words, Evelyn asked contritely: "But what
shall we do?"  and Carpenter replied: "God obviously sent us to save
her, so she's our obligation until we can rid ourselves of the burden.
Good Samaritan and all that."

But this did not solve Luton's problem, which was intensified when he
watched as Irina sat forward with Philip, kepi off and the wind blowing
her silvery hair attractively about her face.  Her little gestures in
pushing it back were, Luton thought, 'so damned Slavic she could be a
Russian princess," and then he found himself speculating on whether
Estonians were Slavs; he decided they weren't.

He was not merely perplexed; as leader of an expedition and at present
the captain of a ship, small though it was, he could not stop himself
from reviewing scenes from British naval history in which disruptive
forces had destroyed otherwise solid explorations, and in his distress
he called Harry aft for a serious consultation: "Have you ever read the
old accounts of how this chap

Bligh, an untidy sort, lost his ship that had been commissioned to
carry breadfruit from Tahiti to Jamaica?"

"Of course."

"What did him in?  Native girls corrupting his sailors.  And did you
follow what happened when the mutineers fled to that tiny island
somewhere?"

Harry hadn't, for that part of the old naval tragedy was not so well
known, but Luton had: "Same thing.  The English sailors handled things
quite well, really, if you forgive them their mutiny, but they fell to
squabbling over native girls, and I believe they killed one another.
None survived."

The two veterans contemplated this for some moments, agreeing that to
have any woman penned up with five men in a small cabin over a
prolonged winter was running a risk that was formidable and, said
Luton, pointing forward to where Irina's silvery hair was once more
tumbling about in the wind: To have that particular one amongst us
would be suicidal.  I could see Philip and Trevor battling for her at
first, and ultimately, believe me, you and I would be at it.  And she
would sit there all the while in the corner of the hut like some Circe,
smiling and combing her hair and plotting to turn us into her swine."
His fear of what Irina might very possibly do had generated a hatred so
intense that he could not think rationally.

Nor did she help.  Eager to prove to the men that she would not be a
hindrance to their voyage, she kept discovering ways to be helpful and
perform more than her share of the tasks: she prepared the meals once
Harry laid out the rations which only he controlled; she cleaned up
afterward; she was remarkably alert in moving out of the way if the men
had duties in adjusting the sails; and regardless of what she did, she
maintained her appearance of responsible gravity, broken now and then
by that ravishing smile which seemed to fill her entire squarish face.
In short, she made herself an ideal passenger.

For Lord Luton that was the problem, because he could see that her
impeccable behavior was winning over not only youthful and
impressionable Trevor Blythe, who read her poems from Palgrave, but
also Harry Carpenter, a married man who should have known better. After
performing her voluntary duties, she would move to the front of the
boat, 'where everyone has to look at her," Luton grumbled to himself,
'and take off her kepi, allowing her beautiful hair to dance in the
breeze."  At such moments he saw her as one of the Sirens, perched not
on the prow of his boat but on a jagged rock toward which she was
luring his men to their destruction; he imagined she carried a lyre
which she strummed as she worked her charms.

Even Fogarty proved susceptible, and one evening Luton caught him
staring as she fixed her hair, his eyes glazed over.  "Fogarty!"  Luton
cried snappishly.  "Tend the sails!"  The Irishman's response was most
unfortunate: "She does remind me of me wife, Jenny."  Luton,
infuriated, wanted to cuff some sense into his ghillie but controlled
his temper, muttering: "Him too?"

Realizing that only he was impervious to her seductive plotting, he
resumed his study of ways to dispose of her: "I could maroon her at
some promontory where the trading ships would have to see her.  Of
course we'd leave food for her, but I doubt the men would permit this.
Or when we make camp, we could build a little hut for her, off to one
side, but I'm sure the others would sneak over there at night, after I
was asleep."  And then came that hideous image, of him pushing her off
the Afton on some dark night, and the others running about: "Where is
she?  What could have happened?"  This hateful dream he tried to chase
out of his mind, but he was powerless to exorcise it.

Reprieve came in the sudden appearance on the Mackenzie of a sizable
river steamer hurrying back to civilization at the completion of her
last trading trip of the brief summer season, and when Luton signaled
frantically, her captain hove to while the men in the Afton explained
how they happened to have a castaway girl aboard: "Bunch of Dakota
farmers wrecked their craft at Great Slave.  You're to take her back to
Athabasca so she can go on down to Edmonton and on to her home."  When
the captain asked: "Who pays her fare?"  Lord Luton with indecent haste
leaped forward to cry: "I do!"  and he gave the captain not only the
requested fare but also a bonus of five dollars.  While , this was
happening Carpenter quietly slipped Irina a handful of bills and a
fatherly admonition: "Go back to Dakota, Irina.  Give up your dreams of
gold."

In gratitude she went to each of her saviors in turn and kissed him.
When she reached Philip he blushed furiously, but the reaction was
quite different when she came at last to Lord Luton.  Stiffly, with his
best silent-sneer he drew back, refused to kiss her but did accept from
a proper distance her warm handshake.

Ignoring this rejection, she transferred to the larger ship, and after
reaching down for her tiny package of clothes the men had given her,
she remained at the railing as the two craft separated there in the
center of the great river with never a tree or a hut visible.  As
Philip watched her slowly vanish upstream, his heart felt a heaviness
it had not known before.  He acknowledged to himself that she was much
older than he, and that she was an American of uncertain lineage, but
he also knew that she was a vibrant, heroic woman with a sense of humor
and compassion, and he was aware that her naturalness had overwhelmed
him.  But his two older companions who were watching him closely,
Evelyn and Harry, knew from their own experiences as young men that
this sense of romantic tragedy would pass.  It always did.

Luton and his party continued their journey on the Mackenzie without
seeing one evidence of human habitation and scarcely a sign that others
had ever passed this way.  As they stared at the banks lined with
increasingly dwarfed trees they agreed that this was indeed one of the
ends of the earth.

When they finally turned northwest for the climactic run of nearly
seven hundred miles to the delta, they had an opportunity to see the
great river at its most powerful; at times it broadened out to two or
three miles until Philip and Trevor thought they were entering another
lake, but then it would contract into' a swift-moving channel.  The
vistas were endless and the loneliness almost terrifying, but the
grandest part came during the night runs when occasionally the heavens
would be charged with electricity as the enormous Northern Lights
filled the sky with luminous patterns.

One night as Luton and Trevor Blythe tended the craft while the others
slept in the little deck house, the display lasted for three breathless
hours, at the end of which Trevor said: "I've headed a new page in my
notebook Eorealis.  Wouldn't that be a wizard title for a small book of
poems about the Arctic?"

Now Luton's party became wilful players in one of the most tantalizing
and fatal games of geography.  Always aware that the Mackenzie was
running roughly parallel to their target river, the Yukon, which lay a
constant three or four hundred miles to the west, they asked
continually: "Where will it be most practical for us to leave the
Mackenzie and leapfrog over to the Yukon, which we can then use to
float down to Dawson or row up, depending upon where we make our
interception?"

The variables in this game were many, for numerous inviting streams,
some considerable rivers, joined the Mackenzie from the west, and if
one paddled and portaged upstream to their headwaters, one would be
close to some' other stream which dropped down to the Yukon.  But even
the most inviting route posed two harsh requirements.  It would be
murderously hard to row upstream against the current, and when one did
reach the headwater, one still had to portage a heavy boat and all gear
over the Continental Divide, as Harry Carpenter had pointed out
repeatedly and kept reminding them as they drifted north.

Now the travelers entered into a kind of hypnotic trance which rendered
sensible decisions impossible, for even though they knew that winter
was approaching, the days remained tantalizingly inviting, and often
they sailed with no covering but their flimsy shirts.  The sun
continued visible and warm, and the mighty river itself almost lulled
them to sleep, so purposefully did it seduce them northward, always
bearing them closer to the Arctic Circle.  It ran so steadily; its
current was so smooth and rapid that it seemed to sing: "I'm not luring
you away from the gold fields I'm carrying you always closer to the
goal."  But the goal to which it was speeding them was the river's
goal, the Arctic, and not the men's.

Every man aboard the Sweet Afton was aware of two conditions: Winter
was perilously close, requiring them to find a place to pitch camp and
dig in for seven or eight months, and they were drifting along without
the courage to make a hard decision as to how they were to survive the
winter and then get across to the Yukon.  They were men morally
disarmed by the vastness of the north, the complexity of the decisions
they must make and the sweet seduction of the Mackenzie.  "We must soon
make up our minds," Lord Luton said several times at sunset, as if on
the morrow he would force a decision, but when day broke, and the
peaceful river rolled northward, it carried him along, and decision was
postponed.

The apt simile for their curious behavior came, as might have been
expected, from poet Trevor: "We go forth, like all significant
voyagers, in quest of our Holy Grail, but we approach it by running
away, as if we were afraid to challenge the rim of Dark Mountain behind
which it hides in self-protection."

Toward twilight on a day in October, Luton was inspecting carefully a
stream which debouched into the Mackenzie from the west, and after some
minutes of close study he said: "I do believe it's got to be the
Gravel."  Everyone crowded the port side to see this ominous yet
fortuitous river, for they knew that it was the last viable escape
route to choose if they wished to avoid the difficult tangle of rivers
at the delta, where the Mackenzie would finally break through to the
Beaufort Sea.

If they elected to leave the Mackenzie here and row up the

Gravel, they would encounter at its head-waters the easiest portage
over the Rockies and a fine free-flowing river, the Stewart, to whisk
them down to Dawson in the spring.  Lord Luton, aware of the amiable
possibilities, cried: "We'll anchor in her mouth tonight and decide in
the morning whether to keep drifting down the Mackenzie," and his men
steered the Sweet Afton hard to Port and into the Gravel for an
overnight stay and some tough decision-making in the morning.

But that harsh obligation could once more be postponed because as soon
as it was light Harry Carpenter announced: "I think our spot for the
winter has been chosen for us."  And when the others looked, they saw
that the edges of both the large river and small had begun to freeze.
The ice did not yet reach out far from shore but frail fingers did
enclose their boat, a stern warning that soon the entire system would
be frozen.

"Well!"  Luton said as he studied the situation.  "This comes a mite
sooner than I had intended.  I was so eager to have us reach Fort
Norman.  It can't be more than eighty miles downstream."

"Milord," Harry said, and by using his friend's formal title he
indicated the gravity of what he had to say, "You're right.  It is only
a few miles to Norman.  But in Edmonton and Athabasca, too, they warned
us that the Mackenzie can freeze like that," and he snapped his
fingers.  "If we were to be trapped in the middle of this powerful
river, with blocks of ice crushing down upon us, we could vanish in the
midst of some floe, with our boat reduced to kindling."

Luton required only a few moments to appreciate the inevitability of
this judgment: "We'll build our cabin a hundred yards up the Gravel. To
escape the ice."  So, aided by long ropes carried ashore and tied to
trees, the men warped the Sweet Afton out of the larger river and
berthed her safely a short distance up the left bank of the Gravel.

Ironically, Luton had been forced to choose the Gravel after all, but
he was putting it to the wrong use, a haven for the winter rather than
a highway westward toward the safety of the Yukon.

TWO

Courage

The regimen Lord Luton's party adopted in their refuge on the left bank
of the Gravel was evolved through committee discussion, for Evelyn did
not act dictatorially except when a decision might mean the life or
death of his enterprise.  He was a shining example of the ancient
English principle of noblesse oblige, that if a nobleman was accorded
certain honors he was obliged to treat his underlings with charity and
decency; in reaching decisions which might affect Fogarty, Luton even
allowed the Irishman to participate in the discussions: "We're
civilized human beings," Luton was fond of saying, 'and shall conduct
ourselves accordingly."

His style of leadership was manifested immediately the Sweet Afton was
safely drawn onto the shore, for he sought advice from all members of
his team regarding the location and size of their winter quarters:
"You're to be living in them October to May so share with me your best
thoughts."

He began by stepping off what he considered an adequate
living-and-sleeping area, and marking the proposed corners with small
piles of rocks, and as soon as he had completed this, Philip, Trevor
and Fogarty lay down within the indicated space to demonstrate where
the beds would have to be.  When Luton himself dropped to the ground,
inviting Carpenter to do the same, it became apparent that his first
estimate for the size of the living area was ridiculously small, and he
began to adjust its confines outward, warning his men: "With each step
I take, your work is doubled."  After some silent calculations,
Carpenter agreed: "You know men, he's speaking the truth.  Enlarging in
any direction increases the work tremendously."

Harry eased the problem by an ingenious suggestion: "Let's pull the
Sweet Afton up here to ground level, wedge her on her beam ends and use
her as one flank of our cabin," and Philip elaborated the proposal with
one of his own: "Let's orient the Afton so she protects us from the
north winds."  Carpenter countered: "Sound idea, Philip.  But on this
spot the winds will come howling down the Gravel out of the west," and
the boat was shifted to provide protection in that quarter.

So Luton transferred his piles of corner rocks to the new terrain:
"Harry, that was a splendid idea.  See how it obviates one entire wall.
A lot of chopping saved by that device and we can use the cabin jutting
in as our cupboard."  But Trevor Blythe chipped in with one of the best
suggestions: "Let's tie our largest canvas into this free end of the
Afton.  Lash it down securely and provide ourselves with a kind of
protected storage area.  Too cold for sleeping but valuable as a place
to hold things."  He smiled at Fogarty: "Say the frozen carcass of a
moose you've shot."  And this idea, too, was incorporated into the
overall plan, with the canvas being erected immediately and tied
securely to the Afton.

When Luton visualized his finished three-part winter dwelling he
christened it "Our Hermaphrodite Igloo," and when the others protested
that this part of the world had never known an igloo, he said: "In my
storybooks there were nothing but igloos, and I've always wanted one,"
but Harry said more soberly: "You know, what we'll have here is pretty
much what the Esquimaux along the ocean fronts have always had.  A big
canoe lashed down on its side to protect a kind of dugout in the earth.
An entrance area much like this tent."  Surveying the site he said:
"We're in the grand tradition.  And if thousands of Esquimaux have
survived the Arctic winter in dwellings like this, so can we."

Then the philosophizing and the frivolity ended, for the laborious work
of building a fairly large cabin had to be accelerated against the
coming of blizzards, and each of the five went studiously about his
assigned tasks.  Philip and Trevor were given ropes and sent to search
for usable timbers from the bleached driftwood that cluttered the banks
of the Gravel.  Like all Arctic rivers which passed through an almost
treeless terrain its shores contained such an inexhaustible supply of
wood that Trevor cried: "Where can it come from?"  and naturally they
asked Carpenter.

"Simple.  The banks here contain few trees.  But up in the mountain,
small forests."

"How does this tangle reach us?"

"Winter snow blankets the forest.  Spring thaw erodes the banks and
down come the trees.  Votld, the next flood brings them right to our
doorstep."  Within a short distance east or west along only the left
bank they had at their disposal enough straight, fine wood to build a
cathedral; choosing only the best timbers, they worked far into the
dusk hauling up to site level the wood that would be needed to face
their cabin.

Carpenter and Fogarty, meanwhile, had taken upon themselves the most
arduous task, that of felling and trimming the four stout poles that
would form the corners of the cabin.  With the expedition's two hefty
axes they sought out larch or spruce, girdled the chosen tree as close
to ground level as practical, then took stances on opposite sides of
the trunk and chopped away until the tree was felled.  Then, by common
agreement, they took turns resting and hacking off the lower branches
and the unneeded crown of the tree so that the end result was a sturdy
corner post.  It was strenuous work but necessary, for although
driftwood of nearly proper size was available, both men feared it might
have been so weakened by flood water and bleaching and rough transit
down the Gravel that it could not withstand winter blasts when wind
pressures could be tremendous.

While the others were thus engaged in the demanding business of
assembling the wood for their cabin, Lord Luton was painstakingly
grubbing away with an improvised hoe-cum-scraper to provide a level
base as the floor, and when that was finished to his satisfaction, he
reached for the expedition's sole shovel, and began the fatiguing task
of digging four-pest holes for the corners.  Almost immediately he
learned that this was not like digging in a Devon garden where the
loamy soil seemed almost to step aside to let the shovel pass.  This
was brutal, demanding work where each inch of niggardly soil was
defended by rocky deposits and when he found that an hour of his best
effort had produced a hole only a few inches deep, he summoned the
others.

"I'm not a shirker," he told them.  "You know that.  But this digging
the pest holes .. . really, I'm getting nowhere," and he showed them
his pitiful results.

This led to serious discussion with Lord Luton and Trevor Blythe
suggesting that a meager footing might be adequate if properly
buttressed by stones above the ground, and Carpenter and Fogarty
counseling from their greater experience: "A corner post not properly
sunk is an invitation to disaster."  Now a subtle change came in the
structure of the Luton party, for without ostentation or any move which
might denigrate his leader's position of authority, Tim Fogarty lifted
the shovel from where Luton had dropped it, saying almost jocularly as
he did so: "The fields of Ireland have far more rocks than those of
England, Milord.  Harry will need help chopping on that third post."

When time came to attack the fourth post, Carpenter said: "Fogarty,
give Evelyn a hand on that last one," and just as quietly as the
Irishman had behaved when taking over the back-breaking work of digging
the pest holes Harry took away the shovel and asked: "Evelyn?  Where
did you have in mind for this one?"  By these easy steps Lord Luton was
removed from command work but protected in his apparent leadership of
the expedition as a whole.

It was Fogarty who suggested the solution to the chimney problem, for
it was known in the Arctic regions that to live in any cabin for seven
or eight months without adequate ventilation for removal of smoke and
noxious gases might not only damage eyesight but also result in death.
Each winter in northern lands a handful of men, often two or three
sleeping in one room, would perish because they went to sleep in some
remote cabin that had no way for smoke to escape.  Those who found
their peaceful bodies in the spring would often say: "It's an easy way
to die, but not necessary."

Carpenter and Fogarty knew it was obligatory to devise some arrangement
which encouraged smoke and fumes to escape while preventing wind, rain
and snow from entering.  Since the team had not brought with them from
Edmonton a stovepipe or anything that could be used as such, the men
had to devise a reasonable substitute.  Several ingenious ideas were
suggested, including Trevor's that the stove should be located in one
of the corners, with that section of the roof left open and a wall of
some sort erected across the corner to keep the smoke out.  This
proposal was rejected by Carpenter on the grounds that the chimney
would have to be so huge an opening that there would be no upward draw:
The wind would howl down it and suffocate us all with smoke."

Fogarty, at this point, found a collection of slab-like rocks, rough on
one side, smooth on the other, and he proposed constructing from them a
stone chimney, wide at the bottom, narrow at the top, and when he put
it together it was applauded by Carpenter who pointed out: "Best
feature is that the wooden wall will be faced by stone.  Prevent fires,
the kind that kill sleeping people in the north."

In this quiet way Carpenter and Fogarty assumed effective command of
the expedition during the period of building the winter retreat.  They
decided how deep the difficult pest holes must be, where the chimney
should be located, how beds should be constructed and how the tent area
should be incorporated into the whole, but even between them an
unspoken struggle for leadership evolved, although neither trespassed
the other's prerogatives.  When Harry decided that for maximum safety
the cabin section must have an additional central post, Fogarty did not
even commment, but when Harry himself started to seek out and cut down
the added post, the Irishman quietly took command of the two axes and
said: "Mr.  Philip, time you learned the secrets."  Off they marched to
fell and trim the post, and when that job was completed, Fogarty also
dug the fifth hole.

In this subtle manner each of the five acknowledged and performed his
special function: Lord Luton decided the questions of policy, or
anything requiring a resounding speech; Harry made the strategic
decisions upon which the life and death of the expedition rested;
Fogarty determined the practical ways to achieve ends with a minimum of
oratory, and even the two young members differentiated their
contributions, with Philip providing muscle and boundless energy when
required, Trevor an ingratiating willingness to do the most menial
jobs, such as washing dishes, gathering firewood or taking waste to an
improvised disposal dump.  He also surprised the others at times with
suggestions of the greatest practicality, as when he constructed and
positioned three different sites from which the lanterns could be
suspended, depending upon where their light was most needed for
specific tasks.

When the log cabin was properly roofed, its sides erected and lashed
securely to the corner posts, the two younger men rejoiced that the
hard work was over, but Carpenter and Fogarty soon disabused them of
that foolishness, for as Harry announced when the roof was in place:
"Now the tedious work begins.  All of us scour this land, miles in
every direction, to find moss, and twigs and mud, especially the clayey
type, for caulking every hole you see up there."  and he pointed to the
roof where a hundred ill-matched joints provided entry for snow and
rain and especially wind.  "Caulk along the walls, too."

Philip, pointing to the Sweet Afton, said jocularly: "I'll caulk that
wall," but he was one of the first down to the creek searching for mud,
and far upstream he came upon one of those apparently random deposits
of earth which had a modified clay consistency.  He became the hauler
of buckets of clay and river weeds to the other four as they strove to
render their Arctic home reasonably weatherproof.

When the talents of these five energetic and willing men completed the
building of their winter refuge they had indeed what Lord Luton still
called his Hermaphrodite Igloo, a weatherproofed cabin defended from
blizzards by the resting Sweet Afton, enlarged by the unheated space of
the strong tent, and warmed by the big wood-palisaded room from which
the smoke escaped through Fogarty's chimney and to which proper light
was delivered by what Trevor Blythe called 'my peripatetic lanterns."

When the hard work was finished, mainly as a result of Carpenter's and
Fogarty's solid leadership, Lord Luton was not only free to resume
command but was also subtly invited to do so, and he began
enthusiastically by lining out sensible rules for the governance of
daily conduct in what he called "Our Kingdom of Kindred Souls': "No one
will lie abed all day unless he be ill and confined there.  At least
once each day every man will exercise.  Harry, mark out a quarter-mile
running oval and we'll give it a whirl.  I calculate we're still well
south of the Arctic Circle, so we'll have hazy light for such running,
but even during the darkness we must protect our health."

Carpenter had several sensible suggestions: "We must change our socks
at least twice a week and wash the worn ones in soap and hot water,
else we'll develop a horrible fungus.  It's not good to sleep in your
clothes or to wear your underthings more than a week.  The latrine is
to be kept well back from the cabin, and I want to find no one just
stepping outside the door and pissing."

But both Luton and Carpenter directed their major planning to the
avoidance of scurvy.  "I've seen it," Harry said.  "Hideous disease.
Comes from an improper diet.  Most people like us have had no
opportunity to experience scurvy, so we underestimate it.  You ever see
it, Evelyn?"

Luton said he had not but he'd heard enough to frighten him.  So Harry
continued: "I saw it during a long sea voyage.  We should've known
better, but the men began to fall sick.  Teeth drop out.  Legs become
necrotic."

"What's that?"  Trevor asked and Carpenter explained: "They die before
the rest of the body dies.  You punch your finger into the leg, and
when you take your finger away, the hole stays there."

"What must we do?"  Philip asked, and Carpenter answered: "Canned
fruit, pickled cabbage, the acid pills we bought in Edmonton.  And we
think that fresh meat provides just enough of what's lacking ..."

"What is lacking?"  Blythe asked, and Carpenter said: "Various
theories.  We'll know one day.  So if anyone can shoot a deer, catch a
fish or wing a duck, do so.  Your life may depend on it."

The five men, as congenial a group as could have been assembled for
such adventure, spent their first two weeks of isolation in routinizing
their existence.  Snow did not yet cover the ground and since this
stretch of the Mackenzie received only moderate precipitation, snow,
even when it did come, would not be a major problem, for as Carpenter
explained: "Arctic regions like this receive far less snow than places
like Montreal and New York."

He laid out the running track, and he and Luton ran three laps morning
and afternoon.  The two younger men ran four laps in the late
afternoon.  Fogarty, who was often absent chasing game, ran on any day
in which he had not walked extensively,

and the health of all flourished.  The latrine was dug, driftwood was
collected from the riverbank and chopped to feed the effective little
stove, and the men watched as the days swiftly shortened.

It was when the long nights started that the group showed itself to be
exceptional, for under Luton's wise leadership the men organized
themselves into a kind of college in which each member except Fogarty
would assume responsibility for a given night, during which he would
expound upon something he knew, no matter how obscure or how apparently
lacking in general interest.  On one of his nights, for example, Luton
explained the ramifications of the Bradcombe family and its role in
English history.  He told of the marriages, the scandals, the murders,
the services his forebears had provided the crown.  Later he and Harry
spent more than an hour recalling fascinating examples of how the rules
of primogeniture had operated in their family to ensure the longevity
of the line.  "It's a thoughtful system," Evelyn said.  "Eldest son
inherits all ... title .. . castles .. . land .. . lease to a good
stretch of salmon river."

"Odd to hear you defending the system, Evelyn," young Hens-low said,
'seeing that you're younger brother to Nigel, and he inherits all."

"But that's what I mean, Philip.  The law spells it out, item by item,
so there can be no quarreling between Nigel and me."

"But aren't you envious?  Just a wee bit?"

"I have my own title, an estate in Ireland, that's adequate.  Envy?  I
doubt I've ever had a shred."

He then reviewed several fascinating accounts of how the principle of
entailment had operated to protect important holdings in the Bradcombe
family.  "It's like this.  My father cannot sell or give away either
the castle at Wellfleet or the two old houses in Ireland.  They're
entailed.  They must stay with the title."

"Interesting problem," Harry said.  "Evelyn's father can't sell the
Rembrandt or the Jan Steens, either.  They're entailed."  He laughed:
"You ever hear about the public scandal when my grand father tried to
sell off the pictures entailed to our family?  Wanted the money to
support an English actress he'd met in New York.  Came home on the ship
with her.  Fearful scandal.  The women in our family weren't too
worried about the actress but they raised hell about selling the
Titian.  Got the law to stop him."

When it came time for Carpenter to conduct his first evening session he
surprised the group by announcing that on his nights he would read
aloud the entire novel Great Expectations which a tutor had told him
was one of the best constructed of all the English novels, and in time
the others looked forward to his sessions, especially when the real
cold set in and the river fairly crackled from the ice it was moving
about.

They had become involved because this novel was composed of masterful
visual images: the dramatic appearance of the convict in the
churchyard, Miss Favisham and her moldering wedding cake, Pip's boxing
lesson, the wonderful scenes of London.  "This is," said Harry, 'a
damned fine novel for a cabin near the Arctic Circle."

Trevor Blythe gave a series of four lectures elucidating the magic of
Shelley, Keats, Byron and Wordsworth, and because both his tutor and
his mother had loved poetry, he had as a result of their pressures
memorized long passages of their finer poems, and he would sometimes
sit with eyes closed, candlelight upon his flaxen hair, and recite
poems the others had known partially, and the cabin would be filled
with the glorious music of the English language.  Once on a very cold
night when the land seemed to shudder from its weight of frost with
never a movement of air or breath of wind, he held a book of poems open
in his lap and without consulting it began reciting poems of Keats
which he especially loved:

"St.  Agnes Eve-Ah bitter chill it was!  The owl, for all his feathers
was a-cold;

The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the
flock in snowy fold ..."

He delivered the first forty lines from memory, then without breaking
his rhythm he shifted to the book, but whenever he reached one of the
sections he had memorized, he closed his eyes again and filled the
night air with those vast images that Keats had pressed upon his
pages.

When Blythe reached the closing, with that marvelous line about the
long carpets rising along the gusty floor, his listeners could see the
lovers escaping and the drunken porter sprawled beside the gate.  They
could hear the door groaning and the warriors suffering nightmares.
Such was the power of poetry that these long-dead words created living
experiences, and the little cabin was alive with wonder.

On nights when Philip was responsible for the tutorial, as Lord Luton
had dubbed these sessions, he could not compete in either wisdom or
experience with his elders, and at first he was reluctant to try, but
his uncle said firmly: "If you're one of us, you must be one of us,1
and Philip, with fear that he was making an ass of himself, reviewed
the courses he had taken at Eton, and because he had been above average
in geometry he began to give the men a review of that precise and
beautiful subject, until Luton stopped him: "It's fascinating, really,
and we could profit from knowing what you know, but with your diagrams
you're using all our paper."

By now Philip had gained confidence, so when he was deprived of
geometry he turned to Greek mythology, and from that to the manner in
which Charlemagne had established a great empire and then divided it
among his sons.  The older men listened attentively, happy to
reacquaint themselves with subjects they too had studied more than a
decade ago.

The hours of daylight, extremely brief at this latitude, were spent in
vigorous outdoor activities-running, hunting, chop-ping-on those days
when the temperature permitted, but when it skidded to fifty below, all
remained inside edging ever closer to the fire to partake of the heat.
Then the nights were twenty-four hours long, and orderly discussion
about the flickering lights became treasured.  The sessions had been
underway for more than a month before Luton thought to include Fogarty
as an instructor: "Fogarty, if we asked you to address this college on
some subject about which you were an authority, what would it be?"  The
Irishman knit his brow, then bit his lip and looked almost appealingly
at each member of his audience: "I could talk about horses, but you
gentlemen already know most of what I'd say."

"Go ahead," Capenter urged.  "We can never know enough."

Fogarty, ignoring this encouragement, said: "But I doubt if you know
much about poaching."

"You mean cooking eggs?"  Philip asked, to which Fogarty said: "No, I
mean real poaching."  And forthwith he launched into a detailed account
of how a master fish-and-game thief worked.  "Mind you, I was good at
picking off a rabbit now and then, and that's not an easy thing to do
without making a noise, but me great love was to slip out on a moonless
night and catch me a prize salmon."

"Salmon!"  Carpenter repeated in astonishment.  His forebears had shot
men trying to poach salmon on the streams they commanded and had
sentenced more than one to Australia for the crime.

"Aye, salmon, queen of the poacher's art."  And as he talked proudly of
his skill and patience he began to reveal just enough about the
specific scenes of his triumphs that Lord Luton could not avoid
identifying the Irish rivers Fogarty had poached with the ones he
himself owned, and it began to dawn upon him that this prideful
Irishman had long been stealing salmon from the very streams he had
been hired to protect.

Shaken by this unpleasant discovery, at one point Luton asked: "Aren't
you speaking of the second pool below the stone bridge that General
Netford built in 1803?"

"Aye.  The very bridge.  They said it had been put there to aid the
army in case Napoleon crossed into Ireland."

Now Carpenter broke in: That's the pool my Uncle Jack wrote about in
his book on the upper-central rivers of Ireland.  He named it Mirror
Pool because it reflected the sky so perfectly."

The same."  For nearly a century the sportsmen of England had written
books about their favorite salmon streams until every stretch of river
in the British Isles that hosted the precious fish had been described
and evaluated.  Men like Harry Carpenter could sit in India or along
the Nile and recall without error entire stretches of river and recount
proudly how some distant relative had landed his prize salmon in
1873.

Now Fogarty, round-faced and unaware of the agitation he was creating,
was relating the poor man's version of the same chase: "I've never gone
out within three days of a full moon, either before or after, and I
used to advise young lads ..."

"You taught poaching?"  Trevor asked, and Fogarty said: "Not in the
manner of a school, but if a young fellow of substantial character came
to me with an earnest desire to make himself into a first-class
poacher, I helped him learn the rules."

"What were the rules?"  Lord Luton asked with an icy reserve which hid
his seething disgust at the revelations he was hearing, and Fogarty
gave such a detailed reply that the evening became one of the best of
the seminars, for interested students were listening to an expert with
an amazing breadth of knowledge.

"I stressed three basic rules, both in me own behavior and that of
anyone I allowed to poach the streams I was controlling."

"You sold permissions?"  Luton asked, to which Fogarty responded:
"Heavens no!  That was me first rule.  "Never poach unless you need the
fish and are going to eat it.  Never sell it and don't give it to
anyone but your own family."  To poach for money would be quite
dishonorable, don't you agree?"

By such questioning, and by the controlled dignity of his approach to
the stealing of salmon, Fogarty gradually brought his listeners into
his confidence, and before long they were all participating in nightly
forays and imaginary travels up and down the great fishing rivers of
Britain.  In particular, Harry Carpenter joined in the discussion for
he had fished most of the stretches and pools the Irishman was speaking
of: "You mean, upstream of the one they call Princeps?"

"Aye, that's the one.  With the willows on the far bank."

It was not until Fogarty had traversed a dozen streams that Trevor
Blythe asked hesitantly: "But isn't this kind of poaching illegal?" and
Fogarty replied with no embarrassment: "I consider it taxation in
reverse."

"What do you mean?"  Luton asked, and Fogarty explained with a
self-incriminating frankness which astounded his employer: "The rich
tax us poor people for almost anything we do, and a good poacher taxes
the rich for a salmon or a rabbit now and then.  It evens out,
Milord."

Fogarty's beguiling revelations now lured even Evelyn into his net, for
the noble lord began discussing poaching and rivers and the thrill of
night fishing as if he too were participating in the challenging sport.
At one point he asked: "What kind of fly would you use in well-rumpled
water?"  and Carpenter chimed in with his own expert knowledge.

But the younger members of the class were not content with Fogarty's
answer on legality, and Philip persisted: "But it is illegal, isn't
it?"

"Many things we do are illegal, or nearly so.  Wasn't it illegal for
Major Carpenter's grandfather to sell off the painting to please an
actress?"

"But the courts stopped him."

"Aye, and the courts stop poachers, if they catch them."

"How do you feel about that?"  Philip persisted, and Fogarty said: "I
feel it's a great, fine game.  A test.  A challenge to all that's best
in a man.  His willingness to stand up for his rights."

"Rights?"  Luton asked, and in the bitter cold Fogarty replied very
carefully: "I suppose that rivers were created for all men .. . to
enjoy the fish God puts in them.  Laws have changed this,

and maybe that's all to the good, for thoughtful men like you and your
father, Milord, you keep the rivers cleaned up and fresh for those who
come after.  But I believe that God sitting up there in judgment smiles
when He watches one of His boys slip out at dusk to catch for his
family one of the big fish that He has sent down, perhaps for that
specific purpose."

"Isn't it risky?"  Philip asked, and Fogarty pointed toward the much
greater river that lay frozen outside: "Isn't it risky for you to be
challenging this river at this time of year?"

As winter deepened, life in the tiny cabin produced unexpected
problems.  When the spirit thermometer purchased in Edmonton stood at
minus forty-three the two younger men did not relish running the oval,
but Luton and Harry missed only when heavy snow was actually falling,
which was rare.  "A man must keep his mettle," Luton said, and once
when the temperature dropped to minus fifty and Carpenter was held
indoors with a nasty cold, Luton ran four laps alone and came in
perspiring: "My word, that was bracing!"

The outdoor running did create one problem which could have become ugly
had not Luton taken stern steps.  Philip Hens-low, still inordinately
proud of his rubber boots despite Irina Kozlok's warning about their
dubious utility in the Arctic, tried doing his daily runs in them even
though he knew that they provided almost no protection from the icy
cold.  In fact, their conductivity of cold was so immediate and
complete that before he had run only a few steps in the bitter cold,
his toes were colder than his nose, and that was perilous.

Out of pride in his choice of these boots and obstinacy in defending
what he had done, he refused at first to acknowledge the resulting
pain, but one evening when it became so intense that he winced when he
took off his boots inside the cabin, his uncle heard the sudden intake
of breath, looked down to see what had caused it, and guessed
immediately that it was frozen toes.

"Let me see those feet," he said quietly, kneeling to feel the gelid
toes and confirm the lack of circulation.  When he looked closely he
cried: "Harry!  Come see this dreadful mess!"  and when Carpenter too
bent down he uttered a low whistle: "Another week of this and we'd have
to cut off that left foot."

When the others gathered around to look, they saw a pitiful example of
frostbite: the skin an ashen white, peeling between the toes, ankles
that delivered no pulse or movement of blood.  And despite the fact
that the feet had now been exposed to the heat of the cabin for many
minutes, they were still shockingly cold.

But no one panicked.  Carpenter said, giving both feet one more
inspection: They can be saved.  Without question, Philip, they can be
brought back.  I've seen it done."

Lord Luton was more firm: "You will not wear those boots again this
winter.  You have heavy shoes and we have extra pairs of thin socks
that you can wear inside."  After turning away in disgust, he whipped
about and said: "Harry, Trevor, you're to inspect his feet every night
to be sure they improve.  I have a very queasy stomach when it comes to
cutting off a man's leg, especially a young man's, but I shall do it if
it needs being done."

By placing Henslow's feet first in cold, then cool, and eventually in
warm water the cure was effected and all might have gone well had not
poor Philip uttered an unfortunate final comment on the messy affair:
"Irina warned me about those boots."  This was more than Luton could
tolerate.  From a great height of moral indignation he glared down at
his nephew and thundered: "She warned you?  Damn me, I warned you.
Harry warned you.  And I heard Fogarty warning you: "Don't buy fancy
rubber boots for the Arctic!"  But you wouldn't listen to us.  You
waited for her to warn you."  Allowing his voice to rise to a shout he
no uttered just two words: "Don't you ..."  and then, ashamed of
himself, he dropped to his customary low-keyed voice: "Don't use her
name again, Philip.  It offends me."

The men honored the rule of not urinating except at the privy, and at
the beginning they were careful to shave once each day, but the tedium
of doing so when temperatures were so low and space so crowded tempted
first one and then another to forego the daily shave, and once a beard
started growing in earnest, all attempts to shave it off were
surrendered.  So by January everyone except Luton had a full beard
which was kept neatly trimmed by scissors applied in nightly sessions
before one of the two camp mirrors; it was not uncommon to see a man
tending his beard by the lantern while Carpenter read Great
Expectations, which at the request of his companions he was reading for
the second time.

As leader of the expedition, Luton felt that he must set an example by
shaving daily, and he did, even though this entailed considerable
effort and even discomfort.  Fogarty, watching him struggle, said one
morning: "Milord, I believe I could put a bit of edge on that razor."
Luton replied: "You're not here as my manservant," but since he winced
with pain when he said this, Fogarty insisted: "Apply more lather,
Milord, and let me have that thing."  So while Luton soaped, Fogarty
honed and stropped.  Thereafter he tended the razor three mornings a
week, not as a servant but as a friend and he nodded approvingly when
Luton told the others: "Men can turn sour in situations like this.  The
proper regard for the niceties is essential for morale."

As Lord Luton ran his laps or worked alone at some outdoor project, or
ruminated at night after Harry ended that day's stint of reading Great
Expectations he came to a conclusion which caused him pain; reviewing
his pusillanimous behavior about failing to make a firm decision as to
how his team was to bridge that awesome gap between the Mackenzie River
to the east and the Yukon to the west, he saw clearly that he had been
delinquent in failing to direct his party up the Liard River, and one
night he startled the others by rapping the table with his knuckles and
crying: "Damn me, I should have grasped the nettle."

"What do you mean, Evelyn?"  Harry asked, and Luton replied: "On that
long drift down the Mackenzie I allowed myself to be mesmerized.  My
duty was to find our way over the Rockies to the Yukon and I failed the
test."

"But Evelyn, you still have three or four choices.  The Gravel here.
The ones at the beginning of the Delta.  You're far from shamed, and
you're even further from having let us down."

Luton would not be consoled, for he better than any of the others knew
that he had been delinquentin allowing the days to slip by as the Sweet
Afton drifted so easily down the great river: "I feel like a Greek
warrior who, on the eve of battle, takes refuge in nepenthe and dreams
away the day of confrontation .. . sweet sleep of forgetfulness."

In these day of self-flagellation it was curious that not once did he
reflect on the fact that he was now by accident precisely where he
ought to be when the rivers thawed in June; a quick push up the Gravel
to where the boat could no longer make the bends, a swift sawing of the
fine craft into halves, a brutally demanding but short portage over one
of the best passes in the Rockies, an easy hookup with the Stewart
River and into Dawson with no more trouble.  Three or four times he had
been reminded of this route, but the facts had simply not been allowed
into his brain, for somewhere he had acquired a fixation that he must,
as a matter of honor, sail to the end of the Mackenzie, then worm his
way through whatever difficulties loomed while still remaining on
Canadian soil.  Ironically, the route up the Gravel would have
satisfied most of those requirements admirably, but he failed to
understand.

In his obstinacy he continued to berate himself until he was almost
sick with self-recrimination, for failure lay heavily on a man like
Luton.  Once when he had captained a crucial cricket match against
Sussex, at least he deemed it crucial, he had been

I2

forced to make one of those quick decisions which only cricket seems to
produce: his team had a surprisingly comfortable lead, but to win the
match outright he had to get Sussex out before time expired, so he made
them follow-on, that is, bat out of turn in hopes that his bowlers
could speedily dismiss them.  But the Sussex rascals battled like
demons, built up a big lead, declared before their last men were out,
and made Luton's team take the field and try to catch up.  An awful
thing happened: Sussex bowlers became like mortars, hurling deadly
bombs at Luton's men, so that instead of his having been clever in
outsmarting Sussex, they outsmarted him and hurtingly.  It was a
disaster which he often recalled at night, 'the arrogance of command,"
he called it, and its memory still stung.

He had the same regrets about having messed up the Mackenzie trip, and
he refused to believe Carpenter when his friend said truthfully:
"Evelyn, it can all be salvaged.  It's to be a grand trip, come the
thaw."

Luton would not be consoled, and he felt so personally responsible for
what he sensed as an impending disaster that he conceived a
preposterous solution.  "Gentlemen," he said one night before the
prayers which he regularly led, "I've worked out the answer.  It's so
simple, really.  It's less than fifty miles to the Hudson's Bay post at
Fort Norman .. ."

"What's that got to do with us?"  Carpenter asked, and Luton astonished
him by replying: "They'll know the secrets about the river systems up
ahead.  Maps and the like.  And with their help I can make the proper
decisions about what to do when the thaw comes."

"Evelyn," Carpenter said with studied patience, 'don't you realize that
Fort Norman is downstream from us.  Come the thaw, we'll go.  right
past there.  Couldn't miss it if we wanted to.  In thirty minutes
ashore we can learn all they have to share."

Luton, refusing to consider this sensible solution, not only continued
to make plans to travel the fifty miles to the outpost but startled his
team by insisting that he would go alone.  When

they remonstrated against the foolhardiness of this, he cut them short
and said with the calm authority he knew so well how to exercise: "This
is my responsibility, mine alone, and I shall make my studies."

After one heated argument in which he said bluntly that he would be
leaving next morning, Carpenter held private consultations with the two
younger men: "Have you seen any indications of instability in Evelyn? I
don't mean this trip.  Before?  At home?"

"None," Philip said firmly and Trevor had no comment, but when Harry
continued: "What can all the fellow?"  Trevor said gently: "I think he
castigates himself for not having made firm decisions on the river,
especially since he was so ready to do so coming across the Atlantic ..
. and in Edmonton."  When no one spoke, the young poet added: "He may
feel he owes us a debt .. . not us but the expedition."  Feeling
himself entangled in arcane matters, he ended lamely: "Such
self-accusations can be quite pressing, you know."

On the morrow, as he had predicted, Luton rose early, dressed in his
warmest gear, ate a hearty breakfast, then checked his rifle, his
precious eiderdown sleeping bag, his supply of cartridges and his
rations.  When Harry took steps to follow with his own preparations for
the foolhardy trip down the frozen Mackenzie, Evelyn said harshly: "I
command you Harry, to stay here and guard this encampment."  Carpenter
looked as if he were going to ignore the command but, Fogarty, to
everyone's surprise, interceded: "He knows what he's doing, Sir," and
the noble lord, just turned thirty-two, struck out for the big river,
made his way to its frozen center and started the long snowshoe-and-ski
push to Fort Norman.

Because he knew himself to be' in excellent condition, he calculated
that he could cover at least twenty-five miles a day and pretty surely
reach the post at the close of the second day.  He ate little and kept
a sharp lookout for animals, not to shoot them but to record what wild
life was moving about at this time of year, but apart from a very few
black and noisy ravens he saw little.  Unaware of when day passed into
night, he rested sporadically and on the second day kept traveling for
nearly twenty hours down the breast of the great river, without
incident: no fractures, no attacks by animals, just a normal caper down
a vast river in thirty-degrees-below-zero weather and with sparse food.
His spartan endurance put him into Fort Norman midway on the third
day.

It had been for many years one of the farthest north of Hudson's Bay
posts and traditionally it had been manned by three or four French
Canadian servants of the famous old company, men who spoke both French
and English plus two or three Indian dialects, and a half-French,
half-Indian fur trader or two.  These latter were never to be called
half-castes or half-breeds, designations they considered offensive;
they were Metis, and the Canadian North could not have survived without
their knowing services.  At different posts, depending upon the
character of the white managers, the Metis were treated either as
fellow explorers with valuable skills, or as lowly servants deserving
little consideration.  At Fort Norman, the one Metis present fell, for
good reason, into the first category.  He was a forty-year-old trapper
and fur trader, who was treated almost as an equal by the three French
Canadians in charge.

He was the first to spot Lord Luton striding alone down the middle of
the Mackenzie, and his warning cry astounded the others: "Man coming
right down the river!"  When the others ran to see, they expected to
find someone near death staggering up the long flight of wooden steps
that led from their high ground down to the river's edge, begging for
water and food.  They were amazed when, upon sighting them, he waved
his rifle spiritedly, left the river and actually ran up the score of
steps, crying as he came: "I say!  How good to find you chaps right
where the map said you'd be."

He did not stagger.  He did not beg for food, nor did he even accept
the drink of water offered him: "I'm what you might say heading a small
expedition.  Five of us.  Wintering in at the Gravel.  All in super
condition."  Munching on a sea biscuit they provided, but not
ravenously, he answered their questions.  Yes, he had come down the
river alone.  Yes, the other three were Englishmen, too.  Yes, I did
say there were five of us, the last's an Irishman.  Why had he come to
Fort Norman?  To seek counsel regarding the most practical way to slip
over to the Yukon and the gold fields at Dawson, but only after the
thaw came, of course.

One of the Canadians would report later: "It was like he had dropped by
his corner tobacconist's to pick up some Cuban cigars and the local
gossip.  Unconcerned.  Unemotional.  Damned good chap, that one, and we
were nonplussed when he revealed under questioning that he was Lord
Luton, younger son of the Marquess of Deal."

It was a remarkable six days that Luton spent at the post,
interrogating the traders, comparing notes with the Metis guide by
relating the trip he'd taken, and formulating the intricate plans that
would determine the third portion of his expedition.  He found the
conversation with the Metis the most rewarding.  The man's name was
George Michael, and all pronounced his first name in the English
fashion, his second as if it were the French equivalent, Michel,
accenting the last syllable.

He told Luton that he had come north twelve years before from the
District of Saskatchewan when some terrible battle with the English had
driven his kind from their lands.  Luton was stern in his questioning
of Michael as to which Englishmen he had fought and was greatly
relieved when he understood that by "English' the man had merely meant
Canadian troops.  Michael said that Luton was the first nobleman he had
ever met and in awe of Evelyn's rank he called him "Duke."  Then he
spoke proudly of the noble blood in his own veins, the Indian blood,
calling it the important half of his twin heritage.  When the three
white Canadians suggested that George Michael hurry back to the Gravel
to assure the Englishmen that Lord Luton had arrived safely, he was
delighted with the prospect of serving a duke and was disappointed when
Luton said firmly: "No need.  They're all solid chaps.  They'll know in
proper time I made it.  I'm sure they expected me to."

Then, with the aid of his hosts, he launched his advanced
interrogations regarding the tangled rivers he would soon be attacking,
and after listening to them only briefly he said: "I think I've found
the four men in all Canada best qualified to advise me."

"First of all, Lord Luton .. ."

"Please call me Evelyn, since we're to be working at this for some
spell."

"You're not in a bad position where your camp is now, at the confluence
of the Gravel.  You're aware, I'm sure, that when the thaw comes, you
can head up the Gravel and portage to the Stewart.  Then all's fair and
a soft run home."

"I had rather fancied the route just beyond the Arctic Circle."

The men were not displeased by this sharp rejection of their advice,
for his preference brought him into the territory they knew best, but
when they were alone one old-timer with the Company asked: "Do you
think he knows what he's doing?"  and another said: "No Englishman ever
does," but the third man cautioned: This one may be different, he's a
proper Lord."  The second pointed out: "Lords are worst of all," but
when the third man reminded them: "This one did walk near fifty miles
right down our river," they all agreed that he merited consideration.

In preparation for their next meeting with Luton they drafted a set of
maps for him, marking with a heavy line the route that two of them had
used in getting from Fort Norman over the crest of the Rockies and down
into the important American trading

station at Fort Yukon, within easy striking distance of the
gold-fields.  And the men combined to drill into him, thrice over, the
important decision points.

"My lord, there'll be markers to help you leave the Mackenzie and find
your way into the Peel.  That's crucial.  Everything depends on your
getting out of this river and into the smaller system to the west."

Another man broke in: "Crucial, yes, but the next turn is the one that
counts.  Many miss it to their woe.  You'll find the Rat River on your
right, not big but the secret to success.  Because it's there you saw
your boat in half, and the vital push begins.  Up to the headwaters of
the Rat, a short portage over the Divide and you're in the Bell.  And
then," the speaker's voice relaxed, 'you're in a straight run home."

"To where?"  Luton asked, and when the man said: The Porcupine which
takes you straight into Fort Yukon, good water all the way."

"Oh, no," Luton said, drawing himself away from his ardent instructors.
"I'd really not care to reach my goal through American territory."

This caused some consternation, two of the men judging such a
restriction to be childish, the other two agreeing that it was sensible
for a patriotic Englishman to want to keep his money and loyalty within
the Empire, but it was George Michael alone who saw the solution to
this impasse: "Duke, the Porcupine she is no problem.  Turn right, you
go into America.  Turn left you stay in Canada, all way to Dawson."

Now the others became enthusiastic, applauding Michael's sensible
statement: "And what's better, half way to Dawson there's a kind of
village, two, three cabins where trappers lay over in storms.  Always
food there."  The men agreed with unanimous encouragement that their
noble guest should follow that intricate but relatively easy Canadian
route to the gold fields

They were surprised, therefore, when Luton pushed aside their
hand-drawn maps and turned to one large one published by the
government: "I had rather thought we'd stay with the Peel.  You can see
its headwaters will bring us very close to Dawson."

This arrogant dismissal of their reasoned advice, and the proposal of a
route completely contrary to what they had been advising caused a hush,
but then one of the Canadians inspected the map closely and said dryly:
"What I see is that you'd be heading into one of the highest passes in
this part of the Rockies," and a second seasoned traveler warned: "That
would be foolhardy, Sir."  Even George Michael agreed: "Duke, I travel
on the Peel one time with the current helpin' me.  Very swift.  Hills
each side river, they are close, close.  To go your way, against
current, those tight spots, they will cause you much trouble you
bet."

It was obvious that their arguments against staying with the Peel had
not dissuaded him, but it was also clear that as a member of nobility
and the leader of his expedition he did not care to prolong the
argument.  The Fort Norman men saw that he had made up his mind and
they knew that extreme hardship and perhaps tragedy would ensue, but
that would be his problem, not theirs.

But when Luton was away working on his notes one of the three French
Canadians asked: "What makes Englishmen so stubborn ... so blind to
facts," and the oldest man, who had tangled with them many times in
various parts of Canada said: "Maybe that's what makes 'em Englishmen.
They're born to do things their way," and one admitted grudgingly:
"Maybe he's right.  We know we can go Rat-Bell route.  Maybe he'll find
a better way startin' with the Peel," and the older man warned: "In a
game, never bet against an Englishman," and another said: "But this
isn't a game," and the old man said: "For them it is.  Else why would
he walk down the Mackenzie in coldest winter?  To prove he could do it.
He'll go up the Peel just to pruve we were wrong," and they burst into
laughter.

Apart from those differences of opinion regarding routes, the six-day
visit had been a respite, appreciated by everyone and the

Canadians were regretful when he said: Tomorrow I must head back and
get our team prepared for the thaw."

They asked if he had any conception of what happened to a frozen river
when the ice broke up, and he replied: "I've heard it can be somewhat
daunting.1

"Unbelieveable," they said, 'and on this river, the worst of all."
Taking him to their front porch atop the rise, they explained a
peculiarity of the Mackenzie: "It runs from mountains in the south to
very flat land in the north.  When the sun starts back in March, it
melts the headwater ice first and starts those waters flowing.  Then it
melts the high plateaus, setting free whole lakes of water, and every
warming day it releases more and more water far to the south, while our
part of the river up here in the north remains frozen tight.  And what
happens?"  the men asked, looking to see if Luton had understood.

"Stands to reason, the waters flood in under the ice and dislodge
it."

"Dislodge is not the word.  It explodes the ice from below.  It throws
it about like leaves in a storm.  Chunks so big you cannot imagine them
are thrown up as if they weighed no more than sheaves of straw. Believe
me, Sir, stand well back when the Mackenzie breaks its bonds. But it is
a sight no man should miss."

Next morning when he proposed to start his fifty-mile journey back to
the Gravel, he was surprised to find that the Hudson's Bay men were
united in insisting that George Michael accompany him: "Common sense
dictates it.  As head of your expedition you dare not risk an
accident."

"I made my way here.  I can certainly ..."  When they refused to alter
their plan, he asked: "But how's he to get back?"  and the Metis said
with a big smile: "No trouble.  I will walk," and Luton thought: To
give me comfort he'll walk near a hundred miles.  With great reluctance
he allowed George Michael to accompany him.

As the two men climbed down the wooden stairway to where the frozen
river waited, the three Canadians gave them three

I2Q

cheers and fired volleys in the air.  Lord Luton turned and raised his
hand in salute to them and their flag, a heroic outpost in this frozen
wilderness.

It was providential that George Michael accompanied Luton back to the
Gravel, for during the first minutes of his arrival at the tent-cabin
he cried: "Oh, Duke!  You 'ave made terrible mistake!"  In the dim
light of day he ran about identifying scars on rocks and trees, and
pointing in dismay toward the Gravel, the Mackenzie, and the cabin.

Seeing his agitation and having had proof of George Michael's good
sense, Luton stopped his running about and asked: "What is it,
Michael?"  and the Metis replied with fear clouding his face: "You are
in great danger, Duke.  When thaw comes, ice here in Gravel and ice out
there in Mackenzie, she will crash, sweep everything away."  Then he
kicked at the upturned Sweet Afton and with wild gestures indicated
huge blocks of ice coming down the Gravel and battering the Sweet Afton
and the cabin into small kindling.  Then what you do?  No boat?  No
cabin?  What in hell you goin' do?"

He would not delay even half a day, for the safety of this expedition
led by a man he had grown to like and respect was of vital importance
to him, and from long experience he knew that in these parts the safety
of the boat was paramount.  Showing the men how to construct rollers
from driftwood tree trunks, he marshaled all the ropes they could
provide, used their shovel to smooth a pathway to higher ground, and
with all hands pushing and hauling he tore the Sweet Afton away from
her snug position as part of the cabin and dragged her to a spot safely
above where the crashing ice might be expected to reach.

Tireless, he then began the removal of the entire living area, even the
privy, to higher ground, and as he and Carpenter started to move the
beds he stopped and said dramatically: "You stay down here, some night
soon when you asleep, the ice she come and we don't see you never no
more."  Two nightfalls later the expedition was finally housed in a
barely adequate substitute for the original cabin, but one at a safer
elevation.  His task done, Michael sat heavily upon a rock, leaned back
to allow the waning sun to reach his face and said: "I very hungry.  We
eat?"

At the first resting period Lord Luton made a proposal that surprised
the others: "Harry, take the shovel and scar out an exercise track for
us up here next to our new cabin," and Philip protested: The one down
there's perfectly good.  No trouble to run down for our daily spin."

"Ah!"  Luton said with some force.  "A great deal of trouble.  Minus
forty and stiff breeze, which of us will want not only to run our
circuits but also to run down that hill and back to do so?  You,
Philip, would be the first to demur.  I can hear you arguing with me:
"But Uncle Evelyn!  It's bitter cold out there!"  And the exercise you
miss could well be the one that would doom you.  Harry, build it close
to the shack."  When it had been delineated, Evelyn was the first to
utilize it, but George Michael, watching him run in the bitter cold,
told the others: "He must be crazy.  Nobody in Fort Norman run in the
cold .. . summer neither," and Harry said quietly: "I'm sure they
don't."

The Metis remained with the Englishmen a full week, during which he
helped them complete the reconstruction of their living quarters and
went hunting with Fogarty, whom he recognized as a kindred spirit. They
were a pair of highly skilled hunters and brought a large moose to the
far shore of the Mackenzie Fogarty told the others: "He did it, not
me'-and next morning after profuse thanks from Luton plus a gold
sovereign he was gone, a lone figure striking out for the north, rifle
slung across his back, right down the middle of the great river.

122,

With George Michael gone and the camp, thanks to his insistence, at a
safe elevation, life returned to its routine, with Lord Luton giving
only the most fragmentary report on his extraordinary visit to Fort
Norman: "We studied the maps and they copied several for us, so we're
in firm shape," and he displayed them briefly.  Carpenter quickly saw
that Luton had apparently decided to follow the Peel into some rather
high terrain and he asked quietly: "Wouldn't picking our way through
those smaller rivers and that lower pass be preferable?  I was told in
Edmonton ..."

"Strangers can be told anything," Luton snapped as he took back his
maps.

One morning, apropos of nothing that had been said before, he told the
men: "At Fort Norman I felt absolutely naked.  Those huge men with
their beards as big as bushes.  Said they never shaved after the
fifteenth of October, tradition, they assured me."  Then, looking about
the cabin he spotted Trevor Blythe whose beard was so skimpy and faded
straw in color that it made a poor show: "I say, Trevor, want to borrow
my razor and scrape that foolish thing off?"  but the younger man
parried the suggestion with a startling revelation: "I simply abhor
shaving.  At home I allow Forbes to do it for me, and I wish he were
here now."

But in some ways it was Blythe who accomodated most perfectly to the
winter isolation, for he was attuned to the changes of nature and
relished what he was witnessing: "Have you ever seen more heavenly
pastel colors than those out there?  I feared the night would be
perpetual, but these midday hours are superb.  Just enough light to
bathe the world in beauty."

He attracted the admiration of everyone by an astonishing
accomplishment.  The men were surprised that even in the remotest and
coldest parts of the Arctic, ravens appeared, huge black creatures with
an ugly cry.  "What do they live on?"  Blythe asked.  "In this frozen
waste what can they possibly find to eat?"  In time, the ravens were
eating scraps which he provided and shortly one of the more daring was
coming close to his feet and snatching crumbs from the snow.  To the
other men, all ravens looked alike, but Trevor found in this one some
identifying sign, and whenever the bird appeared, Trevor lured him
always closer.  Othello, he called him, and it seemed as if the raven
recognized his name and responded to it.

One morning while Trevor was outside feeding Othello, the men in the
cabin heard a soft cry: "I say, come here.  But quiet."  And when they
opened the door slowly they saw the raven perched on Trevor's left arm
eating crumbs which the young man offered with his right hand.

"Remarkable!"  Luton cried, whereupon the bird flew off with a slight
beating of its black wings, but on subsequent days he returned, and
grew bolder, until finally he elected Blythe's left shoulder as an
assured resting place.  When the others saw this extraordinary
spectacle of a young man swathed in Arctic clothing, his flaxen hair
exposed, with a raven perched on his shoulder, all silhouetted against
the blazing white of the snow, they tried to lure the bird, but
Othello, sensing that Blythe was the one to trust, stayed with him.

The men had agreed back in Edmonton, when it became obvious that they
must spend a winter in the far north, that they would keep a record of
how extreme cold and prolonged night affected them, and they learned to
their relief that any healthy man who did, as Luton insisted, 'observe
the niceties," survived rather well.  There is disruption," Luton
conceded in his notes.  "We eat less, seem to require more water and
have to guard against constipation.  We also suffer minor eye
irritation from incessant lantern light.  But we can detect no negative
mental effects, and as the worst part of winter approaches, we have no
apprehensions."

Fogarty in the meantime was scouring the countryside for game, and
sometimes the men would see him approaching the far side of the deeply
frozen Mackenzie at the conclusion of some foray to the east, and they
would watch his distant figure grow larger.  They would study closely
to see if he signaled for them to cross over and help him drag home a
side of caribou, and if he did wave his arms in triumph they would pile
out, cross the river and grab hold of whatever it was he had dragged
behind him, and that night their cabin would be rich with the smell of
roasting meat.

As January waned, Carpenter warned his companions: "February is the
testing time.  No part of the year colder than February."  In 1898 it
was especially bitter along the Mackenzie, with the spirit thermometer
staying below forty for days at a time, but when the cold was most
oppressive Carpenter would say: "When it breaks, we'll have summer in
winter!"  and he was right, for in late February the cold mysteriously
abated and the men had a respite as lovely and as welcome as any they
had ever known.

The thermometer rose to four below, and since there was not even a
whisper of wind, it was indeed like summer.  Harry and Philip actually
ran their laps with shirts off, chests bare and experienced no
discomfort.  Othello made two turns of the snow-packed course on
Blythe's shoulder, and Carpenter accompanied Fogarty on a long
excursion to the other side of the Mackenzie, where they bagged a
moose.

This reassuring respite heightened the spirits of the men who restudied
their maps and made plans for when the spring thaw would allow them to
resume their journey to the gold fields  "What those bearded ones at
Norman reminded me," Luton said, 'is that when we have to saw our boat
in half, it might well be at a spot where there's no timber to be had
to shore up the open end.  So what we must do on our way down river, as
soon as it's ice free, is bring on board any logs that look as if they
might be sawn into short planking."

"And where do you calculate the site for sawing the Sweet Afton apart
might come.7' Carpenter inquired, not in nosey fashion but merely to
prepare his thinking, and Luton pointed almost automatically to a spot
well up the Peel River.  Carpenter was about to launch one final
protest against taking a route which was sure to be perilous, but
before he could voice his objections, Lord Luton anticipated them,
swept up his maps and disappeared before Harry could force the issue.

So the vital decision was never submitted to an honest criticism and
evaluation.  When Harry studied his own maps in secret they reinforced
his apprehensions about the inherent dangers in trying to force a way
up the Peel: "The entire trip on the river is against a current which
has to be swift.  The rapids cannot be easy to portage if there's no
path to walk on shore.  And those damned high mountains at the end. Not
promising, not promising at all."

Now when he did his daily turns on the new track, some fifty feet
higher than the old, he calculated the odds on each of these
impediments.  At the end of one imaginary survey he ruefully cast the
score: "Impedimenta barring the way nineteen, Lord Luton's party
nothing," and he could foresee no way to change those odds unless
Evelyn entertained a revelation when he faced that lonely spot where
the Rat River led to safety across the low divide: "If he refuses to
see or to listen, we're doomed."

He was certain of this, and yet he did not enforce his judgment upon
his cousin.  Luton was younger than he by six years and less
experienced in the field by seven or eight major explorations.  He was
in no way superior to Harry in intellect or in his university
performance.  He was courageous, of that there could be no question,
but he had never been tested under fire the way Harry had been.  And
although he had a stern moral fiber, what some would term character, it
had not yet been required to assert itself in time of real crisis, the
way Harry's slightly firmer character had been tested in India and
Africa.

With the scales weighing those virtues that really mattered in
Carpenter's favor, why did he defer to his younger cousin?  Because in
the prolific and noble Bradcombe family it was the custom out of time
to pay deference when facing difficult decisions to the man who held
the Marquisate of Deal and, remote though the possibility was, Harry
knew that Evelyn might one day be that man.  This rule had served the
family well, and if an occasional marquess had been a ninny, most had
not, and Carpenter could see that when Evelyn had a few more years
under his belt, he would be eligible, if called upon, to be one of the
best.  This expedition to the gold fields of Canada could be the final
testing ground that would make Lord Luton a whole man, one forged in
fire, and Harry Carpenter would stand by him in the testing period, for
in that regard, he, Harry, represented all the Bradcombes.  Their
leader was under scrutiny and they stood with him.

With the arrival of warmer weather in April the men assumed that the
Mackenzie would begin to thaw, and it was Blythe, least experienced
outdoorsman of the group, who pointed out: "Fellows!  It's still ten
degrees below freezing!"  and Philip replied: "It feels like summer."

It did, and the realization that the winter hibernation would soon be
coming to an end spurred the men to start casting up their assessments
of what their adventure in the Arctic winter had meant.  Lord Luton
took it upon himself to make the summary statements in the official
log, and he came close to the truth when he wrote:

As I look back on this splendid adventure I see that we were a team of
five who respected nature and wished to test ourselves against the full
force of an Arctic winter.  Harry Carpenter had wide experience in
frontier situations in all climates.  My nephew Philip Hens-low was a
keen sportsman and a reliable shot.  His friend, Trevor Blythe,
displayed an uncanny aptitude in domesticating wild ravens, something
never before attempted to our knowledge, and even our trusted ghillie,
Fogarty from Ireland, had an unmatched knowledge of the way of salmon.
I had traveled to many distant areas, loved boxing and cricket and the
dictum of Juvenal: Mens sana in corpore sano.

At the beginning of our long hibernation we laid down sensible and
healthful rules which all obeyed, and as a result we suffered not one
serious illness or accident.  Rigorous daily exercise seems a sure
preventative for the idleness of an Arctic stay, and our experience is
that it should be enforced out of doors even in the roughest weather.
Among other benefits, it inhibits constipation.

But the salient fact about our stay is that all team members displayed
unusual and unflagging courage.  Never were spirits allowed to fall or
pettiness to invade our daily regimen.  When meat was needed, our
members were willing to roam very far afield, even under the most
daunting circumstances.  Hard work was greeted almost as a friend, and
we proved once more what honest Englishmen can accomplish in adversity,
and even Fogarty caught the spirit, for his extended forays in search
of provender were little less than heroic.  Harry Carpenter was an
older exemplar without parallel of such deportment and our two younger
men were faultless, displaying great promise for future development.

In all modesty I make bold to claim we were a gallant bunch and the
Arctic was powerless to defeat us in our quest.

When the others heard these lines read aloud, they protested that in
the coda Lord Luton had not mentioned his own laudable behavior, and
when he disclaimed the right to any special notice Harry Carpenter took
the journal and wrote, reciting the words aloud as he did:

"The other members of the Lord Luton party wish to record the fact that
in all contingencies their leader was salutary in his own display of
courage under difficult situations, none more so than when he went on
foot fifty miles in each direction, alone and in the dead of winter
with the thermometer at minus forty and storms brewing, to find us data
regarding our next target.  In this feat, performed during days that
allowed only two hours of daylight, he performed as none of the rest of
us could have."

There were murmurs of assent when Carpenter laid down his pen, but when
he himself looked at the final words of his encomium he realized that
he had omitted the salient truth of Luton's unwarranted escapade: "And
he returned from his venture without having listened to a word of the
advice given him."

In May came unmistakable signs of approaching thaw, but it was not
until June that Fogarty set out for one last hunting trip on the
opposite bank of the Mackenzie, but returned immediately up the Gravel
shouting: "Gentlemen!  Come see the river!"  When they did, they
witnessed one of the most savage displays of nature, for the various
tributaries lying far to the south where the sun returned early had
long since thawed and sent their burden of melt-water and floating ice
crashing northward.  Now, as this icy flood reached areas still frozen,
the whole river began to writhe and crack and heave.  With astonishing
reports like the firing of a battery of cannon, thick ice off the mouth
of the Gravel, locked there since October, broke asunder in wild
confusion.

"Good God!"  Luton shouted.  "Look out there.  That one's as big as a
house," and when the men stared toward the middle of the Mackenzie they
saw that he was wrong.  It was bigger than three houses, a gigantic
chunk of ice, and as it ground its way past the mouth of the Gravel,
pulverizing the smaller floes which that small river had contributed,
the men gained an appreciation of what an Arctic river could do when it
was shattered by the surges of spring.

Blythe and Henslow stood side by side, watching in awe as a gigantic
iceberg came thundering down the river, holding embedded within its
massive walls of ice a collection of intertwined evergreen trees which
it had ripped from a hillside eight hundred miles distant.  On it came,
'a frozen forest," Trevor said as he tried to imagine the journey the
trees had made, "That iceberg must hold a thousand bird's nests, and
when they come flying back to find their homes the landlord will tell
them: "We've moved them to the shores of the Arctic Ocean.  Start
flying north."  '

For more than an hour the two young men watched little forests floating
past, but then their attention was directed to Carpenter, who shouted:
"Look what's coming to greet us over here!"  and everyone turned to see
what their relatively tiny Gravel could produce, for tumbling down it
came a monstrous block of ice traveling at harmful speed.  As it roared
past, twisting and turning, it came with awful crunching force right
over the spot where the original cabin had been and with such grinding
power that it would have reduced both craft and cabin to pulp.

No one, watching the total erasure of their former homesite and means
of escape from this wintry prison, could keep from thinking: My God! If
we had remained in that spot?  And all recalled George Michael's
rhetorical question: "What would you do if you lost your boat?"
Carpenter summed up their reactions:

Thank God Evelyn did go to Fort Norman and bring back that Metis.  We
escaped a terrible trap."

And then Philip shouted: "Look at this one!"  and down this relatively
meager stream, the Gravel, came one more block of ice, as big as any on
the Mackenzie, and it was twisting and rolling in such grotesque
fashion that as it roared past it dug deeply into the right bank,
opposite where the watchers stood, and gouged out a huge chunk of bank,
leaving behind four trees with roots torn loose so that their trunks
and branches, lying parallel to the earth, reached far over the surface
of the river but not quite in it.

Carpenter, who had seen this phenomenon in Africa, warned those about
him: "Extremely dangerous, that.  They call them sweepers."

"Why that?"  Philip asked, and Harry said: "Because if you come down
this river in an open boat, and what else would you have on a stream
this size, you grow careless, and those low branches reach out and
sweep you right off your boat, and the current is so swift you can't
climb back.  Take care with sweepers."

One night during the waiting period it came Trevor Blythe's turn to
conduct the seminar, and since this was more or less the termination of
their long confinement, he offered a surprising but unusually
profitable exercise: "Under my goading, we've talked a lot about
poetry, I'm afraid, and often we've referred to the inventive lines
with which poems begin.  Things like "My true love hath my heart and I
have his" and "Tell me where is Fancy bred."  Such lines are keys that
unlock gracious memories, and they don't have to be all that fine as
poetry.  Their job is to set bells ringing.

"As we drifted down this great river, I was pestered by a ripping pair
of lines:

Ye Mariners of England

That guard our native shores .. .

Ever since we left the Athabasca Landing I've been such a mariner," and
after laughing at himself he cited a few more effective opening lines:
"It was a beauteous evening, calm and free" and "Oft in the stilly
night."  '

But then he shifted sharply: "I've come to think that how a work of art
ends is just as important as how it begins.  A good opening entices us,
but a strong finish nails down the experience."  Now he had to consult
Palgrave, for not even he was as familiar with the good closings as
with the lyrical openings.  He deemed one of blind Milton's to be
impeccable: They also serve who only stand and wait."  But as a young
man in love, a condition he had so far revealed to no one, not even the
young lady, he also favored: "I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Lov'd I not honour more."

But he surprised his listeners by praising extensively the rough, harsh
ending of one of Shakespeare's loveliest songs: "It has one of the
perfect openings, of course: "When icicles hang by the wall" and it
continues with splendid lines which evoke winter, such as: "And milk
comes frozen home in pail" and "When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl."
But when all the niceties of the banquet hall have been exhibited he
takes us into the kitchen with that remarkable line which only he could
have written: "And greasy Joan doth keel the pot" to remind us that
somebody has to do the cooking."

In the silence, men thought of winter, for they had known it as few do,
and finally Philip asked: "What does keel mean?"  and Trevor said:
"Most people think it means to clean or scrub.  It doesn't.  It means
cooling down by stirring!

He then came to his conclusion: "Point I've been wanting to make, the
real poet has the last line in mind when he writes his first, and
there's no better example of this than the ending to that special poem
of Waller's whose opening stanza I praised many months ago, the one
beginning: "Go, lovely Rose!"  Do any of you remember how it ends?
Neither did I, and I'm not

going to trust my belated memorization now.  It's Palgrave, Number
Eighty-nine, I believe."

While fumbling for the page, he said: "Remember how the first three
stanzas go.  In the first the rose is commanded to go to his love.  In
the second it's to inform her that young girls, like roses, are put on
earth to be admired.  In the third the rose is to command her to come
forth and be admired.  And now the wonderful last verse:

"Then die!  that she The common fate of all things rare

May read in thee:

How small a part of time they share That are so wondrous sweet and
fair!"  '

Silently the men contemplated the misery of death, then Lord Luton
spoke: "A noble ending to a grand winter," and as he looked at the two
young men he said loudly: "Do you realize how precious this winter will
have been when we look back upon it?  Philip, Trevor!  You'll tell of
this to people who will never have guessed that a majestic river like
this existed!"  He smiled at Harry and added: "So shall we all."

Harry did not return the smile, for while the others prepared joyously
to plunge into the swollen Mackenzie for a triumphant run down river to
its junction with the Peel, he could not erase from his mind a segment
of map he had memorized.  It showed that if one ascended the Gravel to
its headwaters and made a relatively short portage across the divide
one found one's self at the headwaters of a considerable river, the
Stewart, which did meander a bit but which finally deposited one right
on the Yukon, less than fifty miles upstream from Dawson City and the
gold-fields.  "And it's downstream all the way, once you reach the
Stewart," he told himself, and he became so convinced that Lord

Luton was doing exactly the wrong thing in turning his back on the
Gravel that on the very morning of their breaking camp he launched one
final appeal: "Evelyn, you have studied the maps more closely than any
of us.  Surely you can visualize what a sensible union the Gravel and
the Stewart achieve?"

Luton refused to listen: "I have indeed studied the map .. . memorized
it ... and I visualize instead the Peel, which leads directly to our
destination."  And so the five men set forth.

THREE

Desolation

On the tenth of June, 1898, ten months after they departed from
Edmonton, the Luton party was ready to resume its journey toward the
Arctic Ocean, and their departure from the cabin which in its two
locations had housed them for so long contained elements of sadness.
Luton said the official farewells: "I doubt if any other five men could
have occupied so small a space for so long without even a suggestion of
friction.  Gentlemen, I shall be forever indebted to you."  And each of
the men said goodbye to some particular aspect of this strange
hibernation.  Harry Carpenter took one last circuit of his running
track, its surface muddy now but nonetheless still one of the agencies
for the good health the men had enjoyed.  Philip clad once more in his
treasured boots, now that the freezing weather was over, sat by the
dead fire and read a few pages of Great Expectations; he had acquired
much useful information beside that fire.  Luton saluted the cabin, and
Fogarty gazed for some time at the surrounding hills he had come to
know so intimately.  Trevor Blythe had the most painful fare well,
because although his raven was reluctant to move near the boat, he was
obviously loathe to leave the poet.  He rode on Trevor's shoulder down
to the water, but when the young man stepped aboard the craft, Othello
flew off.  In bewilderment he circled a few times, then cawed hoarsely
as if bidding a dear friend farewell and flew inland to where his
companions waited.

As the carefully reloaded Afton eased into the fast-moving waters of
the Gravel, she seemed eager to complete her journey and fairly leaped
forward to rejoin the Mackenzie.  Carpenter had been nominated to get
the voyage started properly and he was steering when the rushing waters
of the Gravel veered suddenly to starboard, throwing the little boat
right at the spot where the huge cake of ice just days before had
gouged out the chunk of bank, leaving the dangerous sweepers.

Too late Harry saw that he was powerless to prevent the Afton from
being driven under the branches of this fallen tree, but he did have
time to shout a warning: "Down!  All down!"

The men, remembering Harry's warning, obeyed except that Philip
Henslow, striving to save a rope that might be lost, remained standing
aft as he reached for it.  Before Blythe could shout his own warning,
the sweeper caught Philip in the back and pitched him into the icy
waters.

"Help!"  shouted Blythe, leaping to that end of the boat, but now the
mighty current of the Mackenzie took over, and by the time the others
sprang into action, Philip was far out into the larger river.  Even so,
the agility with which Carpenter shot the Afton into the main current,
plus the frenzied power when the others started paddling and rowing,
would have enabled them to save Philip had it not been for those
dreadful boots, rubber and heavy and reaching well above his knees;
they filled immediately with icy water and made swimming impossible.

Had he been wearing short, loose boots, which the knowing did, he could
have kicked them off and saved himself, but impeded as he was by these
monstrous weights he could kick neither swiftly nor strongly and was
unable to keep afloat until the boat overtook

him.  In the first terrible moment when he struck the icy water and
felt his boots becoming dead weights, he tried with superhuman valor to
stay afloat.  His lungs took in more oxygen.  His heart beat faster.
His arms produced unbelievable pulling power, and he battled to keep
his head above the swirling waters of the Mackenzie.

But inexorably the massive boots, heavier than lead, pulled him down,
and as he fought vainly to counteract their pull to death he uttered a
wild and piercing scream: "Help me!"  Each man on the boat heard it,
and would hear it for many nights, and even months, but each was
powerless.  Trevor Blythe tried to leap into the water but was
restrained by Harry Carpenter who did not wish to lose two members of
the team.  However, he could not prevent Lord Luton from diving fully
clad into the icy waters.

The gesture was fruitless.  Luton did not come even close to his
drowning nephew before the boy, with one terrible last scream,
disappeared forever.

When the three men in the boat finally dragged Luton back aboard, they
threw a blanket about him and sat beside him as the Sweet Afton floated
swiftly down the broad crest of the river.  "You did your best,"
Carpenter said, and Fogarty added: "No force could save him, Milord.
You tried."  But Blythe, standing at the rear of the boat, could only
look through stinging eyes aft toward the dark waters that had taken
his friend to their bosom.  He remained there through that long,
dream-like spring twilight which seemed to last forever.

As the Sweet Afton continued down the Mackenzie the four survivors
became painfully aware that each mile it carried them along took them
farther from the Klondike.  It was infuriating, yet inescapable, to be
drifting down this great river and to be allowing it to divert them
from their target, but that was the nature of the Mackenzie: one of the
great rivers of the world, it led nowhere but its own end.

Harry spotted Trevor writing quietly as he had done so often during the
winter on the banks of the Gravel.  Saying lightly "Examination time'
he brought the book toward him and what he saw was so pleasing that he
did not stint his praise: "I say, Trevor, I do believe you've done it."
Rapping for attention, he read aloud some dozen lines which ended
sardonically:

"Reluctant paladins we Who seek our Golden Grail by fleeing from it."

Returning the book, Harry told the author: "See how much better it is
when you compact your words and place among them images we can respond
to?"  and Trevor fell silent, for he was wishing that Philip had been
alive to share this encouraging assessment of his first mature poem.

Shortly after dawn on the next day, Luton saw from his position in the
bow the post at Fort Norman, and without alerting the three others, he
fired two salutes into the crisp morning air.  The shots brought the
Canadians to the head of their stairs where they waited, but the Metis,
George Michael, recognizing the boat and its occupants, leaped down the
steps shouting: "Duke!  Duke!  Throw a line."  When he had it firmly
under control he drew the Sweet Afton to him as the Canadians hurried
down to meet the Englishmen and renew their acquaintance with Luton,
whom they remembered with respect.

When all were seated in the post's dining area, Luton opened the
meeting with an acknowledgment: "Good friends, I want you to know that
if your man Michael had not accompanied me home last time, all of us
might now be dead."  When the Canadians looked at one another in
surprise, he explained: "He warned us to move our cabin and our boat to
higher ground .. . against the day when so many ice floes would come
roaring down that they would pile onto the land and crush all.  He not
only gave warning, he helped us move upland, and saved our lives."

As the Englishmen nodded toward their savior, he looked carefully at
each and asked: The other one, with the light hair?  You leave him,
maybe?"

Slowly and with visible pain Luton told the Hudson's people the kind of
abrupt tale with which they were familiar: "Drowned in the Mackenzie. A
sweeper caught him in the middle of his back."  There was silence
broken by Carpenter who added: "Lord Luton dived into the icy water to
save him.  Hopeless.  A dreadful loss."

The post people were so pleased to see Luton again that they wanted him
to lay over two or three days, but as professionals they understood
when he declined: "Our job is to get over the mountains and into the
Yukon."

"We remember," said one of the men who had drawn him some maps of the
delta area.  "We certainly hope you've changed your mind about trying
the Peel."

By the austerity of his look dismissing that ticklish subject, Luton
let it be known that he would not welcome further discussion of routes,
but he did express interest when the head of the post said: "We have
few goods for sale this time of year.  Our big supply ships don't reach
here till July, but we can let you have a few things you might be able
to use."  While Luton disappeared with him to check what might be
available, the two other Canadians took Carpenter aside and advised him
strenuously to argue some sense into Lord Luton's plan to travel the
Peel: "You will not be able to get through the rapids before the freeze
sets in.  It's as simple as that."  But Carpenter silenced them: "It's
his expedition and he's gone into difficult spots all over the world."
One man replied with unmasked contempt: "Not at our degrees, he ain't.
In Fahrenheit forty-five minus, in latitude sixty-six north."

The post people were able to provide Luton with six cans of meat, but
nothing else, and as the Englishmen walked down to their Afton they
assured the Canadians that they had sufficient stores to carry them
into Dawson.  The farewells were hearty, with Lord Luton at the last
moment slipping a ten-dollar note into George Michael's palm: "For
saving us with your help," and it was not till some time after cast-off
that Trevor Ely the, wreathed in smiles, revealed his secret: "Look
what George Michael slipped aboard when the Canadians weren't
watching!"  and he threw back a tarpaulin to reveal eight boxes of
hunting ammunition.

Some days later as they moved north of the Arctic Circle, Lord Luton
for the first time lost his composure: "Damn it all!  I wish we could
leap over those mountains and land in Dawson," but this was not to be.
At the conclusion of a river trip that had no parallel in the world,
the Luton party approached the incredibly tangled delta where the
Mackenzie fragmented into a score of separate rivers, each winding its
way haphazardly toward the ocean.  It was a jungle of swampland and
muddy streams that not even the local Indians could thread, and Harry,
who was at the wheel shouted: "Everyone!  Help me find the Peel or we
drift out into the Arctic Ocean!"

All eyes scouted the left bank but found no indication of where the
Peel debouched into the Mackenzie, but they were able to move slowly
ahead still looking, for at this time of year no night fell in this far
latitude.  As they crept along, Trevor Blythe, suddenly overcome by the
thought of leaving the majestic Mackenzie, cried: "I cannot allow poor
Philip to lie in the bosom of this icy river without a word of
Christian farewell."  For, although each of the others had mourned
privately for Philip, they had done so during the lonely night watches
and at the rising sun of each new day.  They agreed with Trevor and
gathered with him at the rear of the Afton, where the young poet
borrowed Carpenter's Book of Common Prayer, searching the pages for the
Service for the Dead.  When he found it, he passed the book along to
Lord Luton, who read the noble words in stately cadence: A young man
they had loved was gone and they eased his soul to rest.  But when the
prayers were ended, Trevor produced his copy of Palgrave, opened it to
a place he had marked, and said softly: "I should like to read a
farewell to my dear friend: And he began in a clear voice: "John Milton
lost a young friend, drowned in the Irish seas, and wrote "Lycidas" to
express his grief:

"Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

I come to pick your berries harsh and crude .. ."

On through the majestic phrases he read, until it seemed as if some
celestial organ were paying tribute to the dead young man, and it was
improbable that Blythe realized how appropriate the final lines of this
elegy were going to be when heard by Lord Luton's beleaguered party:

"And now the sun had stretch'd out all the hills, And now was dropped
into the western bay; At last he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

"That's the command," Luton said, 'spoken from the grave.  Tomorrow we
head for the conclusion of our journey."  Trevor, listening to these
harsh, practical words, thought: How callous.  But quickly he added: It
was I who chose the poem.  It was I who did not foresee the ending.

On through the silver night the Sweet Afton drifted, passing and
ignoring one branch of the Mackenzie after another as the river fed off
to the east.  "We've got to find something leading in from the west,"
Carpenter repeated, the edge of his voice betraying his unease, and
when the hours from eleven at night through three in the morning passed
with no sign of the Peel,

even he began to lose confidence: "Could we have missed it?"  The
others frantically consulted their inadequate charts, as he prepared to
turn back and research the west bank.

He was prevented from this mistake by the appearance on the near shore
of a group of smallish dark men, apparently Indians, who leaped in the
air and made wild noises which, when Harry steered the Afton toward
them, turned into the exciting words: "Peel!  Peel!"  With a deep sigh
that revealed the tension under which he had been steering, Carpenter
headed for the shouting men, and as the midnight dusk brightened into
full Arctic daylight Lord Luton's team left the broad and many-mouthed
Mackenzie to enter its tributary the narrow, unknown Peel.

They were in the new river only a few minutes when they came upon the
ramshackle Indian encampment from which their guides had come; it was
not a permanent village, nothing more than a collection of tents and
improvised shacks to which a group of some three dozen Han Indians from
the Yukon district had come to barter their furs with the Company men
on the trading ships that would soon be probing such gathering sites.
From the nervousness of the Indians both Luton and Carpenter deduced
that this might be either their first or one of their first encounters
with white men.

"They speak no French," Luton said.  "Probably never traded with
Hudson's Bay people.  Or traveled with Metis hunters."

As he stepped forward and away from the Afton, the Han uttered screams,
raced to gather their women and fled far from their shacks.  Dismayed
that he had frightened them, Luton extended his hands, palms upward and
empty, and moved slowly toward them, uttering reassuring words in
French, hoping that someone among them would understand even one word.
He accomplished nothing, for the Han continued to withdraw, but from
the direction to which they were addressing their frightened looks he
concluded that he was not the focus of fear, and when he looked back
over his shoulder, he saw the cause of their anxiety.

Trevor Blythe, hungry for one last sight of the Mackenzie, had taken
out the expedition's long, black telescope and after exploring the
tangled mouths of the great river had turned it to look up the dark
banks of the Peel.  The Han, thinking the scope to be the white man's
rifle with deadly power, assumed that Trevor would soon be shooting at
them.  They would have continued to flee had not Luton dashed back,
taken the telescope and held it sideways across his upturned palms
above his head.

As he approached the terrified Hans he began to laugh, not loudly or
derisively but in accents of friendship, and when he had the first
cautious Indians about him-mostly clad in the simplest of leather
garments, always dirty with matted hair and evasive eyes-he showed
first one, then another how the telescope worked, and soon he had them
pacified and genuinely friendly.

Everyone wanted to see the distant shore, the white birds on the mud
flats, and before the Afton was allowed to move on into the Peel, there
had to be a feast and dancing and the chanting of good-luck songs.  It
was a greeting of such amiability, so different from the austerity of
the Blackfoot ceremonial at Edmonton, that Luton actually cried to
Carpenter: "Harry, have we aught to give these good people?"  and odd
bits of cargo were distributed.  Fogarty, with his peasant agility in
solving simple problems, was soon talking in sign language with the Han
and from them learned that they had actually come from the Yukon or
some other western river to the west as powerful as the Mackenzie.

"Is it far?"  Luton asked, and the little men indicated that they had
walked it in half of one moon, which caused Harry to say: They must be
talking of the Porcupine."

His pronunciation of that name excited the Indians, and with a jumble
of signs they explained to Fogarty that, yes, it was

'45

the Porcupine, but beyond it there was this other huge river, and all
members of the Luton party were both relieved and excited to learn that
they were so close to the Yukon.  They quickly made their departure,
but as they poled their way up the Peel, for there would be no more
easy downriver drifting, Luton asked his crew: "How is it possible that
in a modern country like Canada, or the United States, there can still
exist such hopeless savages?  Little better than animals, really."
Harry replied: They knew where they were, and we didn't."

Two days later, as they sweated their way up the sluggish, unpleasant
Peel, which seemed such a mean river after the clean, swift-moving
Gravel, they were faced by one of those moments that determine human
destinies, but it did not present itself with any sounding of trumpets
or a glowing sunset at end of day.  On the starboard side of the Afton,
that is, the left bank of the Peel, they saw two men, heavily bearded
and almost bare to the waist, engaged in sawing their small boat in
half.

"What's the plan?"  Carpenter called out as he headed his own boat for
shore.

"Strippin' down so we can portage over the pass just ahead."

"What way you taking?"

"Rat, Bell, Porcupine.  Quickest route to Dawson."

Lord Luton, hearing this conversation and not liking it, broke in
peremptorily: "You're wrong about that.  The Peel is much shorter."

"But not quicker," the men said, 'not by a long shot.  Join up with us,
more hands, more speed."

Luton stared at them with distaste, prodded Carpenter and said: "Let's
move her up the Peel, Harry," but Carpenter felt that he must in
obedience to common sense argue once more for what he knew to be the
saner route, since all knowledgeable hands had recommended it.

Speaking quietly and using once again a formal mode of address to
emphasize the gravity of his message, he said: "Milord,

we shall never find a better spot to penetrate the Rockies than by the
pass at the headwaters of this little river."

"Harry!"  Luton snapped almost peevishly.  "It's been decided.  The
pass at the headwaters of the Peel takes us much closer to Dawson," and
he was correct.  It would be closer, but over a route much higher and
much, much more difficult.

He grasped the tiller and headed the Sweet Afton southward up the Peel.
For half an hour he steered the rugged little craft in that direction,
his jaw grimly clamped.  At the end of this arrogant performance he
handed the tiller over to Carpenter and said: "We're well started,
Harry.  Keep her steady."

As they left the Rat behind, Carpenter closed his eyes and for some
moments did not breathe, knowing that a decision of terrifying
importance to him and the others had just been made.  Then he opened
his eyes, sighed deeply and saw ahead of him the uninviting Peel, a
river of little grace or character whose once-sluggish current now ran
far too swiftly for its banks, signaling that rapids lay ahead. Furling
his sails and directing Trevor to stow them neatly, for they would no
longer be of use, he reached for one of the long poles and started
pushing his boat upriver.

By July 1898, a full year after having left London, Lord Luton's party
was far into the Peel, all hands poling fourteen or sixteen hours a day
and covering so many miles that even Carpenter was beginning to think
that transit by this route might prove possible, but that dream was
short lived.  Early one morning, when Trevor Blythe had been put on
shore to run ahead to scout what the Sweet Afton would soon be facing,
he came back ashen-faced to shout from the shore: "Oh, Lord Luton!
Worst possible news!"  And as the three aboard strained to hear, he
delivered the foul message that would characterize the remainder of
their trip up the Peel: "Heavy rapids and canyon, no shore line from
which to drag."  As the import of these dreadful words was absorbed,
all hands began wondering what to do.

First they took Blythe back aboard, then they poled ahead to where the
rapids ended their cascade down a fairly steep incline, and there three
facts became inescapable.  Harry, scrambling ahead, shouted back the
reassuring news: "Enough water beyond the rapids to keep us afloat,"
but Trevor confirmed his earlier report: "Absolutely no shore footing
from which we could pull."  Luton recalled with a shiver the warning of
one of the Schnabel brothers: "When there's no path, you catch your
breath, step down into that cold mountain water, and hike right up the
middle of the Rat .. At the reappearance of that fated name his breath
really did catch, and he thought: Oh God!  Should we have taken that
little one after all?  But he dismissed such self-recrimination,
telling his men with a show of confidence: "We'll have to tow and push
whilst wading, but we can't do that with a boat so big.  Haul her
ashore, break out the saw and let's get started."

There was, of course, another option and a sensible one: don't cut the
boat, turn around, drift back with the current, go up the Rat and cut
the boat there as everyone had advised, but since the other three
realized that Luton would not hear of this, the possibility was not
discussed.  Instead, the trustworthy little boat which had given such
excellent service was hauled ashore, unloaded, and sawed in half,
following exactly that red line painted by one of the Schnabel brothers
back in Athabasca Landing.  When they saw how wee the half they
proposed using was going to be, Carpenter said: "Not much sailing in
this one.  Pushing and pulling."

With good heart, now that the worst of their position was known, the
four men laid out the driftwood they had been collecting, cut timbers
from it, boarded and caulked the gaping hole left by the sawing and
carefully stowed their diminished cargo, discarding nothing.  As a last
gesture to the half not taken, Lord Luton saluted her and turned his
face resolutely toward the waiting canyon and Dawson City, which lay
only 190 miles to the west.

A new routine was quickly set.  Two teams were established, Luton and
Fogarty in front hauling ropes, Harry and Trevor in back pushing.  As
might have been expected, Lord Luton was first in the water, and
although he must have winced inwardly at the sudden coldness, not much
above freezing, his face revealed nothing.  "Heave, men!  And with good
heart, we'll make it."

That first day in the water was horrible, for the bouldered footing
allowed no steady progress and the depth of the river in places plunged
the men to their necks in icy water.  Since they had to waste half
their energy fighting to remain erect, forward motion was minimal, and
all hoped for a sudden ending to the canyon so that they might find
solid footing ashore and a decent chance to tow in an organized manner.
But most of the day passed with no shore available, and Carpenter
thought: "This is going to be pure hell if night falls and we're stuck
in here," but that fearful emergency was avoided, because the canyon
did end and good footing was available on the left bank.  By this time
the men were so exhausted they could not avail themselves of it, and as
night approached, they dragged their half-boat ashore and pitched their
camp.

Before they fell asleep they conducted a fascinating conversation, for
as men of sturdy will they were interested in such matters.  "I say,
Carpenter, how do you figure?"  Luton asked.  "Who had the more
difficult task out there, we pullers or you pushers?"  Without a
moment's reflection Harry said: "You men," and when Luton asked "Why?"
he received the correct answer: "Because we in the rear had the boat to
lean on to steady our feet amongst the boulders," and Luton said: "I
wondered.  From now on we'll alternate at intervals."

Of course, when there was no canyon eliminating the shore, the four
could make a respectable day's run, and then their hopes quickened as
they visualized a short but demanding portage over some mountain pass
and a swift descent into Dawson.  But, with appalling frequency,
rapids, usually less formidable than that first one, impeded and then
the men had to grit their teeth, plunge into the icy water, fight the
boulders and haul-push their half-boat westward, but the worst
punishment came when they climbed out of the water, drenched, and had
to shiver in the increasing cold until they slipped awkwardly out of
wet and into dry clothing.

One day in mid-August, when they still faced one hundred and sixty
miles on the river, Trevor Blythe was in the pushing position when he
suddenly awakened to the hideous fact that they could not possibly
cross the Rockies before oncoming winter froze the Peel and piled
snowdrifts over all the passes.  "Dear God," he whispered to himself as
he struggled along the rocks.  "Another winter holed up.  And we have
so little food to see us through."

He said nothing that day, but he did begin to scan the faces of his
companions, trying to ascertain whether they appreciated the impasse
into which they had quite literally stumbled and in which they were
continuing to stumble day after taxing day.  He could not deduce their
inner thoughts or their fears, but he did notice they talked less and
in the evenings were too exhausted to do anything but collapse in their
crowded tent.  The seminars were held no more.  Now it was a matter of
survival.

During the last week of August, Lord Luton broke the silence.  At
supper one night-beans and no meat-he said abruptly: "I suppose you
realize we shall soon have to pitch permanent camp."

"No other way," Carpenter said.  Fogarty remained silent, and Trevor,
too, said nothing, relieved that at last their predicament was in the
open.

By mid-September, when the upriver poling and dragging was at its
worst, the four men put on extra bursts of effort to get through this
horrendous part of the Peel before the fall of snow and while they
still had time to select a liveable spot.  They

succeeded, breaking into an inviting plateau at the foot of the
Rockies.  During the second week of October, when the temperature was
close to zero, they dragged the half-boat ashore, emptied it of the
pitiful amount of gear they still had, leaned it against rocks to form
a protection from the northwest winds, and began to search for trees or
scraps of river-born timbers that could be used to build a kind of
cabin, well aware that it would not duplicate the first, comfortable
shelter they had enjoyed the previous winter.

As they worked, each man thought to himself at one time or another:
"Good God!  This time even closer to the Arctic Circle!"  And each man
swore that he would conserve his energy, eat meager rations without
complaining, and do everything possible to maintain his health.  And
each prayed for inner strength.

As winter began, sixteen months since their departure from Edmonton,
the men were in as good condition as could have been expected.
Carpenter and Blythe had shin cuts acquired while hauling and all were
markedly underweight, not from lack of food, but from the endless hours
of exertion.  No one had any perceptible sickness, nor bad teeth, nor
malnutrition, but all would have to face a most taxing winter, with
temperatures lower than they had known along the Mackenzie and with a
frightening lack of proper food.

This year there had to be new rules as Lord Luton explained: "Privy
same as before.  Daily run the same, and do not shirk.  No one, and I
mean no one, no one at all, is to eat anything except in the presence
of us all.  You must give me your word on that."  And the men swore to
share food equally and openly: "We shall pray that our distinguished
poacher, Fogarty, will put his talents to good purpose."  Plenty of
hunting shells the group did have,

thanks to the gift of George Michael.  Fogarty said that he would do
his best, but he hoped Major Carpenter would assist, since he was a
practiced shot.

Strangely, it was Fogarty who evoked the first revelation of the
lurking terror which these men had so far successfully hidden.  The
privy had been positioned as before, a respectable distance from the
lean-to cabin, but this winter it seemed to be frightfully cold, and
Fogarty noticed that the other three were failing to visit it as often
as he thought they should.  One night he warned them about
constipation: "In Edmonton they told me it was the curse of cold
climates.  Gentlemen, do not ignore those little messages from your
bowels."

He was prepared to sit in the ice-box privy for as long as necessary.
"His bottom must be lined with bear fur," Harry suggested, but in the
privy Fogarty would stay.  It was what he did when he returned that
caused trouble, for always when he came into the warm room he sighed
with deep satisfaction, saying the same four words: "Better out than
in."  Since this was true, and was also a kind of reproof to the others
with less hardy bottoms, it occasioned resentment.  No one did anything
about it until one night, when the routine was lustily repeated, Lord
Luton suddenly reached for his revolver and shouted, indeed, he almost
screamed: "Say that one more time and I'll blow your brains out!"

There was an awed hush during which each man acknowledged how desperate
their situation was.  No one apologized for what Luton had done, and he
said nothing.  Fogarty, aware at last of how offensive he had been,
said: "I am sorry, Milord."  And then he added as if nothing had
happened: "I think I spotted where the caribou cross."  Luton laid his
revolver down and said calmly: "I hope so.  We shall have to rely on
you, Fogarty."

For several weeks the poacher failed to bring in fresh meat, and even
when Carpenter accompanied him as second gun they returned
empty-handed.  Food now became the problem that superseded all others,
and as the supplies purchased eighteen months earlier in Edmonton began
to dwindle, everyone had to go on severely reduced rations, watching
with deep apprehension as one can after another was carefully opened
and scraped of every morsel.  For some curious reason, which no one
could have explained, the six cans of meat acquired by chance at Fort
Norman were considered sacrosanct, never to be touched until the
ultimate extremity.  They stood neatly stacked in the corner,
representing a fighting chance for survival.  Their pile became the
religious icon that kept hope alive.

The savage deprivation had to have visible consequences: the men grew
leaner, their countenances ashen as blood fled their faces, their
movements more carefully considered.  Also their tempers frayed, but of
this they were aware, so that they spoke to one another with a more
careful courtesy, as if they were members of some ancient court in
which formality was required.  And then one day Trevor Blythe shattered
the make-believe with a startled cry of real anguish: "Oh, Jesus!  Look
what's happened!"  And he held forth in the palm of his left hand one
of his back molars, unblemished and sound as a walnut but nevertheless
ejected from his weakening upper gum.

"Scurvy," Luton said without showing his fear.  "We must eat more
carefully," but how this was to be accomplished he did not suggest.

One very cold afternoon as Carpenter and Fogarty tried to find a stray
caribou or the cave of some hibernating bear, Harry suddenly went lame,
and when Fogarty inspected his left leg he saw that the open wound
caused by the rocks in the Peel had not healed.  This was bad enough,
but when he pressed his fingers about the wound to see whether
putrefaction had set in, he saw to his and Harry's horror that the
prints of his fingertips remained indented in the graying flesh. Harry,
never one to avoid reality, pushed his own fingers in with the same
result.

"Necrotic," he said.

"Is that what you told the young men about?"  Fogarty asked, and Harry
replied: "Yes.  Scurvy."

"What can we do?  Fogarty asked, and he was told: "Catch us an animal.
We heard fresh meat will cure it."

Of course, both Luton and Carpenter, as experienced explorers and
students of British naval history, knew that this was not totally true.
They were aware of the remarkable work done in the previous century by
Captain James Cook, who almost singlehandedly eradicated scurvy as the
curse of seafaring men.  By almost forcing his crew to drink what they
described as 'a nauseating mix of things' containing ingredients like
vegetables, seaweed, roots and the brine of fermented sauerkraut, he
had sneaked into their diet the specific nutrient that would eliminate
scurvy.  Later experimenters said: "Cook had eight items in his mix and
seven were totally useless, but somewhere in there he had lucked upon
something which provided ascorbic acid, and that saved the day."

Luton and Carpenter knew that ascorbic acid in minute but life-saving
amounts could be obtained from digging up a mess of roots, boiling
them, and drinking the water.  But what roots?  Explorers never knew
which particular ones carried the treasured acid, but a wide mix always
seemed mysteriously to provide the necessary.  But Luton's party could
not dig for roots and grasses as the Arctic land on which they were
camped was frozen so solid and for so long each year that normal roots
could not thrive in it.  Those that might have proved helpful were
locked into ground frozen so deep that they were not attainable.
Potential salvation was everywhere under their feet, but they could not
get at it.

Harry was not lying to Fogarty; fresh meat did help combat scurvy
because it strengthened the body and thus made it slightly more capable
of withstanding the attack, but both he and Luton knew that this -was
merely a delaying tactic, not a cure.  The two men grew almost insanely
preoccupied with searching for any sign of scurvy.  The condition of
Harry Carpenter's leg was ominous but not yet fatal; a strong man like
him with tremendous inner courage and determination would have a good
chance of survival.

When Fogarty and Harry returned to the camp they both refrained from
adding to Lord Luton's worries by informing him that a second member of
his party now had scurvy, but they did say that it was imperative to
find meat.  Luton, Carpenter and Fogarty went out to scour the
countryside-Blythe was far too weak to join them-and although they shot
nothing that day or the second day, when they were quite exhausted they
did shoot a small caribou and with joy they butchered it and hauled it
home.

It was a miracle.  Harry said of it: "When that roasted meat hit my
stomach, I could feel the proper juices rushing to all the starved
veins," and Blythe said the same.  They were self-deluded, of course,
for not even fresh meat could halt the inroads of this terrible disease
only a replenishment of lost acids could accomplish that but the
salutary effect of roasted and savory meat in their systems created
such a sense of renewed well being that Trevor believed his gums were
strengthening and Harry was sure his necrotic legs had begun to mend.

But that was the last fresh meat they would enjoy for weeks.  One night
when the men were really starving, Lord Luton, as protector of the six
cans of meat, announced almost merrily: "Gentlemen, we celebrate!"  and
with exaggerated ritual he placed one of his precious cans on their
rude table and watched approvingly as Fogarty slit it open with an axe,
tossed the contents in a saucepan, and threw in odd bits of everything
he could find.  As they waited for it to heat, they became aware of the
Arctic wind howling at their shack, and for some reason not one of them
could have explained, they began to hum and then sing softly the
Christmas carols of their youth.  When they came to that grand old
English one not favored in other countries, The Holly and the Ivy,"
Trevor Blythe's high tenor sounded so sweetly throughout the tent that
one could imagine the sound of sleigh bells echoing in the frozen air
outside.  They talked of home and family and of the grand Christmases
they had known in England and Ireland.  Then, one by one, each returned
to his own sad silence, and only the thunder of the wind was heard.

Two nights after the caroling the others heard Trevor gasp, and when
they looked in his direction he was holding in the palm of his right
hand two more of his big back teeth, flawlessly white and glimmering in
the lamplight like the malevolent eyes of some ghost.  Before anyone
could commiserate with him, he said softly and with profound
resignation: "I doubt I shall see spring."

"Now look here, Trevor," Luton began to bluster, but the young fellow
said with the gentleness that always marked him: "Evelyn, will you
please fetch my Palgrave?"  and when the precious little book was
found, Trevor asked: "Will you read some of the short poems?"  In his
strong baritone Luton read those wonderfully simple lines, those
thoughts that seemed to represent the best that England had ever
offered the world: "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains ..."
and "She dwelt among the untrodden ways .. ."  and Tell me where is
fancy bred ..."

As this essence of love and beauty and the longings of youth filled the
cabin, Blythe sighed.  Soon thereafter his breath became uneven and
labored and he asked: "Evelyn, will you read me the Herrick?"  Luton
could not find the right poem, so Trevor in his trembling hands leafed
through the pages for Number 93 and found the magical six lines:

Whenas in silks my Julia goes

Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows

That liquefaction of her clothes.

"Next, when I cast mine eyes and see That brave vibration each way
free; O how that glittering take th me!"

When Luton finished reading, Trevor reached for Carpenter's hand and
whispered in a voice so weak it could scarcely be heard: "When we
reached home I intended speaking with your cousin, Lady Julia.  Please
tell her."  Then he turned his ravaged body toward Luton: "Oh, Evelyn,
I'm so sorry."

"For what?"

"For having let you down," this in a gray, deathly voice.

"Forget that!"  Luton said heartily.  "Sleep now and mend yourself."

He was long past mending.  That remorseless killer, scurvy, had so
depleted him, stealing his sources of strength and destroying his
capacity to rebuild, that all he could do was look pitifully at his
three companions and gasp for breath, even though he knew the cool,
clean air would do him little good.

Fighting valiantly to maintain control, he reached out to clasp
Evelyn's hand, failed, and watched with dismay as his fingers fell
trembling on his blanket.  Knowing that he was near death, he tried
with harsh rasping sounds that formed no syllables to bid farewell to
his companions, fell back, and with one last surge of energy turned his
face to the wall to spare them his distress.  Thus isolated, this
compassionate young man, so full of promise but with his love
undeclared, his poems unwritten, died.

As before, the end of February was the time of hell and ice, except
that this year there was no spring-like break in the middle, and much
of the misery it brought stemmed from the fact that the days were
lengthening, visibly so, but the rate was slow and the persistence of
the cold so deadening that it seemed a perversion, a teasing of the
spirit.  Spring was due but it did not come.  Camp routine continued as
before.  Lord Luton shaved, and tended his clothes, and protected his
five cans of meat and marched erect rather than bent over as the others
did in order to keep whatever heat they had trapped in their bellies.
He ran three laps in this winter's version of a track and he goaded the
others to do the same.  He ate sparingly, preferring that the others
take larger portions, and he did everything possible to sustain the
spirits of his two remaining partners.  He was an impeccable leader,
and barring that one dreadful night when he had threatened to shoot
Fogarty, he never lost his composure.  His party had fallen upon rough
times and he intended leading the survivors to safety.  Never, not even
in his lonely, unspoken reflections, did he acknowledge personal
culpability for the growing disaster; he viewed it as either a
capricious act of God, or the manifestation of the malevolent forces of
nature.

Harry Carpenter was the regimental major.  His big mustache had
proliferated into a beard, but he kept it clipped and when he sat in
the cabin divested of the heavy clothes he had to wear when outside, he
was a handsome man, not so rugged as before and somewhat drawn about
the face because of scurvy, but still a proper officer whose upright
bearing was relaxed rather than stiff.  Had he stayed in India and
become the colonel of his regiment his men would have called him "Good
old Harry," and here in the wastes of northern Canada he was the same.
He did not run every day; he couldn't, but when he felt that Luton was
silently chiding him he tried; after one lap he would return to the
cabin, exhausted.

He was reading Great Expectations for the third time, not aloud this
time, for Luton and Fogarty claimed they had not cared much for it the
first time around and had more or less resented the waste of time
during the second reading.  He was sorry that he had confided to
Fogarty his concern about his incipient scurvy, but now he wished he
had someone with whom to discuss the matter; to do so with either Luton
or Fogarty seemed quite impossible and what was worse, improper.  He
suffered his debilitating disease in silence, supposing that Fogarty
had informed Luton of the matter.  Throughout the cabin, night and day,
there was a conspiracy of silence regarding his affliction, and he
allowed it to continue.

Fogarty resembled his master in his stolid acceptance of conditions. He
ran with Luton on those days he was not searching vainly to find the
meat that would ensure the safety of his team, and he maintained that
stubborn cheerfulness which made any good Irish serving man a model of
his calling.  Though not required to wait on his companions, he still
found pleasure in heating Lord Luton's shaving water in the morning and
in honing and stropping the razor.  He helped Carpenter in a dozen ways
and strove to maintain good spirits in the cramped quarters.  He was
appalled that they should be spending a second winter in such
surroundings, and he watched almost breathlessly for even the slightest
promise of spring: "Soon we'll be over the mountains, that I'm sure,
and there'll be gold for the finding!"  He was the only one who
mentioned gold; the other two had never been obsessed with it and were
now concerned only with survival.

As winter waned, so did Carpenter's reserves; each day he grew weaker
until once toward the end of the month he was unable to get out of bed
in the morning, which now showed a clear difference from night.  When
Luton asked: "You joining us for a bit of running?"  he grinned and
said: "I shall sit this out in the tea tent," as if they were
participating in a cricket match.

On the next day, when Fogarty returned from the privy to camp he saw a
pathetic sight: Harry Carpenter was on his weakened hands and knees
trying with the shovel, whose long handle he managed poorly, to grub
away the surface of the frozen earth in what the Irishman knew was a
search for elusive roots that might help stem his rampant scurvy.  He
was obviously not having any luck, but with the quiet determination
that had always marked him he continued his futile scraping until he
fell forward exhausted, the heavy shovel falling useless beside him.

Fogarty considered for some moments whether he should run to
Carpenter's aid, but some inner sense cautioned him that a man like
this would want to solve his own problems and would, indeed, resent
intrusion from another, so he withdrew out of sight, taking a position
from which he could maintain watch over the fallen man.  In due course
Harry rose, took almost two minutes to steady himself, then walked
slowly back to the hut, dragging the shovel behind him.  When he saw
Fogarty, he brought it sharply up and placed it against his shoulder as
if it were a rifle and he on parade.

"I've been giving a touch to our track," he said as he walked past, but
when Fogarty saw his ashen face he uttered a silent cry: Dear Jesus!
He's going to die.

No matter how courageous and determined Carpenter was, he could not
avoid brooding about the awfulness of death in these bleak
surroundings, when every amenity that might have enabled him to fight
off his debility was missing: the medicines, the proper diet, the good
doctors, the nursing, the supervised recuperation .. . How valuable
these things were, how clear an indication that the society which
ensured them was properly civilized.

However, his painful reflections often did not center on himself.  He
thought mostly of his cousin Julia, nineteen when last he saw her, and
a young woman who would never be beautiful in the ordinary sense of
that word; she did not even own what was described as a 'flawless
English complexion," but she did have what Trevor Blythe had
recognized, a positively glowing inner fire that made whatever she said
sound reasonable and whatever she did seem humane.  "Best of her
breed," Harry said to himself as he visualized her running freely
across the lawn, to greet him after a safari in Kenya, 'bubbling with
life's infinite possibilities."

Then came the gloom, for he had in his life of moving about, especially
among English families living abroad, seen a score of young women like
Julia, radiant and of great power, but not particularly marketable in
the marriage bazaars, and if they failed in their twenties to find the
one good man who could appreciate their inner beauty they might find no
one, and have to content themselves, in their forties, with playing the
cello, reading good books and needlework.

When such thoughts assailed him he recalled Trevor's commission: "When
we reached home I intended speaking with Lady Julia.  Please tell her."
He was certain now that he would not be reaching home, which meant that
Julia would never know that a young poet of marked talent had loved
her.  He became so obsessed with his failure to deliver the message
that for two days he chastised himself, then asked for one of the last
precious pieces of paper on which he tried in vain to tell Julia of
Trevor Blythe's death and of the young man's last request: that she be
told he would have been coming home to marry her.  But he had neither
the strength nor the concentration to finish the letter, and as the
pencil fell from his almost lifeless hand he realized the true
significance of death and murmured in a voice too low for his
companions to hear: "It means that messages of love will not be
delivered."

That night Lord Luton, seeing the desolation of spirit which had
overcome his chief lieutenant, cried brightly: "I say men!  Isn't it
time we attacked another can of our Fort Norman supply," and as before,
Fogarty chopped the can open and brought out the saucepan.  This time
he was able to throw in a small collection of roots he had grubbed from
the thawing soil, and when stew was rationed out, it was twice as tasty
as before and the three diners leaned back and smacked their lips,
remarking upon what a civilizing effect a substantial hot meal could
have upon a hungry man.

But Carpenter was so debilitated that his high spirits did not last the
night, and in the morning he had neither the strength nor the resolve
to leave his bed.  Luton lost his composure and, sick at heart over the
weakening condition of his friend, sat beside Carpenter and took him by
the shoulders: "Look here, Harry, this won't do.  It won't do at all."
Harry, thinking he had been rebuked for purposely malingering and
unable because of his illness to see that Luton was merely using the
hale-and-hearty approach of the regimental marshal, took offense at his
friend's chiding.

Hiding his intention, he rose on pitifully weakened legs whose sores
had never healed but only worsened, put on his heaviest clothing, and
said cheerfully: "You're right, Evelyn.  I could do with a bit of a
jog," and with that he stepped out into the bitter February cold.  As
he walked unsteadily toward the running track he paused one fleeting
moment to whisper to Fogarty, but what he said, Lord Luton could not
hear.

The two men remaining in the hut agreed that spurring him to action had
been salutary, but since they did not continue to monitor him as he ran
right past the track, they did not see him slow down because of gasping
pain near his heart, nor when he was out of sight, begin to take off
his outer garments one by one.  Heavy parka, gone!  Woolen jacket with
double pockets, thrown aside!  Inner jacket, also of wool, away!  Now
his good linen shirt came off and next his silk-and-wool undershirt,
until he stumbled ahead, naked to the waist in cold that had returned
to many degrees below zero.

There was no wind, so for a few minutes he could move forward, but then
his scurvied legs refused to function and his lungs began to freeze.
Grasping for the branches of a stunted tree, he held himself erect and
in that naked position froze to death.

When Harry's return was delayed, Lord Luton said to Fogarty: "Good,
Harry's whipping himself back into shape," but when the absence became
prolonged, Luton said with obvious apprehension: "Fogarty, I think we'd
better look into Harry's running."  From the cabin door they stared at
the track, but they saw nothing.

"Whatever could have happened?"  Luton asked, and Fogarty had no
reasonable surmise.  They walked tentatively toward the running oval,
and Fogarty spotted the red-and-gray parka lying on the ground and
rushed forward to retrieve it.  As he did so, Luton, coming behind,
spotted the woolen jacket, and then the inner jacket and not far beyond
the erect corpse of Harry Carpenter, already frozen almost solid.

When they returned to the shack, a distraught Evelyn could not accept
the death of his friend as merely the kind of accident one could
anticipate during a protracted adventure.  In a voice trembling with
anguish and self-doubt he asked: "What did he whisper to you, Fogarty?"
and the Irishman replied: "He praised you, Sir."

"What did he say?"  Luton cried, his voice an agitated demand, and
Fogarty whispered: "He told me "Keep Evelyn strong for crossing the
mountains."  '

"Why would he have said that?"  in higher voice.

"Because he knew we were trapped ... by those mountains Mr.  Trevor
wrote about."

The two survivors were to experience one additional horror in Harry's
manly suicide.  Unable to dig at that moment a grave in the frozen
ground, and not wishing to bring the corpse into the cabin, they
collected his strewn garments and placed them like robes over the stiff
body, which they laid in the snow.  When they returned the next day
they discovered what food the ravens of the Arctic fed upon.

March was especially difficult, for with the coming of the vernal
equinox, when night and day were twelve hours long at all spots on the
earth, the two survivors had visible reason for thinking that spring
was already here, and they wanted the snow and ice to melt so they
could be on their way.  But this did not happen, for although the days
grew noticeably warmer and those fearful silent nights when the
temperature dropped to minus sixty were gone, it still remained below
freezing and no relaxation of winter came.

It was a time of irritation, and one day when Luton was beginning to
fear the onset of scurvy himself he railed at Fogarty: "You boasted
last year that you were a poacher extraordinaire.  For God's sake,
let's see you poach," and Fogarty merely said: "Yes, Milord," but was
able to shoot nothing.

Even in the closeness of the cabin, Lord Luton maintained separation by
caste.  Fogarty was a servant, an unlettered man who had been brought
along to assist his betters, and never did either man forget that.
During two winters each more than seven months long, Luton never
touched Fogarty, although Fogarty sometimes touched him when performing
a service, and it would have been unthinkable for Luton to have
addressed him by a first name.  And had Fogarty referred to his
lordship as Evelyn, the cabin would have trembled as if struck by an
earthquake.  From these strict rules, hammered out over the centuries,
there could be no deviation.  If Fogarty had to address Luton directly,
it was "Milord' and nothing else; Luton would have considered even
"Sir' too familiar.

And yet there was mutual respect between these two.  The Luton party
had started with five and now only two survived, and at times Luton had
entertained but never voiced the judgment that if in the end there was
to be only one to reach Dawson, it would probably be this happy,
moon-faced Irishman.  "Damn me," he muttered to himself one day as he
watched Fogarty running his laps on the oval track where mud was
beginning to show.  "Peasants have a capacity for survival.  I suppose
that's why there's so many of 'em."

In fairness to Luton, he never demanded subservience of a demeaning
kind.  The original rule still prevailed: "Fogarty is the servant of
the expedition, not of any individual member."  And in a dozen unspoken
ways his lordship let the Irishman know that the latter's contribution
was both essential and highly regarded.  It was an arrangement that
only two well-intentioned and thoroughly disciplined men could have
maintained through these difficult conditions, and they knew that if
they remained obedient to it they had a fighting chance to bring their
odd combination safely to Dawson and its gold fields

Despite their shared determination to avoid any differences of opinion
that might exacerbate tempers already in danger, each had a strong
individual attitude toward what should be done with the four remaining
cans of meat, and the manner in which they expressed these differences
indicated that, as peril intensified and even the approach of death,
each man reverted more strongly than ever to his primeval inheritances.
Lord Luton, as the descendant of gentlemen for fifteen generations and
noblemen for nine, insisted upon living by the code of the endangered
aristocrat: "Decency says we must save the cans till the very last.
Stands to reason, Fogarty, it would be unconscionable to devour them
now, when they may be required in some great extremity," and he would
not allow them to be touched.

Fogarty, on the other hand, was descended from some of the shrewdest,
self-protecting peasants Ireland had ever produced, and like the
sensible pragmatist he was, he saw even the precious cans of meat only
as means to some worthy end, and if there was a good chance of getting
to Dawson alive, he would use the four cans now, when they were
obviously needed: "I say, with all due deference, Milord, we ought to
chop one of them open right now and fill our bellies."

"We'll have none of that, Fogarty.  Those cans are for an emergency."

At this very moment, in a small Scottish hamlet many thousands of miles
distant from this segment of the Arctic Circle, a sentimental little
Scottish writer, James Barrie, (later Sir James) was brooding over a
winsome idea for a stage play, one which would later sweep theaters of
the world with joy and chuckles.  The Admirable Crichton dealt with a
situation somewhat like the one in which Luton and Fogarty found
themselves: a spoiled and pampered family of the English gentry is
marooned on a tropical island along with a trusted retainer, their
butler Crichton, and as the family falls apart in this crisis,
displaying a lack of both common sense and will-power, Crichton reveals
himself as a master of every emergency.  Only his courage,
inventiveness and inexhaustible good sense saves the family, but when
rescue comes, he, of course, reverts to being their servant.  It was
neat, amusing and reassuring, and people loved it, especially the upper
classes who were the butt of the joke.

That was not to be the case on the frozen banks of the Peel.  Lord
Luton did not reveal himself as a giddy fop; he was tougher than walrus
hide.  Nor did Fogarty suddenly step forward as all-wise or possessed
of the masterful characteristics that Luton lacked.  Fogarty was a good
factotum, and Luton was more than able to care for himself, but
gradually through the pressure of circumstance and the necessity for
decisions of great moment, the two men seemed to reach a status of
equality, each complementing the other, and necessary to the
partnership.  This was never better exemplified than during the days
following the equinox when they had to make up their minds as to how
they would operate in the more fortunate weeks they could be sure were
coming when summer returned.  All depended upon one crucial decision:
"Since we're through the canyons, shall we put the half-boat back in
the water and pole our way to the headwaters and then hike over the
mountains, or shall we abandon the boat here and start walking
immediately?"  They whipped this back and forth, with Luton always
asking Fogarty for his opinion, because at long last the noble lord was
beginning to suspect that his earlier obstinate decisions might have
been largely to blame for the deaths of Blythe and Carpenter.

Pleased that finally Luton wanted his advice, Fogarty would propose:
"Let's keep the boat, Milord, because with it, we can carry more
stuff," and Luton would respond: "But if we head out swiftly on foot
with the simplest backpacks, we can certainly make it before another
winter."

At the next discussion, Fogarty would defend the backpack and Luton the
retention of the boat, and in this way each calculated danger or
emergency was voiced and assessed.  It was Luton who had the courage to
investigate one of the most painful situations: "Fogarty, we've seen
men die .. . from causes they could not control.  If only one of us
survived, which way would be better?"  Without hesitation Fogarty
replied: "If he lived and was alone, he'd have to leave the boat,
otherwise .. ."  and that settled the matter: "Since we're both going
to live, we'll keep the boat until the last practical moment."

The choice having been made, the two men spent much of April deciding
in minute detail what would be carried by boat to the headwaters and
which articles would be taken forward in each of the backpacks.  They
must take the tent, and the tools for survival and all available food,
which was not much.  Looking at the dried beans and the other edibles
that kept the body alive but allowed the extremities to die, Luton felt
intimations of scurvy-a loosening tooth, a sensation of numbness in his
toes.  When Fogarty was absent he saw with horror that when he pushed
his forefinger into the flesh of his right leg, the indentation
remained.

At this moment in the twenty-first month of the doomed expedition, he
almost lost heart, but when he heard the approach of Fogarty he
stiffened and presented his servant with the obligatory posture of a
gentleman still in control: "Fogarty, we really must see if we can get
ourselves some meat."  That was all he said, but the Irishman knew that
Lord Luton was not going to make it through the mountains unless he,
Fogarty, brought home some game.

He thereupon started the most significant poaching journey of his life,
traveling each day up and down the frozen Peel looking for anything
that moved, and each night when he returned empty-handed to the
terrible disappointment of his waiting companion, he could see his
lordship's shoulders not sag but stiffen with determination: "Good try,
Fogarty.  I'm sure you'll get something yet."  Luton's journal now
lacked the easy flow and broad philosophical base that had
characterized it the preceding winter,

when five able men were really exploring life in a cramped closed cabin
in the Arctic.  One night, after Fogarty had once more returned
empty-handed, Luton wrote in disjointed, trembling phrases:

Again no meat.  Pushed right forefinger in leg, mark remained hours. Am
slipping.  If I must die terrible isolation pray God able to do it with
grace of Trevor Blythe, courage of Harry Carpenter.  Right now pray
Fogarty finds Caribou.

Shortly after this confession of despair, Luton left the cabin and
tried on weakening legs to run his customary laps, but as he used the
oval which Harry Carpenter had tramped into the snow, he began to see
images of that good man whom he had brought to his death, and of Philip
lost in the Mackenzie, and of the poet Trevor Blythe, perhaps the
greatest loss of all.  He started to stagger and duel with phantoms, so
that Fogarty, who watched from the cabin, having learned from
Carpenter's suicide, saw that his master was in difficulty.

Running to help, he heard Luton cry to the phantoms: "I am strangled! I
am cursed with grief!  Oh God, that I should have done this to these
men through my ineptitude!"

The Irishman, who was not supposed to hear this confession, jogged
methodically behind Lord Luton, overtaking him on a turn, where he said
in his best matter-of-fact voice: "Milord, we'll be in sore trouble if
we don't chop more wood."  Luton, rattling his head to drive away the
cruel images, said: "Fetch the axes," and as they exorcized their
terror through sweating work, Luton's head cleared and he said:
"Fogarty, unless you bag us a caribou ..."

This was the first time that Luton had spoken of his fears about either
himself or the expedition, and Fogarty knew immediately what he must
do: his master was starving and to allow this to continue when the four
cans of meat were available was stupidity.  Ignoring orders and
grabbing the axe before Luton could stop him, he took one of the
sacrosanct cans, chopped off the top and placed the meat in a saucepan
which he placed over the fire, adding one of the last onions well
chopped and large handfuls of his Arctic roots.  When the stew was
bubbling, he ladled out a bowlful and set it before his lordship. Luton
looked down at it, smelled its ravishing aroma, and with a fork neatly
picked out one small piece of meat after another, never wolfing it down
and never asking Fogarty by what miracle it had been provided.

Refreshed by the unexpected food, he slept soundly, rose early and
shaved as usual.  Refusing to acknowledge even to himself how close to
surrender he had been the night before, he dressed in his meticulous
way, took down his gun and a pocketful of George Michael's shells and
said: Time comes, Fogarty, when a man must find his own caribou," and
off he marched, thinking as he went: This may be the final effort.  My
legs.  My damned legs.

Fogarty, of course, trailed behind, and during that long cold day
whenever he tired of climbing the snowy hummocks, he knew that this was
for Luton the do-or-die effort, and he had not the heart to stop his
master.  It was good that he didn't, for toward evening when he joined
up with Luton, the pair came upon spoor which excited them to the
trembling point.  A herd of the large deer called wapiti moving north
for the summer had recently crossed this way leaving fresh signs.

The animals could not be impossibly distant, both men agreed on that,
so the chase began, the men following the signs with desperate
intensity, but when the silvery night fell, the wapiti had not yet been
overtaken.  There had to be a great temptation for the men to go back
to the safety of their cabin, but without speaking Luton pointed to the
spot where they stood, indicating that here he would shoot his deer or
die, and Fogarty, feeling deep affection for the austere man, nodded.
Through the early hours of the shortening night they remained in
position, each man striving to catch a little rest against the demands
of the coming day.  It was fortunate that they did not turn back for at
midnight, when the waning moon stood high, Luton thought he heard a
movement to the east: "I'm going to scout over that hill.  Watch sharp
if I rouse anything and it comes this way."

When he had crept quietly to the crest of the hill covered with sparse
snow, he broke into a sweat for below him in a cleared space grazed
five wapiti, incredibly beautiful, and big, their huge antlers gleaming
in the moonlight.  "Should I try to call Fogarty?"  he asked himself.
Rejecting that idea lest the animals be alerted, he tried to control
his shaking wrists and mumbled: "I do it myself or I die along this
cursed river."

Moving like a ghost, for he was nearly that, he closed upon the
unsuspecting animals, saw once more how glorious they were, bowed his
head in silent prayer, then raised his rifle slowly and squeezed the
trigger.  Fogarty, hearing the shot from behind the hill, cried: "Good
God!  He went off to shoot himself!"  And when he clambered up the
hill, he saw four or five deer running free across the tundra and a
dreadful panic gripped him.  But he also saw Lord Luton leaning on his
gun over the body of a dead animal whose great antlers shone in the
moonlight.

When Fogarty rushed up to the lifeless beast, he nodded deferentially
to Luton, who nodded back.  Both men then began gathering brush, and
after Fogarty had built a substantial fire, he dressed out the big
deer.  By unspoken agreement he ripped out the liver, and that was the
first portion of the meat they roasted on sticks over the flames.
Jamming it down their mouths half raw, they allowed the blood to
trickle down their chins, and they could almost feel the lifesaving
juices running into their own livers and down the veins of their legs,
which only a few minutes before had been doomed.

But Fogarty, who had been listening to all the talk about scurvy, was
not deluded into thinking that Luton had been cured; he had been no
more than temporarily strengthened and in an effort to capitalize upon
this temporary improvement, the Irishman adopted as his credo Harry
Carpenter's final commission: "Keep Evelyn strong for crossing the
mountains' and he directed his efforts toward that seemingly impossible
goal.

Adopting a routine he would doggedly adhere to throughout the remainder
of this devastating journey, he went out three or four times each day
with a spade and a digging stick made from one of the wapiti's antlers
and began digging in all those thawed places where the looser soil and
gravel of the upland terrains had proved hospitable to roots.  He dug
for half an hour at a time, probing downward through thin ice and into
stony soils which contained networks of roots, some capable of
producing low trees, others attached to shrubs and some merely
connected with grasses.  But like others who had saved their lives in
this way, he accepted whatever the earth provided, shook off the dirt
and carried it back to the hut, where he kept a pot simmering in the
ashes.

With his precious roots, gathered at such great expense of labor and
affection, he concocted a witches' brew that in some mysterious way
contained the precious acids.  As he and Lord Luton drank this acrid
broth as an act of faith, believing that it would cure Evelyn and
prevent Fogarty from becoming afflicted, the magic worked.  With deer
meat to make the muscles stronger and acids to revitalize the blood and
the body's protective systems, the day came when Luton was able to bare
his legs for Fogarty and allow the Irishman to press his thumb into the
flesh.  To the joy of both men, the flesh proved firm and resilient; no
longer did it remain indented in the gray mark of death; it sprang back
in the reddish sign of health.

But still Fogarty continued grubbing and replenishing the vital powers
of his master, until the spring day when Luton said: "Fogarty, I do
believe we're both strong enough to tackle the Divide."  So the
half-boat was loaded, the deadly campsite was abandoned and a final
farewell was said at the rude graves of

Harry and Trevor.  With no recrimination, no voiced regrets, the two
men, their legs strong, resumed their journey up the Peel, poling and
pulling as before.

Now there were no rapids to be forded in icy water, and in time they
reached a place where the Peel branched, one tributary leading to the
west, the other to the south, and the two men debated at their camp
that night which course to follow.  The maps were consulted once more
as if each man had not already memorized their every detail.  At last
Luton stood stiffly and, placing them on the ground, anchored them with
a large stone and said: They have served us well, but we are beyond
them now," and he left them.  Then he added: "I fear we would be headed
to America if we press west.  We shall steer to the south."  Their
compass direction would remain south-southwest until, at some point
farther along, they intercepted some west-flowing river, several of
which had to lie beyond the mountains.

As Luton and Fogarty muscled their half-boat up the remaining miles of
the Peel, they reached the upland where the final tributary of that
river contained so little water that it could not keep their half-boat
afloat.  They had to bid the Sweet Afton farewell; as a whole boat it
had served them well on the Mackenzie River, and had its half been
steered up the correct sequence of Canadian streams it would have long
since deposited them at the gold fields safely.  They were sad at
leaving it beached at the foot of the mountains they must now attack,
and Lord Luton said as he patted its gunwales: "Proper boat properly
built.  No fault of yours."  After a formal salute, he was off to
tackle the Rockies.

For two days they struggled in their attempts to find an easy procedure
for carrying everything on their backs, and many ingenious stratagems
were explored as they packed and repacked their gear.  After numerous
promising solutions proved futile, each man hit upon some adjustment
which suited him best, and when Fogarty hefted his burden, feeling it
pressing down upon his shoulders, he told Luton: "Every packhorse I
treated poorly for his lazy ways is laughing at me now."

Their goods were divided into four properly tied bundles: two
forty-pound rucksacks, one for each man, and two much smaller knapsacks
which they could carry in one hand or under an arm.  In allocating them
Lord Luton was meticulous in seeing that he received the heavier of the
pairs, and it was always he who stepped out most boldly when the day's
journey began, but Fogarty, trailing behind, monitored him carefully
and during the course of the day he would wait for a halt, after which
he would slyly appropriate to himself the heavier burdens, and in this
manner they approached the mountains that separated them from the gold
fields  Luton, of course, realized what his ghillie was doing, and
normally as a gentleman and head of the expedition, abbreviated though
it was, he would have protested, but even though he had recovered from
his attack of scurvy it had left him so debilitated that he needed the
assistance Fogarty provided and was grateful for it.  But each morning,
when they set out afresh, Luton would heft his own packs and cry as
before: "Let's get on with it, Fogarty!"  and he would forge ahead in
full vigor.

The land they were entering sloped upward to a range of low rounded
mountains from which in some ancient time loose boulders and scree had
tumbled in vast drifts.  As they scrambled up, in places skidding back
in one minute what ground it had taken ten to gain, Luton said: "Mark
it, Fogarty.  These mountains are very old," and when Fogarty puffed:
"How can I see that?"  Luton explained: "Erosion, snow in winter, wind
in summer, has worn their jagged tops away," and the Irishman replied:
Then they should be called hills, not mountains."  Luton accommodated
him by saying: "When we cross over to the next range you'll see real
mountains.  New ones.  All craggy and pointed peaks.  Then the climbing
becomes a test."

As they descended the gentler western slope they caught their first
glimpse of the splintered, craggy mountains behind which Dawson lay.
But between where they stood and that stern jumble of waiting peaks and
ragged troughs lay a wide valley so bleak that each man shuddered to
think that he must first cross this unforgiving Arctic tundra.  This
was desolation, as alien as any land Luton had seen in his many
travels, a land without even the slightest sign of hope.

In those first moments of inspecting the intermontane wilderness and
the mountains beyond, Luton saw three aspects that terrified him: there
was no defined path through the wasteland, nor even a continuation of
the fragmentary trail that had led them from the Peel to the mountains;
the bleak area was speckled with a plethora of little lakes indicating
that boggy swampland probably lay between, linking them together; and
the distant mountains gave no hint of any pass.  The prospect was so
forbidding that he halted to assess the chances of even reaching the
opposite mountains.  The clear path they had followed up the Mackenzie
River and along the gloomy Peel had deserted them.  As he surveyed the
terrain he and Fogarty must now try to cross, Luton brought the
Irishman to his side and said: "We did not anticipate this.  Mr. Harry,
who studied the maps so carefully, did not..  ."

His voice betrayed the anxiety he felt at standing on the edge of this
desolate land, but then he sniffed, cleared his throat as if beginning
a new day, and said: "Stands to reason, doesn't it?  If we've been
following a footpath, and we have .. . you certainly saw that .. .
well, the path must come from somewhere.  It must be from Dawson City
lying just beyond those far mountains.  Our job is to cross this
wretched vale and climb them," but Fogarty cautioned: "Milord they are
too sheer.  We cannot cross them unless we happen upon a low pass to
take us through, and I can see no pass.  We must follow the valley
westward until we spy a break in their wall," for the Irishman knew
that Luton's strength would not endure the scaling of such precipices,
and feared also that his own vigor might be too much spent.  Luton
remained quiet for a moment, then said: "No!

There's got to be a safe route through there and it's our job to find
it.  Eyes sharp, Fogarty!"  and they left the relative security of the
low mountains to plunge into this hostile wasteland.

As evening came on that first day it was clear to both men that they
were lost on this trackless plain.  A mist had obscured the distant
mountains so that no fixed beacon drew them onward, and the
interminable lakes, little more than collected swamps with marshy
edges, obliterated whatever tracks there might have been between the
two mountain ranges.  They slept only fitfully that night assuring each
other: "Tomorrow we'll find the way," because neither man believed they
would.

The next day, their first full one in the barren tundra, was a horror
of wrong choices and blind guesses as the light mists of the previous
night turned to heavy cloud and pelting rain.  At times they seemed to
go in circles, or get bogged down in swamps much deeper and tenacious
than before, so that any hope of completing an orderly transit of the
valley vanished.  Fogarty, always the realist, said at dusk when the
rains ceased and the clouds in the east lifted: "Milord, we are close
still to the hills we left yesterday.  I can see where we came out of
them.  I know where the trail back is, and if we start right now we can
retrace, go down the Peel, and get back to Fort Norman before another
winter."

Luton, poking about among the bogs to find a place to catch some sleep,
stopped his search, turned to glare at Fogarty and said very quietly:
"I did not hear what you just said.  Tomorrow, bright, I shall explore
some distance in that direction.  You'll do the same in the opposite,
each of us keeping the other in sight, and we shall try to intercept
the missing path.  It has got to be here.  It stands to reason."

So on the second full day, when the thick clouds closed in once again
and the escape route back to the Peel was no longer visible, the two
men scouted exactly as Luton had devised, he to the north flank,
Fogarty to the south until each was almost lost to the other.  Finding
nothing, they would shout, wave arms,

and reconvene in the swampy middle, march forward, then launch a new
probe outward.  They accomplished nothing and at dusk had to
acknowledge that they were truly lost.

But not hopelessly so, for Luton said grimly as they ate their meager
rations: There has to be a path through this morass.  Tomorrow we find
it and hurry down to Dawson."

On the third day of fog and rain they succeeded only in penetrating
ever deeper into this hellish vale of lakes and hummocks and ankle-deep
swamp.  At dusk Lord Luton could no longer deceive himself: "Fogarty,
for the first time I fear we are getting nowhere."

"Milord, I'm sure I could find the way back to those first hills."

"They're mountains,1 Luton said almost primly, 'and we shall not see
them again."

"You mean to press on?"

"I do."  He said this so simply and with such finality that any
gentleman would realize that no adverse comment would be entertained,
but Fogarty asked in his blunt way: "You mean ..."

Before he could phrase the question, Luton said: "Fogarty, when a man
sets forth upon a journey he completes it."

"And if he can't complete it?  If there's no way on God's earth he can
complete it?"

Luton did not respond, and that night he slept apart from the Irishman.
At dawn they rose with new hope as the heavy mists had thinned.  But
even before they made their start the two travelers were thrown
together in self-defense, for they!  were about to be assaulted by one
of the most terrible of Arctic enemies.  It began with a low buzzing
sound which Luton heard first but could not easily identify.  The enemy
scouts, after an exploratory pass, flashed back a signal to their
waiting army and within moments a devastating horde of buzzing
creatures descended upon the men, launching an attack that terrified
them.

"Fogarty!"  Luton shouted with un lordly vehemence.  "Mosquitoes!"  and
before the Irishman could protect himself thousands of the Arctic
terrors had engulfed him.

The first minutes of the attack were horrifying, because no one
unfamiliar with the Arctic wastelands could imagine what an assault of
this nature was like.  Many lands are famous for their mosquitoes, but
their breeds are positively docile compared to those of the Arctic, and
Lord Luton had led his partner into the heart of a breeding area: the
swampy land of little lakes which provided endless wet grounds for the
winged tormentors.

Before the two men had a chance to break out their mosquito netting-to
have traveled along the Mackenzie without it would have been
suicide-they were blackened with the insects, and the biting was so
incessant and painful that had they not found protection under the nets
they might well have been bitten to death by nightfall, so tenacious
and painful was the attack.  When the two men arranged proper
protection under the green netting, they were able to survive, even
though thousands of the insects swarmed over them, battling to find
even one opening in the clothing through which they might gain entrance
to the target within.

Within minutes of the opening attack, the ankles of the two men were a
mass of inflamed bites and not until Luton showed Fogarty how to tie
cords about his pant legs were the terrifying beasts kept away.  It was
a long and terrible day and the men were so busy protecting themselves
that any thought of trekking farther toward the western mountains,
wherever they might be, was preposterous.  When night finally came, and
smudge fires were coaxed from damp twigs to keep the insects at bay,
Luton and Fogarty had to sleep side by side to share and tend the fire,
and before they fell asleep, Luton said: "This was not a good day,
Fogarty.  A few more of these ..."

"I'm sure I can still find the Peel ..."

At the mention of that repugnant river Luton shuddered and said: "We're
engaged in a challenge, Fogarty, and the more hideous it becomes .. ."
The Irishman, formulating his own finish to the sentence thought: He
intends to move forward until we perish.  Making the sign of the cross,
he vowed: And I shall stay with him till he does.  But then he added:
The minute his eyes close for the last time, back to the Peel and Fort
Norman.

The next day was the worst the two men would know, for with the coming
of dawn and the dying of the smudge fire, the hordes struck with
renewed fury, attacking any centimeter of exposed skin.  They simply
engulfed an area, sinking their proboscides deep into the skin.  Their
bite also carried what seemed to be an especially potent irritant, for
once they struck, Luton and Fogarty had almost uncontrollable desires
to scratch, but if they succumbed, they exposed more skin which was
immediately blackened by new hordes.  "My word, this is rather
frightening," Luton cried as he adjusted his netting to keep the little
beasts from his face and eyes, but Fogarty expressed it better when
with ghoulish humor he muttered as they attacked him in a score of
different places: "Stand fast, Milord, or they'll fly off with you."

The two men found macabre delight in chronicling the ingenuity of their
foe.  Luton said: "Look at this rivet on my glove.  You'd think not
even a gust of air could force its way in there, but they do."
Belatedly, Fogarty found that the beasts were assaulting his face by
forcing their way through a minute hole in his net; they had detected
it in the first moments of their attack.  No opening, no gap in
clothing could be so insignificant but what these murderous creatures
exploited it.  And they were murderous, for tradition in the Arctic was
replete with stories of unprotected men who had been caught in summer
and driven to suicide by millions of mosquitoes which assaulted them
without respite.  There were many cases in which caribou or horses had
been killed by overwhelming and relentless attacks.

In all of nature there was no comparison with the Arctic mosquito;
mercifully it appeared only for a few weeks in late spring and summer,
but when it did men shuddered and animals sought high ground where
breezes would keep the pests away.

On this hideous day the two men were not to find their escape on high
ground, for there was none that they could see, only the remorseless
tundra swamp populated by myriad mosquitoes which maintained their
attack in unbroken phalanxes.  At one point in the early morning Lord
Luton was so beleaguered by a black swarm perhaps five hundred thousand
coming at him in waves that darkened the sky-that he clawed at his face
in despair as the hordes broke through a tear in his netting.  In that
moment he realized that if the assault were to continue with such fury
throughout the day he might indeed go berserk as caribou were said to
do when the mosquitoes pursued their relentless attack.

Fortunately, Fogarty spotted the break in Luton's protection and
repaired it with grasses that he wove through the surrounding
interstices, and in this way Luton was saved, but neither man had much
hope that if such conditions persisted for several days they could
survive, especially since they had only limited food and no clear
understanding of where the western mountains lay.

They did have drinking water, of course, and Fogarty suggested:
"Milord, that was a sad attack you suffered.  Fill your belly with
water.  It gives a man courage to feel something down there .. .
anything."  But when the Irishman led his master to one of the pools
and they bent down to drink, they found the surface covered with
millions of black and wriggling larvae which even as they watched were
transforming themselves into mosquitoes.  The insects rose in swarms
from the lake to enjoy their brief two or three weeks chasing across
the tundra in search of any living thing that carried blood.  Finding
Luton and Fogarty delivered right into their cradle as it were, they
swarmed upon them so mercilessly that drinking became impossible, and
in this extremity Lord Luton very nearly lost control: he shivered, he
fought the attacking hordes with shadowy movements of his hands as if
he were a doomed boxer, and looked helplessly at Fogarty.

But before he could speak and reveal his near-disintegration, he saw
behind the Irishman an animal moving, or was it a pair of animals?
Believing that he was to be attacked from yet another quarter, he ran
back to retrieve his gun and would have fired at

the animals had not Fogarty anticipated his wild action and knocked the
gun aside so that the bullet sped harmlessly through the horde of
mosquitoes rising from the lake.

"Milord, They're Indians!"  When Luton lowered his gun he saw two
Indians of the Han tribe whose representatives he had seen at the mouth
of the Peel.  Toward them walked a robust man, dark-faced and with
black hair neatly cropped above his eyes, and a lively little woman
adorned with strands of seashells around her neck and with intricately
beaded shoes upon her feet.  They halted a few yards before the two men
and dropped to their knees.  From their manner of probing into
everything and even inspecting the knapsacks, Fogarty concluded that
they had come, with friendly intentions, across the tundra to see
whether the white men were lost and needed help.

Luton, with a bounding joy which cleared his tormented brain, rushed
toward the startled Indians, shouting to Fogarty: "You see!  There is a
track through this wilderness!  They've come to show us!"  But when he
reached the Indians he stopped short as if a mighty hand had been
thrust in his face, for the Indians were engulfed in a most putrid
stench.  However, when Fogarty came close he burst into laughter and
pointed to the man's face: "Some kind of animal grease, probably
rotting.  Keeps away mosquitoes, but it does stink."

Luton was correct in guessing that the Han had come to help; they had
seen the wanderers from a distance and had deduced that they were lost
and in grave trouble.  Their tribe made their summer camp along the
edge of this inhospitable land and various members had made the long
excursion to the Hudson's Bay establishment at Fort Norman where they
had traded furs for the rifles, axes, and iron cooking pots they
treasured.  They were not engaged in such travel now, for it would have
been unlikely that any Han man would take his wife on such a trip
trading among strangers, especially when the latter were white.  They
were in this harsh land only to hunt the Arctic hare, but this intent
was discarded now, for to succor men who were obviously lost was
another matter.

However, Lord Luton could conceive of no way to converse with these
people who had no command of English and no proficiency in any language
other than their own, and he was angry with himself at being unable to
explain to them the extremity in which he and Fogarty found themselves.
But the Irishman was encountering no difficulty in discussing his
predicament with the Indians, for with vigorous and imaginative
gestures he described Fort Norman, and the Mackenzie River and the Peel
with its ugly rapids, and the journey through the western range, and
the mosquito attacks.

When this was understood, with the Han nodding in enthusiastic
agreement and adding comments of their own, also in sign language,
Fogarty turned his attention to the gold fields at Dawson, and he had
dug only half a gold mine with his lively gestures when the Indians
indicated that yes, they understood about the find on the Klondike
because several of their men had worked there and others had acted as
guides from the headwaters of what had to be the Porcupine or some
similar river into Dawson.  Yes, they knew the mosquitoes were
horrendous at this time of the year.  Yes, there was some game among
these many lakes.  And what was most important of all, yes, they would
guide the two men through the myriad lakes and the endless swamps along
the paths which gained high ground where the mosquitoes were less
ferocious.

When Fogarty gestured a question about a route directly through the
distant mountains, the Indian man shook his head and pointed
insistently along the valley, indicating that if they kept to the lower
elevations they would at the far end of the valley reach a spot from
which two relatively easy passes led through the mountains.  Then he
turned toward the nearby range Luton had proposed to climb and started
to scrabble in the air as if hauling himself up sheer rock and then
collapsed suddenly on the ground.  His stunned audience realized that
they would have perished had they attempted to climb those heights;
fallen to their deaths down some monstrous chasm.

That night the two Indians took from sacks about their waists odd bits
of dried meats they carried with them when traveling the tundra, and
after assuring the strangers that they were going to make a kind of
stew in an iron pot they carried they went to the shore of the very
lake that Luton had refused to drink from because of the mosquito
larvae and dipped up a copious supply of the water.  Fogarty, seeing
that the water was still crawling with future mosquitoes, indicated
that perhaps the Indian would want to skim off the violently swimming
creatures but the woman shook her head vehemently indicating that the
larvae, when properly boiled with bits of venison, were not only
palatable but also nourishing.

That night they tended the smudge fire, using an aromatic grass the Han
gathered that repelled the insects most effectively, and the men slept
well, with Luton whispering to Fogarty before they fell asleep:
"They've saved our lives.  We must pay them well."

It was what happened the next day that stunned Lord Luton, making him
not a scorner of the primordial Han but a devotee, for after leading
the strangers to the footpath leading to the pass through the
mountains, they insisted that the two strangers leave the path, which
Luton was reluctant to do, and visit a site on a little rise beside a
clear lake.  There Luton and Fogarty found three mounds, each the size
of a grave, and where the headstones might properly have been rested
three small piles of stone.

"Who?"  Fogarty asked in sign language, and so clearly that it could
not be mistaken, the little Han woman indicated that the three corpses
had been white men like himself, that they too had become lost, and
that they had perished from mosquito bites and madness and starvation.
To indicate madness she rotated her forefingers about her ears, crossed
her eyes and staggered to her imaginary death.

Luton was tremendously affected by this account: "Damn me, we've got to
give the poor souls a Christian burial," and to Fogarty's astonishment
Luton stood bareheaded facing the graves and recited long passages from
the Book of Common Prayer, saying at the close: "Heavenly Father,
accept belatedly the souls of these good men who perished in their
Wilderness of Gibeon."

It required three days for the Han couple to lead their guests across
the desolate plateau to the first rises of the jagged mountains, and
when they had deposited them safely, they indicated that from this spot
two well-marked tracks led to Dawson; they would accompany the men no
farther.  That evening as the four travelers shared their last frugal
meal, Lord Luton addressed his saviors in flowing and gracious words
they could not possibly have understood: "Beloved friends, guides and
helpers, when I first saw your people engulfed in the strangeness of
Edmonton, I saw you as savages.  When you helped us find the mouth of
the Peel I chuckled at your confusion about the telescope.  And even
when I saw you coming as our saviors as I knelt by that fetid mosquito
lake I tried to shoot you as if you were animals.  I was vain and blind
and arrogant, and I pray you will forgive me, for I owe you my life."

They could make nothing of his words, of course, but Fogarty repaired
that deficiency by indicating that he, Luton and the Indians had shared
the same camps and the same food.  They had marched together, had
fought the mosquitoes, had prayed together at the graves and had
crossed the land of death.  This sharing had made them brothers, and as
members of mankind's common family they would place their final beds
side by side.  Before they fell asleep Luton whispered: "I've almost
grown to like their stench.  Reminds me of salvation from mosquitoes
and that wilderness of lakes."

Next morning there was an impasse, for although the travelers were
safely through the desolate land, where assistance from the Han was
vital, they still faced a taxing journey to Dawson, and they must now
choose which of two radically different routes to follow.  Each path,
as the Han indicated, had been well marked by the passage of many
Indian feet in centuries past and even by some white men's traces in
recent years.

The first was the easiest and most inviting: a northwest trail which
led over relatively low mountains to the Yukon some miles down the
river from Dawson, where the travelers could catch an American boat
which would carry them upriver to the gold-fields.  The alternate path
led off to the southwest, plunged immediately up into the higher
mountains and quickly led down into Dawson; it would require real
climbing.  But there was one more significant difference: the route to
the right edged toward the American portion of the north; the way to
the left stayed completely within Canada, and although Luton could not
verify that this would be the case, for his discarded maps had lacked
accuracy, he still was so determined to avoid America that he said
resolutely: "We'll take the mountain route.

When the man saw the two men actually start for the more difficult
climb they protested, showing by labored steps and bent backs that the
route being chosen was wrong, then springing easily along the lower
pathway and even indicating a boat on the river.  For the first time in
their days together, Fogarty was unable to devise any hand symbols
which would explain to the Indians that Lord Luton was driven by an
obsession to complete this tortured journey on Empire terrain and to
avoid even in the last painful moments any trespass on American soil.
Indeed, the Irishman found it difficult to explain to himself why Luton
was choosing the more difficult route, but in a re-statement of the
decision he had made that night as they plunged blindly into the
pathless tundra where they would surely have perished had not the
Indians saved them, he now told the Indians in words neither they nor
he could comprehend: "He leads.  I go," and he resolutely followed
Luton onto the path leading to the high mountain.

Now came the moment of farewell, one that moved Luton profoundly, for
he had developed a bond of deep affection for these two Indians who had
saved him from the mosquitoes and the feral tundra and who had gone so
far out of their own way to guide him to safety.  He saw them now as
remarkable human beings, living at their own level of civilization and
doing it with competence, for they knew their vast wasteland as well as
he knew his London, and such mastery he could respect.  But he really
did not care to embrace them as brothers any more than he would have
wanted to clutch Fogarty to his bosom in gratitude for what the
Irishman had done, so stiffly he stood before the two small brown
people and bowed saying: "I shall remember you with affection all the
days of my life."  Then, from a pocket he handed each a pair of
Canadian bills which he delivered with another bow.

For one frightening moment he feared that the Han woman was going to
clutch his hands in gratitude or even throw her arms about him, but her
intentions were quite contrary.  She placed her hands not in his but in
the air close to her ears where she revolved them as she made funny
faces and wobbled about to indicate that Luton, in choosing the more
difficult route, was out of his mind.  As she danced her pantomime of
insanity, Fogarty muttered to himself: "I think he's crazy, too," but
unlike her he had to follow Luton as his lordship attacked the final
range that rose between them and the gold fields

The first half-mile into these newer mountains with their sharp peaks
and deep gorges proved that the concluding segment of their journey was
not going to be an easy one, for although the range was not excessively
high-little more than six thousand feet-it was rugged, and at times the
well-marked track could be so steep that real effort was required to
master it.  Indeed, the climb proved so demanding that the two men
reacted as other climbers had throughout history: the more their path
led upward the more encouraged they were to dispose of trivia they felt
they no longer needed, and this impulse was intensified by the
realization that they were closing in upon their goal.  So quietly they
began to cast aside the burdens which, though once of vital importance,
they now calcuated they could do without: a hammer, a valuable rope,
two books without covers, one of the axes, a score of things once
treasured but now too heavy to lug.

There was one bundle, however, of concentrated weight which Lord Luton
alone carried, the three remaining cans of meat, for since Fogarty had
once opened a can without permission, he could not be trusted to guard
these, for Luton knew that upon their rich contents might depend the
safe conclusion of his expedition.  Once as they started the day's
climb, Fogarty hefted the rucksack containing the cans and said:
"Heavy, Milord, too heavy," but Luton said as he took the burden
himself: "Not if our salvation depends upon it."

The angle of upward climb was sharper than Luton had anticipated, a
steady, grinding ascent up a barely discernible rock-strewn trail, not
precipitous like the Alps, but fearfully exhausting for climbers in
their debilitated condition.  Luton could feel the heavy weight of the
meat cans pulling him back, but in a curious way this added burden
inspired him, for whenever he became aware of its familiar weight he
assured himself: "Well, we won't starve on the mountain."

But as the trail grew steeper, Fogarty, struggling along behind with
his own burden, saw Luton's steps begin to waver and the pace to slow;
at times it would look as if he was in danger of plunging forward onto
his knees, so exhausting was his pack.  Then the Irishman would quietly
maneuver to take the lead from where he would search for a resting
spot, and when he sighted one he would cry out as if it were he who was
at the end of his tether: "Milord!  This one looks inviting.  I'm near
spent," and he would throw down his pack as if he could proceed no
farther.

This enabled Luton to play the game of wanting to forge ahead but
agreeing grudgingly to a pause for his companion's sake.  After a rest
which each man needed, Luton would be the first on his feet, as if he
were impatient to get on with the climb, but almost without betraying
that he was doing so, Fogarty would hoist Luton's heavy rucksack onto
his own back, and the two would resume their climb.

Now the miracle of the Arctic abetted them, for the days of late spring
were practically endless, more than twenty hours long during which they
could climb as they wished.  They kept pushing painfully upward through
the silvery dusk, stopping for rest and even unplanned sleep, then
rising again, as if it were dawn, to strike for higher ground. However,
real night, shadowy though it was, did eventually come upon them,
forcing them to face the problem of what to eat and this caused
tension.

"We can't go on climbing like this without something to eat," Fogarty
said on the second night, staring at the rucksack in which Luton kept
the remaining cans of meat.  Luton replied: "It's up to you.  You're
the poacher.  For God's sake get going," and desperation glared in his
eyes.  Luton absolutely refused' to discuss the possibility of slashing
open one of the cans: "No!  No!  We must still have scraps of that meat
the Indians gave us," and they scraped their bags for fragments of
food, chewing on them in triumph when they found a few edible
morsels.

When they neared the top of their exhausting climb, Fogarty succeeded
in bagging an adventurous goat, a remarkable feat considering the
wariness of that beautiful animal, and this kept them going for the
last painful days.  On each occasion when they built a fire with such
twigs as they had gathered during that day's struggle and they could
smell the meat beginning to roast, Luton said generously: "Excellent
shot, that one, Fogarty.  Never seen better."  But even on such nights
of quiet triumph, when he went to sleep, Luton kept his rifle across
his chest, available for shooting the Irishman if the latter dared
touch the cans.

The upward climb was merciless, but no matter how steep the rude
pathway sketched out by earlier travelers to and from the gold fields
the pair were consoled by the knowledge that the Yukon could not be far
distant, and they did not allow their spirits to flag.  At the close of
one extremely difficult climb, when Fogarty who carried the slightly
heavier load was exhausted, and there was practically no food, he went
boldly to Lord Luton's rucksack, ripped open the package of three cans,
took one and chopped it through the middle, handing Luton one half and
keeping one for himself.  Since the meat had been well cooked by steam
before packing, they could eat it raw as it was, but they did so in
grim silence, for Luton was aggrieved.  At the conclusion, knowing that
he must in decency say something lest they go to sleep embittered, he
observed: "Up here we aren't bothered by mosquitoes."

This wasn't good enough for Fogarty: "Milord, I almost staggered today.
My rucksack is far too heavy.  We must finish with those cans and you
must help me with my burden."

Very quietly, and with not the slightest show of temper or resentment,
Luton replied: "You are right, Fogarty.  We need the nourishment and
you need help, but if you try to touch these last two cans I shall
shoot you."

Fogarty did not blink.  Putting a finger to his forelock he said
easily: That's the second time you've threatened that.  Once for me
crapping, now for me eating.  I do seem to run into danger of me life
because of me digestion."  He said this with such easy good humor that
Luton did not resent the familiarity which would have appalled him a
month ago.

On the next evening Fogarty ended the day's climb so famished that he
feared he might topple over, and he pleaded: "Milord, let us open one
of your cans," but Luton was adamant:

"We shall hoard them against the day we face a crisis," and Fogarty
asked weakly: "Will my death be considered a crisis?"  Luton replied:
"I am determined that we shall reach Dawson, you and I. And these cans
may be the agency that enables us to do so."  Ostentatiously he used
the rucksack containing the cans as his pillow, and fell asleep with
the rifle across his chest.

They struggled up the last rocky tor, sustained only by their
primordial courage, which all men can call on in extremity but which
only a few are ever required to exercise.  Fogarty, gasping up the
final slope, was in the van, with Luton's extra pack draped about his
shoulders, when he saw with mute joy that the apex had been reached.
Staring down the forested valley that awaited to the west, he turned
and said quietly: "From here on Milord, it's all downhill."

Luton affected not to hear nor did he look ahead to the escape route
that lay revealed before them; he stood with his back turned to his
destination, his gaze reserved for the dreadful steeps they had climbed
with such pain.  As he stood there exhausted, his shoulders sagged,
even though Fogarty was bearing half his burden, and his thoughts
wandered down the slopes, beyond the horizon and the hidden Peel River,
to the lonely shack in which Trevor had died and from which Harry had
walked to his death.  It was impossible for him to experience any sense
of triumph in having conquered the mountains.

But then Fogarty tugged him away from the doom-ridden past, turning him
to face the more promising future, and when he had Luton's attention he
repeated his encouraging words: "From here on, all downhill."  Luton,
ignoring his servant's efforts to inspirit him, continued looking back
at the brutal path they had taken, and his shoulders sagged so
perceptibly that Fogarty wondered if his master was weeping.  Then,
with a sigh that caused Fogarty to shudder, the noble lord said: "There
must have been a simpler way through the tangled rivers and the
mountains but we were not allowed to find it."  Even at this
near-conclusion to their terrible journey he was unable to accept any
blame for the fatal choices taken: it was still implacable nature that
was to blame.

But as he spoke these words by which he absolved himself he felt
intuitively that he really must present a more resolute impression to
his servant, so he rose suddenly, hoisted his heavy main pack,
recovered his secondary one from Fogarty and stepped boldly into the
lead uttering a command that fairly rang with enthusiasm and authority:
"Let's get on with it, Fogarty!  Dawson's got to be hiding behind that
bend."  Off they strode on the last leg of their journey, elated to
know that they had at last penetrated the mountains that had opposed
them from the beginning.

Then on a memorable day in June, Fogarty in the lead position went
around a bend and shouted: "Milord, there it is!"  When Luton hurried
up he felt dizzy and had to shake his head to clear his eyes, for below
him, on a narrow ledge of land fronting a great river stood the tents
and false fronts of what had to be Dawson City.  Seeing it nailed down
in reality, and not a chimera, the two men stood silent.  They had
defeated scurvy and temperatures of minus sixty and rapids up which
their boat had to be hauled by bare hands, and murderous mosquitoes and
they had reached their destination after twenty-three months and nearly
twenty-one hundred miles of hellish travel.

Neither of the men exulted or gave cries of victory, and neither
revealed what prayers or thanks he did give, but Lord Luton, in this
moment of extraordinary triumph, knew what any gentlemen must do.
Instructing Fogarty to conceal their camp in the treed area that sloped
away from the river, lest anyone down in Dawson see them before they
were prepared, he said: "Fogarty, we'll enter in style."  For two days
he kept himself and the Irishman less than a mile from their
destination while they cleaned their gear, dusted their clothes, and
made themselves generally presentable.  From a tiny military kit which
he carried, Luton produced a needle and thread, and for much of the
second day he perched on a rock mending the tears in his jacket.
Fogarty's beard presented a problem: "It must come off,1 Luton
insisted.  "It would look improper for me to present myself
clean-shaven while I allowed you that wandering growth.  Would look as
if I didn't care."

"I'd like to keep it, Milord.  It was most helpful with the
mosquitoes."  There was no reprieve, and during most of the second
afternoon, Fogarty heated water, soaped his heavy beard, and hacked
away at its edges, wincing when the pain became unbearable.  Finally he
threw down the razor: "I cannot," whereupon Luton retrieved the razor
and cried: "Well I jolly well can."  And for the first time during this
long journey Lord Luton touched his manservant voluntarily.

Perching him on a log and covering his heavy beard with as much lather
as their last shreds of soap would produce, he grabbed Fogarty by the
head, pulled his face upward toward the warm June sun, and began almost
pulling the hairs out by the root.  It was a process so painful that
finally Fogarty broke loose, leaped to his feet and cried: "I'll do it
me self  and the rest of that day and into the evening, using the tired
old razor which he stropped at least fifty times, he fought the battle
of the beard, exposing always a bit more clean Irish skin.  At bedtime
he looked quite presentable, a lean, capable, rosy-faced man who, as
much as Lord Luton, had held the party together.

That night when Fogarty was not looking, Lord Luton took from his pack
one of the two remaining cans of meat, placed it on a flat rock and
laid the hatchet quietly beside it.  When Fogarty finally spotted it,
he was overcome, and after a painful joyous pause in which neither man
spoke, the Irishman lifted the hatchet by its cutting end and pushed
the wooden handle toward Luton: "It's your can, Milord.  You got it
here and you shall do the honors."

When the can was neatly severed, Fogarty ransacked the gear for
whatever scraps were still hiding and made one final stew, which he
served elegantly to his master: "One spoonful for you, one for me, and
Milord, never on this entire trip did any of us break that rule about
eating.  We never ate secretly nor at expense to the others."  When
Luton made no response, the Irishman added: "And you arrive as you said
you would, with your meat to spare.  You got us here," Only then did
Luton speak: "It's like dear Mr.  Trevor said that night in the tent. A
good poet always has in mind the closing lines of his poem.  So does
the leader of an expedition.  He intends to reach his target."  He fell
silent for just a moment, but then his voice hardened: "Scurvy or
Arctic freeze, pushing or pulling, he does reach his target."

Real trouble arose at dawn when Fogarty wanted to throw into a nearby
ravine the unnecessary gear that he had lugged so laboriously and which
was now useless.  "We'll toss this lot, including the last bloody can
of meat!"  he cried, but before he could do so, Luton restrained him
with a warning cry and when Fogarty turned he could see his lordship's
face was gray with anger.

"Fogarty, we have come so far, so very far.  Let us today march into
Dawson as men of honor who remain undefeated," and to Fogarty's
bewilderment he spread on blankets what gear their rucksacks could not
contain and gave a demonstration of how it should be properly packed,
with the corners neatly squared.

When all was in readiness, Luton supervised the placement of Fogarty's
pack on his back and then inspected the Irishman's clothes, brushing
them here and there: "Let us enter that sprawling mess down there as if
we were prepared to march another hundred miles," and when Fogarty said
truthfully: "Milord, I could not go another hundred," Luton said: "I
could."

At eight in the morning of 21 June 1899, Lord Luton, tall, erect and
neatly shaven, led his servant Tim Fogarty, who marched a proper three
paces behind, into Dawson City as if they were conquerors.  When
Superintendent Steele of the Mounties heard that Luton had arrived, he
hurried down the false-fronted street to meet him, bringing several
packets of mail and a list of inquiries from London.  But Luton could
express no interest in such things; his only concern was to dispatch
immediate telegrams to the families of his three dead companions.  Each
message concluded: "His death was due to an act of God and to human
miscalculations.  He died heroically, surrounded by his friends."
Satisfied that he had discharged his obligations, he was about to leave
the rude shack that served as telegraph office when Fogarty said quite
forcefully: "I'd like to inform my people, too."  Luton, striving to
mask his astonishment at a servant's presumption, said: "Go ahead," but
Fogarty said: "I have no money, Milord."  Luton asked: "All that money
you earned cutting hair?  Four customers, almost two years."  Fogarty
looked squarely at the man who'd brought him so far from Ireland and
said: "I'm keeping that money as I may need it to buy me a gold mine."
Luton smiled icily at the cheekiness of his ghillie and told the clerk:
"I'll pay for one more.  To Ireland."  Fogarty, after careful
calculation, sent his wife six words: ARRIVED GOLD FIELDS ALL

WELL WRITING SOONEST.

While Fogarty was drafting his message, Steele informed Luton that a
generous supply of funds had been received from London 'to be delivered
to Lord Luton's party, should it ever arrive."  The sender, the
Marquess of Deal, had expected his son to reach Dawson in the summer of
1898; he was a year late.

Steele's message reminded Luton of the package of mail he still held,
and he tore open a thick envelope addressed in his father's strong hand
and quickly read the first page.  His back stiffened and Steele
enquired if the letter had brought bad news.  Luton stared at the man
as if he were not there, folded the page and slid it back into its
cream envelope.  His older brother, Nigel, dead in a hunting accident
on their Irish estate.  Luton's stern, imperial face betrayed no hint
of the conflicting emotions sweeping over him: shock at his new
responsibilities as heir to the marquisate, grief at news of his
brother's death, for he had loved and respected him, and confusion
regarding his cheerless victory in having at last reached Dawson
despite intolerable defeats along the way.  Head bowed, he mumbled:
"Mostly it was bitter gall.  But there were moments.  And every man on
our team did behave well.  They really did, including Fogarty."

When Steele asked: "Will you be heading for the gold fields  Luton
stared at him in amazement and said nothing.  Gold was not on his mind
or even in his consciousness; he could not recall how he had ever
become interested in it, and certainly it was no concern of his now.
Later, when Steele related the story, he said: "He looked as if he had
never heard the word.  But then most of the people who reached Dawson
from Edmonton never went to the gold fields  They seemed content merely
to have got here alive."  Steele's people later compiled this summary
of the Edmonton traffic:

There left that town in the years 1897-1899 some fifteen hundred
persons, men and women alike, Canadians and foreigners with no
distinction.  More than half turned back without ever reaching the
Klondike.  At least seventy perished en route, and they among the
strongest and best prepared of their societies.  Of the less than a
thousand who reached the gold fields there is no record of anyone who
found gold and only a few cases in which claims were actually staked,
invariably on nonproductive streams.  Most who did succeed in arriving
here turned right around and went home without trying to visit the
fields which they knew had been preempted, the most famous case being
that of Lord Luton, the future Marquess of Deal, his older brother
Nigel having died.

Luton achieved local immortality by the boldness of his actions that
day in Dawson.  He arrived with Fogarty at eight, received his
accumulated mail at nine with indifference, not even bothering to open
most of the letters, sent his cables, and at ten, after having given
depositions concerning the deaths of three members of his party,
spotted the old stern wheeler Jose.  Parker anchored at the waterfront.
Inquiring as to its destination, he was told: The young feller at Ross
and Raglan can explain."

Hesitating not a moment, he marched down the muddy street to the store
and demanded two passages to Seattle.  A bright young clerk said:
"Boats from here have too shallow a draft.  Ours goes only to St.
Michael."

"What do I do then?"  Luton asked severely, and the clerk replied: "Oh,
Sir, one of our fine, new steamers bound for Seattle will be waiting to
pick you up the moment you arrive."  As Luton signed his name to the
manifest, the young man said: "Evelyn, that's a funny name for a man,"
and the noble lord stared down at him as if from a great height.

As he started to leave he grumbled to himself: "I came through Edmonton
to avoid America.  Now I'm heading into the heart of the damned place."
He shook his head: "The only other course is to return the way I came,
but that would be insanity."

Turning to Fogarty, he held out a ticket for the steamer, but he did
this with a gesture so impersonal and demeaning as if to say: Here it
is, come aboard if you wish, that the ghillie ignored it, and to
Luton's surprise said rather blithely, "No Milord, I came to find me a
gold mine and I shall."

"You mean ..."  Luton fumbled, 'you're not coming?"

"No, Milord," Fogarty said brightly.  "We've come to a free land and I
aim to run me own gold mine ... me own way."

There was no rancor in what he said or how he said it, and that
afternoon when the flustered nobleman started for the gangway that
would separate him forever from Fogarty, the Irishman demonstrated his
good will by offering to carry Luton's two small pieces of luggage, one
containing new clothes he had purchased in Dawson, the other the
rucksack he had carried so far and

with such uncomplaining determination.  "No," Luton said, returning the
rucksack, 'this is for you.  To help you on the gold fields and he
strode on ahead as was his custom.

But as he approached the steamer he knew that he could not in decency
part from this faithful helper without some gesture of appreciation
toward the man who had saved his life by grubbing for roots.  Reaching
out with his lean left arm, he grasped Fogarty's left shoulder and said
in a voice so low that no passengers could hear: "Stout fellow,
Fogarty," and started onto the boat, indicating that the Irishman had
been dismissed.

But Fogarty, as if already imbibing the spirit of raucous freedom that
animated Dawson, reached out and grabbed Luton's arm, swinging him
about: "I have a name, Milord.  Me friends call me Tim.  And I have a
little something for you."  Rummaging in the rucksack Luton had just
given him, he produced the treasured final can of meat and with proper
deference handed it to Evelyn: "You guarded this faithfully during our
long trip.  I'm sure you'll want it for remembrance."

Luton, neither flinching nor showing color at this forwardness of his
erstwhile servant, accepted the can with a slight bowing of his head as
if expressing gratitude, then said evenly: "It served its purpose,
Fogarty.  It got us here.  And now, as you expressed it so eloquently,
"Let us toss it in the ditch,"" and with an easy swing of his arm, as
if he were once more bowling in county cricket, he tossed it far out
into the waters of the Yukon.  Then, turning on his heel without a
gesture of any kind, he stalked toward the waiting ship.  But he was
not destined to board it on this first try, for as he stepped onto the
gangway he heard a rough voice accustomed to giving commands.  It was
Superintendent Steele of the Mounted saying: "Lord Luton, this young
woman came pleading to my office.  Said she had come to see you," and
he pushed forward the one woman in all Canada that Luton was least
eager to meet.

It was Irina Kozlok, the North Dakota castaway he had rescued from that
bleak shore along the Great Slave Lake, the one who had caused him such
anxiety as they drifted together down the Mackenzie in the crowded
Sweet Afton.  What could she be doing in Dawson?  And how in God's name
had she got here?

In his first agitated glance he saw that she was as trim and
self-assured as ever, with her freshly laundered military uniform, her
heavy boots and her neat little kepi still cocked at a jaunty angle so
an ample supply of silvery hair shone below.  Against his better
judgment he had to concede: Gad, she keeps herself appealing.  What
kind of story will she tell this time?

Before Luton could speak, Fogarty saw her and with an almost indecent
yell rushed forward, grabbed her by her slim waist, swung her in the
air and gave her a resounding kiss before he plumped her back on her
feet: "How did you get here, Madam North Dakota?"

Half-ignoring Fogarty, she straightened the suit he had rumpled and
addressed the man she had been so eager to meet: "Like I told you that
day on your boat, Lord Luton, I was always determined to reach the gold
fields and as you see, I did."  She said this with just enough of her
old icy force to make her point, but having done so, she quickly
softened and said: "I never forgot how you rescued me from certain
death .. . how out of Christian generosity you paid my fare back to
Edmonton .. . how in fact you enabled me to do the things I've done."

She said this with such an engaging accent, with such an appropriate
smile that Luton was almost forced to think: Now that she's not
endangering a young Bradcombe, she's really not such a bad sort, and he
shuddered to think that he had once considered pushing her off his boat
in the dark of night.  To make amends, he asked with unfeigned
interest: "How'd you get here?"  and she was glad of the invitation,
because she desperately wanted to tell him of the sequel to their
exciting but abortive acquaintanceship.

That big ship you put me on, and thank you again for paying my fare,
steamed its way up the river just as ice formed behind us.  I got into
Edmonton in October, I guess it must have been,

and just like you advised, everyone wanted me to go back to North
Dakota but I'd have none of that.  I got me a job as waitress.  Last
autumn in Edmonton anybody could get a job."

"What miracle happened to get you here?"  Luton asked, and she said
almost demurely: There was a big Australian who had dug for gold in his
country and was eager to try his luck on the Klondike, but like all
sensible ones he hadn't rushed north when your team and mine did.  He
sat the winter out in a warm boarding house in Edmonton.  He came to
our restaurant for his meals and what with one thing and another we got
married.  That's him, standing over there.  He jokes that he's the only
man in Alaska with no neck, but he's fierce in a fight."  Then she
added one of those extraordinary touches that distinguished her,
amusing, revealing and just a bit self-deprecatory: "An unmarried woman
in Edmonton, especially a widow with no children working in a public
place, I do believe I received six proposals of marriage a week, and
Verner had three big fights before he drove the others off.  It was
dreamland, Lord Luton, and it seems so long ago."

Then, putting her own affairs aside and grateful for the domestic
felicity she had attained, she asked: "Where are your other three? That
delightful young fellow who cared for me so thoughtful?  Wasn't his
name Philip?"

When Luton could not bear to answer, Fogarty said gently: "Drowned.
Those boots you warned him about.  They dragged him down.

Uttering a cry of grief, she covered her face and soon was sobbing: "I
told him he was too young to go."  Then she recovered her poise and
asked: "Carpenter, the nice one?"

"Dead.  Scurvy in the second winter."

"You spent two winters?  How about the one who quoted poetry?"

"Dead."

"Oh my God!  What happened to you men?  Did you miss the easy route or
something?"

Neither Luton nor Fogarty dared answer that terrible question, but
after a moment Evelyn asked: "And you?  How did you negotiate the
Mackenzie?  On your second try, that is?"

"Come early spring we're back at Athabasca Landing, same four Germans
sell our group, three couples, a new boat, bigger and stronger this
time, and the rest was easy."

"Easy?"  Luton asked in his distant, displeased manner.

"Yes.  That fall when you put me on the big boat, ice chased us up the
river.  In the spring in our boat, we chased it down.  Like everyone
advised us, we found the Peel, then the Rat where we cut our boat in
half along the line the Germans had painted on it, and we hauled it
inch by inch .. . what hellish work .. . over the Divide, but when we
reached that other little river, what do you call it?"

"The Bell," Luton replied in an ashen whisper.

"Once we hit it, no more trouble.  It fed into the Porcupine and after
being careful to turn right at that junction we sailed so fast, first
thing you know we were on the Yukon where we bought six tickets for
that steamer right there, the one you were boarding, which whisked us
into Dawson in a proper hurry."

"How long did it take?"  Luton asked, and he listened almost benumbed
as she calculated: "Well, we left Edmonton earlier than most, maybe
twentieth of May, so we could beat the crowd to Athabasca and get one
of the good boats.  The rest, pretty normal except that portage was no
fun.  We got into Fort Yukon where we bought our tickets for Dawson ..
."  Losing count, she beckoned for her husband to join them and the big
Australian, a veteran of gold fields ambled over.  "Verner, what date
did we reach Dawson last year?"

"Eighth of September.  Everyone said it was one of the speediest trips.
So it would be twenty May till early September, fifteen, sixteen
weeks."  He said this in such a barbarous Australian accent that Lord
Luton almost winced to think that this man, and a million like him,
were full-fledged members of the British Empire.

"What are you doing now?"  Fogarty asked, and the couple, taking turns,
explained: "We arrived here too late to hit that big strike on the
Klondike, but so did most everyone.  Anyway, Verner said he was tired
of mining.  We operate what you might call a pawn shop, buy and sell
anything," and Irina added: "You can make surprising money if you're
sharp."  Luton gasped inwardly: A pawn shop.  This couple is right out
of Dickens.  But Fogarty cried: That's wonderful!  You have your own
store and all?"  and Irina said: "We do.  Verner built it.  We used the
timbers from six Yukon riverboats abandoned by those who couldn't wait,
they were so eager to be off to the diggings.  We bought two for one
dollar American each."

But now, in her moment of triumph, Irina, like the responsible woman
she had always tried to be, wanted to repair ancient damage, and she
asked: "Lord Luton, could we please sit over there?"  When they were
apart from the others, but still within the shadow of the steamer that
would separate them forever, she said quietly: "You never liked me, and
I didn't like you.  But I did understand you, and I pray you understood
me.  You were a man frightened by the onset of winter, I was a lone
woman who had just survived a terrible tragedy."

Luton started to speak, but she held up her hand, and when it was in
the air she used it to brush off her cap, so that her wealth of silvery
hair fell free to frame her face: "No, let me finish, then you.  I knew
your problem.  You were terrified that your nephew would fall
completely in love with me.  As a proud man from a proud family you
couldn't allow that.  You would do anything to prevent it and so would
Mr.  Carpenter, because you understood how such an affair .. . the
woman six or seven years older .. it could unbalance a young man for
life.  You knew that, but so did I, Lord Luton.  I would never have
allowed it to happen ..."

"But you encouraged it.  Harry and I could both see that."

"I was not thinking of Philip," she said contritely.  "I was thinking
of myself.  I had suffered terrifying loss.  At the end of the world.
With no one.  With not one penny there or back in

Edmonton.  Lord Luton, I needed assurance.  I needed the affection of
some other human being.  In that cold, cold land I needed warmth."
Covering her face, she wept silently for several moments, then said as
she wiped her nose with her sleeve: "He was such a dear boy, so good,
so promising.  I share your grief at his loss."

Luton, a man who had in the last year also suffered defeats few men
experience, needed to exorcise himself and confessed: "At one point I
was so distraught I contemplated shoving you overboard in the dark of
night.  Harry prevented me.  He thought I was joking, but I wasn't."

Irina stared at Luton, who averted his eyes, and she wondered what
alchemy the deaths of his friends had wrought on his soul that he would
now admit this monstrous thought to her, his intended victim.  A few
moments later she asked: "Why did things go so wrong that three of your
team died?"

"Nature dealt us a series of dreadful blows .. . much like the storm
that sank your first boat on Great Slave."  He was still unwilling to
admit that he had abetted an uncharitable nature, had indeed invited
her retaliation for his blunders: "You could call it rotten luck."
Then, to his own surprise he asked: "Have you ever known anyone who
stood this close to death from scurvy .. . the slow rotting away of the
human body?"  And he held his thumb and forefinger only a millimeter
apart.

"So now it's back to England and a castle somewhere I suppose?"

"Yes, I do now have a castle and many new responsibilities."

A gush of tears overwhelmed her, and at the end she said: "I can see
the faces of each of your three men, of my own three farmers.  They
will be with us forever."

When Luton said nothing, she concluded: "On the first time we parted,
you refused to accept my kiss of thanks.  Don't refuse me again."  He
rose, stood very erect and, striving to mask his distaste, he allowed
her to kiss him but she had to stand on tiptoe to do it.  Then he
asked: "What will you do when the gold runs out?"  and she shrugged her
shoulders as she replaced her kepi: "Who knows?  Verner might rush off
to another gold field

Who can guess what we will do?  We are voyagers headed for destinations
we cannot see.  But like traveling the Mackenzie; if you get thrown
back the first time, you keep trying."

Signaling to Fogarty and her husband that she was ready, she joined
them and watched Lord Luton briskly climb the gangway and turn at the
railing of the ]os.  Parker to salute her in farewell.  "Where are you
heading?"  the big Australian shouted and he called down: "Back to
civilization," and with a kind of sardonic amusement Evelyn lingered
there, watching the three as they walked jovially away: There they go,
an upstart Irish peasant trying to be better than he is, a hulking
Australian with no neck nor any command of good English, and a Yankee
farm girl of no background whatever."  He shook his head in a gesture
of surrender and mumbled: "Barbarians take over the world while proper
men huddle like bears in icy caves."

But that cynical comment was not to be Lord Luton's final evaluation of
his well-planned expedition to Dawson.  It could not be; he was too
good a man for that.  As he watched Irina Kozlok disappear from view,
swinging along with her mates in a free and easy stride, her fine
uniform glistening in the sun, her kepi properly cocked, he suddenly
uttered an anguished cry that startled others lining the rail and he
felt no embarrassment in disturbing them in this highly improper way.

"Oh God!"  he cried, his heart torn with anguish, his brain at last
prepared to face the truth.  "She spent fifteen weeks going the right
way.  I spent one hundred going the wrong, and I lost three companions
in doing so."  He trembled, still looking at the empty space she had
just vacated, and then like some penitent anchorite in his medieval
cave he mumbled, his proud head bowed at last: "Merciful God, let the
souls of those precious three men forgive me."

FOUR

Requiem

Thoughtful biographers of the ninth Marquess of Deal, which title he
inherited in 1909, judged that his disastrous expedition to the
Klondike had not been all loss:

He spent twenty-three months covering the two thousand and forty-three
miles getting to Dawson and remained only a few hours, but it was this
prolonged and dreadful experience, in which he lost three of his party,
including his sister's only son, that put steel into the heart of the
Marquess.  When Lloyd George tapped him in 1916 to whip the British
industrial effort into line so that Britain could muster its full
strength against the Kaiser, he was as well prepared as a man could be
to discipline the private sector.

A blue-blooded nobleman and a man who in the privacy of his club had
dismissed Lloyd George as 'that insufferable little Welshman, no
gentleman at all," he rallied to his assignment, became one of Lloyd
George's most trusted adherents, and performed wonders in helping to
throw back the German might.  In dealing with refractory industrialists
who came to him complaining that they simply could not accept the
difficulties involved in this wartime measure or that, he never
referred to his two years in the Arctic, but he did look the man in the
eye, stare him down with what was known as "Evelyn's silent sneer' and
ask: "Difficulties?  Do you know what difficulty is?"  and because
everyone knew of his experiences in the Arctic, he got his way.

But that was not the characteristic which enabled him to become one of
the most effective ministers of war, for as Lloyd George remarked in
one of his cabinet summaries: "The Marquess of Deal could reach a
decision quicker than any man I ever knew, defend it with brilliant
logic and ram it down the throats of all who opposed.  But if his
opponent marshalled relevant facts to support his case, Deal was
prepared to listen and even reverse himself, acknowledging with
disarming grace: "I could have been wrong."  I asked him once: "Deal,
how in God's name can you be so overpowering when you first thunder out
your decision, then be so attentive when the other fellow argues his
case?  And how did you school yourself to surrender so graciously if
his arguments prove superior to yours?"  and he gave a cryptic answer:
"Because I learned in the Arctic it's folly to persist in a
predetermined course if in your heart you suspect you might be wrong."
I do believe his willingness to listen to others, to bend his will to
theirs, anything to keep production humming, helped us win our war
against the Boche."

Among the few personal items Lord Luton carried back to England was
Trevor Blythe's battered copy of the 1861 Palgrave's Golden Treasury.
Harry Carpenter's dying wish was that Luton take it to Lady Julia, but
before making the presentation he had put together in an elegant
limited edition for family and friends a slim volume consisting of
three parts: a selection from those Palgrave lyrics Trevor Blythe had
read during the night sessions near the Arctic Circle, extracts from
his own journal of the expedition, and, most precious of all,
disjointed fragments of a poem cycle Blythe had intended to call
Borealis.

In selecting the Palgrave poems, Luton chose those which he and the
others had especially prized, and that collection is here reprinted in
part.  The editors express gratitude to the tenth Marquess of Deal for
allowing access to this treasured family heirloom, which is now part of
the library collection at Wellfleet Castle.

In justifying his choices Luton explained: "Three of us were not yet
married, so it was understandable that we would find great pleasure in
the love poems, and Trevor read to us some of the most beautiful, none
better than this first one which we all cherished."

LXXXIX

Go, lovely Rose!  Tell her, that wastes her time and me,

That now she knows, When I resemble her to thee, How sweet and fair she
seems to be.

Tell her that's young And shuns to have her graces spied,

That hadst thou sprung In deserts, where no men abide, Thou must have
un commended died.

Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired:

Bid her come forth, Suffer herself to be desired, And not blush so to
be admired.

Then die!  that she The common fate of all things rare

May read in thee:

How small a part of time they share That are so wondrous sweet and
fair!

E. WALLER

Cupid and my Campaspe play'd At cards for kisses; Cupid paid: He stakes
his quiver, bow, and arrows, His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then down he throws The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on's cheek (but none knows how); With these, the crystal of his
brow, And then the dimple on his chin; All these did my Campaspe win;
At last he set her both his eyes-She won, and Cupid blind did rise.

O Love!  has she done this to thee?

What shall, alas, become of me?

J. LYLE

XCII

A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness: A lawn
about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction,-An erring lace,
which here and there Enthrals the crimson stomacher,-A cuff neglectful,
and thereby Ribbands to flow confusedly A winning wave, deserving
note,

In the tempestuous petticoat, A careless shoe-string, in whose tie

I see a wild civility, Do more bewitch me, than when art

Is too precise in every part.

R.HERRICK

CI

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

Prythee, why so pale?  Will, if looking well can't move her,

Looking ill prevail?

Prythee, why so pale?

Why so dull and mute, young sinner?

Prythee, why so mute?  Will, when speaking well can't win her,

Saying nothing do't?

Prythee, why so mute?

Quit, quit, for shame!  this will not move,

This cannot take her; If of herself she will not love,

Nothing can make her;

The D I take her!

SIR J. SUCKLING

xc Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup

And I'll not look for wine.  The thirst that from the soul doth rise

Doth ask a drink divine; But might I of Jove's nectar sup,

I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,

Not so much honouring thee As giving it a hope that there

It could not wither'd be; But thou thereon didst only breathe

And sent' st it back to me; Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,

Not of itself but thee!

B. JONSON

LXXXII

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles to-day,

To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun,

The higher he's a getting The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he's to setting

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst Times, still succeed the
former.

Then be not coy, but use your time;

And while ye may, go marry; For having lost but once your prime,

You may for ever tarry.

R. HERRICK

"But the harsh times, the terrible times came when we needed not the
reassurances of love but these stern reminders of what the essential
character of a man ought to be.  Then we turned to those oak-like
definitions of how a true Englishman should behave in adversity; poems
that sound like bugle calls at night with barbarians at the gate.  My
heart elates as I recall them."

cxxiv

How sleep the Brave who sink to rest By all their Country's wishes
blest!  When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, Returns to deck their
hallow'd mould, She there shall dress a sweeter sod Than Fancy's feet
have ever trod.

By fairy hands their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is
sung; There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps
their clay, And Freedom shall awhile repair To dwell a weeping hermit
there!

w. COLLINS

LXXI

When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark
world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with
me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he
returning chide,-Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?  I fondly
ask: But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies; God doth not need Either man's work, or his
own gifts: who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; His
state

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean
without rest;-They also serve who only stand and wait.

j. MILTON

LXXIIl

It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make Man better be; Or
standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry,
bald, and sere; A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall
and die that night-It was the plant and flower of Light.  In small
proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may
perfect be.

B. JONSON

CCXLVI

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said; Two vast and trunk
less legs of stone Stand in the desert.  Near them on the sand Half
sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer
of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which
yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal
these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my
works, ye Mighty, and despair!"  Nothing beside remains.  Round the
decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level
sands stretch far away.

P.B. SHELLEY

LXXXIII

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind

That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,

To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,

The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace

A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such

As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, Dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

COLONEL LOVELACE

"And then there was that little song by the master voice of our tongue.
Its words were simple and some lines almost comic, but they bespoke the
pure joy of being alive.  We treasured them, reciting them often to one
another when temperatures plunged."

XXVII

When icicles hang by the wall

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail; When blood is nipt, and ways be
foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl

Tuwhoo!

Tuwhit!  tuwhoo!  A merry note!  While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all around the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the
snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw; When roasted crabs hiss in the
bowl-Then nightly sings the staring owl

Tuwhoo!

Tuwhit!  tuwhoo!  A merry note!  While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

W. SHAKESPEARE

Lord Luton introduced the Trevor Blythe fragments from his proposed
poem sequence Borealis with this appropriate disclaimer: "We must
remember that these are the introductory attempts of a young poet
striving to find his way.  He had already proved at Oxford that he
could write the traditional three-verse rhymed lyric, and his sonnets
won him prizes, but later he felt obligated, and properly so, to
experiment with forms, length of line, rhyme and blank verse.  What he
would have kept and what discarded we cannot conjecture; but obviously
some of his attempts succeed much better than others.

"He began under the influence of the standard elegy, sixteen lines of
fairly competent un rhymed iambic pentameter:'

Hark!  From the distant village tolls the bell Summoning to prayer all
those who feel the need

Of more than mortal sustenance.  These rites Can be discharged by those
who hear the cry Of brass on brass to speed the well-worn prayer, To
bless the child newborn or ease the gray And palsied head to its
eternal rest.  I hear a sterner call: the road untrod, The heathen who
has never seen the light, The passage through dark seas uncharted
still, The desert that they claim no man can pass, The virgin mountain
peaks ne'er stepped upon, The lure of gold still hiding in the ground,
The call, the call from some untended Grail: "Find me!  Rescue me
before I tarnish!  And yours shall be the shout of triumph..."

The long middle portion of the poem," explained Luton, 'had not been
attempted, and although Blythe must have contemplated how it would
develop, he left no notes.  However, he did leave on two pages
unattached to the longer poem, but obviously intended to be a part, a
lyrical passage celebrating his adventures on the Mackenzie during the
days when all was proceeding on schedule."

Broad Mackenzie helped to speed us Caribou came down to feed us Arctic
winds could not defeat us Ravens came to guide and greet us.  Endless
nights were not oppressive For our minds flared forth in wonder Never
mean nor small-possessive As we talked our world asunder.  Blizzards
whistled in but spared us Challenge tempted us and dared us.

Borealis explodes in the night Leaping and twisting in tortured forms
Conflagrations of shimmering light Heavens ablaze in celestial storms.
Arcs in the sky Tumble and tremble Teasing the eye With forms they
resemble.  There leaps a bridge to the moon Here drops a chasm to hell
Soars high that silver balloon Borealis ablaze and all's well. Patterns
tremendous Clashes stupendous Behold that vast fire as it rages Then
fades to pastel as it ages And drifts from the sky all too soon
Borealis asleep and all's well.  Spring days bring cheer No cold to
fear New sun to warm Nothing to harm Arctic gods sat on our shoulder
Whisp'ring to us "Bolder, bolder!"  We became the lords of winter
Brushing off the icy splinter Dangling from our frozen portal Till the
cry came "You are mortal."

"At this point," Luton wrote, Trevor was prepared to deal with the
death of his friend and companion, Philip, but only eight
unsatisfactory lines in an unusual meter remain of what he certainly
planned as an extended threnody:'

Mighty Mackenzie, enraged at our boldness,

Drew from the lakes she hid high in her mountains

Torrents of water locked up in the coldness

Sent it cascading in perilous fountains.

Ice blocks as big as an emperor's palace

Gouged out whole forests and left the trees bending

Lurking to snatch at young men un attending

Eager to drown them in hideous malice.

"Obviously dissatisfied with the meter though pleased with the words,
he crossed them out, pencilling the caution: "Graver, much graver
rhythm!"  Then he turned to the closing, the lines that had won praise
from Harry Carpenter:' the fault was mine.  I visualized the Grail a
shining light, Perceptible from any vale in which I and my helpers
struggled.  It would be A constant beacon, milestone in the sky,

Signalling far

Calling to goal.

I did not comprehend that it could function Only by flashing back light
from me.  Its gleam Existed, but in partnership with mine, And I had
launched the search a blind man, Nothing within myself to guide the
way, No silver in my soul to match the blaze Of what I sought, nor did
I test the peaks That would forever bar me from my goal Till I broke
through with force and fortitude To conquer them and in my victory

Conquer myself as well.  I see my fellow seekers lost in darkness

And know that I have failed to lead the way.  Mountains en girl us,
rivers swirl, we lose Our trail and cry: "Reluctant Paladins we, Who
seek our Golden Grail by fleeing from it."

TREVOR BLYTHE

The Arctic Circle Belated spring 1898

The major part of this small and valued publication reappeared later in
Luton's highly regarded An Englishman in the Far Corners, published in
1928, by which time he had become ninth Marquess of Deal, aloof and
white haired but still slim and erect.

Reflections

This short novel came into being because of a photograph I first saw
years ago.  It captivated me from the moment I came upon it and has
reverberated in my memory so vibrantly that it now stands as the
honored frontispiece to this book.

It was taken in the studio of a professional photographer working in
the tiny northwest frontier town of Edmonton during the frenzied gold
rush of August 1897.  I had been doing casual research on the Alaskan
portion of that rush, and had, at that time, no interest whatever in
the preposterous madness in Edmonton, whose historical importance was
unknown to me.  But this photograph was so evocative of the thousands
of amateurs streaming north that it registered profoundly, becoming for
me the symbol of that period.

It is a little masterpiece, still in first-class condition, and shows a
young woman gold seeker perhaps thirty years old, dressed in heavy
boots, a kind of hunting uniform with shoulders excessively puffed out,
and the sauciest cap you ever saw.  Her sensible looking, no-nonsense
head is tilted slightly and she stares at us with a resolute, almost
defiant set to her lower jaw, her mouth pulled in at the corners.  Her
hair has been bobbed, I believe, in preparation for the long trek
north, and she has haunted my memory during all the years since I first
saw her.

I was unable to learn her name or place of origin, for she might have
been either a Canadian from some place like Ontario or an American from
Michigan or one of her sister states.  I could not even determine by
what route she tried to reach Dawson, but I have always supposed she
tried the overland one, and if she did I fancy she may have died during
the first terrible autumn when, miles from Edmonton, she awakened to
the terrifying fact that she was never going to make it to Dawson and
that she was too far from Edmonton to scurry back.  She may have
starved to death on the bank of some turbulent mountain stream she was
powerless to ford.

On the other hand, her portrait is that of a determined young woman, a
realist, and there is a chance, I think, that when the realities of
this great delusion became clear she turned her back on the folly and
hastened back to Edmonton, from where she quickly departed for her
former home in Michigan or Ontario.  Or, being the resolute woman she
seems, she could well have gone down the Mackenzie, over the mountain
divide and on to her destination.

In the original version of Journey I had no place for a heroine, but
she went every step of the way with me nonetheless.  She was my guide,
my muse, my touchstone, and was so indelible that she kept fighting her
way back onto my pages.

Journey is a narrative which depicts the courage that men and women can
exhibit when dealing with adversity, even that which they have brought
upon themselves.  Writing and publishing this novel has been an intense
experience for me for I, too, was dealing with adversity, if of a
different nature and under different circumstances.  Although Journey
now stands as a fully conceived novel in its own right, with which I am
well pleased, it had its genesis as part of another work.

How the story of five men's tragic journey across Canada to the
Klondike gold fields came to be written and then published as journey
deserves explanation.  It starts with my life-long interest in Canada
which began with a summer spent on Lake Mus-koka in 1929.  Canoeing
into the wilderness north of there I caught a glimpse of the essential
Canada: open, majestic, wild, challenging and filled with fine people
and a commanding life.  It was an unequaled introduction to a land of
manifold beauties.

I followed it up through the years with visits to various parts of the
country whenever an opportunity presented itself: Halifax, the coast of
Newfoundland, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, never in an orderly way,
and perhaps more enjoyable because of the arbitrary nature of my
travel.  However, my main interest came about through my study of the
history of Spanish culture in preparation for writing my book on that
subject, Iberia, and my subsequent studies of Hispanic communities in
Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida.

What was the relationship?  I came early to the belief that every
incident in Quebec's struggle for recognition of its distinct language
and culture would one day be repeated in the southern United States,
with Spanish in our country replacing the role of French in Canada.
Canada thus became of vital interest, and I followed with a microscope
the twists and turns of how this nation of two languages sought to
apply intelligent answers to the problem.

I remember two incidents which epitomized the situation for the
visiting observer.  At a sports meeting in Montreal, where everyone on
the panel had already demonstrated his command of English, an agitated
member of the audience rose, pointed out that the meeting was being
held in Quebec and was therefore obliged to obey Quebec's new language
law, and warned that if the words of the speakers were not also
translated into French he would summon the police.  Cowed by his
threat, we sat through an afternoon of
speech-transtation-speech-translation when everyone present knew that
this was both unnecessary and an irritation.

Later, on the same trip, I was in Toronto talking with businessmen of
that city, one of the finest in North America, about how they had opted
to close down their Montreal headquarters and seek refuge in Toronto,
even though they had been happy in Quebec and did not want to leave.
This seemed so preposterous that I asked for an explanation, and they
informed me that under Quebec's language law all businesses in that
province now had to keep their records in French, and the extra work
this required had made conducting business there impossible.

After these two introductions to the friction between the two language
groups, and with my conviction that sooner or later a similar movement
for language rights would germinate in our Hispanic communities, I
followed with the closest attention the implementation of official
bilingualism in Canada and became, as a result, moderately informed on
life north of the border.

I have since learned that Canada's two main language groups have found
accommodation.  Quebec is no longer threatening to separate from the
rest of the nation, and many anglophone Canadians avidly seek bilingual
education for their childeren.  The language problem we face in America
stems from different causes, and it remains to be seen whether we can
resolve our differences as effectively as Canada has resolved hers.

I have met Canadians in other circumstances, too.  While working in
both Barbados and Florida I became aware that Canadians are some of the
best-informed travelers in the world, seeming always to know where they
are going and what local custom and history have to offer.  Wherever
they cluster outside their own country, especially in warmer climates,
they behave admirably and invest wisely, so that certain spots in
Florida seem to be Canadian enclaves, where citizens from that country
build the condominiums and operate the big shopping malls.

Yet, like many Americans, who are poorly informed about Canada, I
tended to perceive Canada for the most part through its expatriates;
those Canadians who have met with outstanding success in the United
States-Saul Bellow, John Kenneth Gal-braith, Peter Jennings, Senator
Sam Hayakawa-whose achievements have led to a great respect in America
for Canadians as a whole.  I have admired, too, the successes of those
who chose to remain and work in Canada, not least my fellow writers
Pierre Berton, Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler and Morley
Callaghan.

I did have one other contact with Canada, but it was personal.  Once at
a countryside picnic in Pennsylvania where the Micheners of the world
convened to celebrate the glories of their supposedly distinguished
past, I met by accident my cousin the Right Honourable Roland Michener,
the governor general of Canada, and we locals felt a bit puffed up.

My interest in things Canadian never diminished, and whenever I came
upon someone in my travels who was familiar with the country I engaged
in long conversations about political changes, life in the western
provinces, and especially adventures in the Arctic.  So it was
inevitable that when I began seriously to contemplate a novel on Alaska
I would spend considerable time pondering how to fit in a Canadian
contribution.  And, of course, there was always the vivid memory of
that woman gold seeker in Edmonton.

When I began constructing the intellectual outline of my novel Alaska I
had three special desires beyond the obvious ones that would have to be
treated in any fictional work on that region.  I wanted to help the
American public to think intelligently about the Arctic where large
portions of future international history might well focus;1!  wanted to
remind my readers that Russia had held Alaska for a longer period, 127
years (1741 through 1867 inclusive) than the United States had held it,
122 years (1867 through 1988); and I particularly desired to acquaint
Americans with the role that neighboring Canada had played and still
does play in Alaskan history.

The reasons for these desires are easy to explain.  I had found my
first good luck in writing by dealing in a fresh way with the South
Pacific and had always wanted to complete the cycle with work on the
North Pacific.  In the years after 1946 when I finished Tales of the
South Pacific scores of correspondents had urged me to write about
either the North Pacific or Alaska or both, but I refrained because I
was afraid I did not know enough.  However, the urge to tackle such an
enticing subject was ever-present, and I visited the area repeatedly to
check my understandings in case I should later wish to try.

My interest in Russian Alaska is duplicated by many American historians
and geographers who have knowledge of either the history of Russian or
of British and American attempts to explore that part of the world.  As
a young man I had studied the eastward expansion of the Russian empire
to the Pacific with the same avidity that I studied American and
Canadian expansion westward to the same ocean.  I was moderately well
informed about the steps Russia had taken to extend her empire eastward
and I had been allowed to travel to many of her Asian frontiers but
not, alas, into Siberia itself.  But if books can provide the portrait
of a land, and as a writer I had to think so, I had acquired a powerful
understanding of and admiration for the great, halting, confused and
finally triumphant Russian push to the east.  What I did not know very
well, and I was dismayed to realize this, were the Alaska-Yukon border
region and the events that had occurred there, particularly during the
years of the gold rush.  In fact, I knew of only three incidents that
might be usable in a novel, and that was pretty thin gruel for the kind
of book I hoped to write.

I was aware, as were most Americans with knowledge of our history, that
the great gold rush of 1897-1899 occurred mainly on Canadian soil and
that the Canadian police had saved the day when the American presence
in the region had not yet been fully established.  Many Americans, like
me, deplored the fact that the boundary between the two nations had not
been just a few miles farther to the east, which would have placed
Dawson City and the Klondike on American soil, but we accepted its
position as a regrettable mistake that could not be corrected.

On the subject of boundaries, I had also read many years ago about the
hilarious contretemps that occurred in connection with the important
Hudson's Bay post at Fort Yukon, that strategic settlement just off the
Arctic Circle where the great Yukon River stops flowing north and takes
a ninety degree turn to the west for its long run into the Bering Sea.
When American surveyors got around to checking boundaries in 1869, they
learned that this big Canadian post was not in Canada but in Alaska! An
amiable agreement was worked out, with never a harsh word, whereby the
Hudson's Bay people would move their trading store the proper number of
miles to the east, which would put it safely on Canadian soil.  In
fact, the agreement was so amicably reached that American military
personnel helped the Canadians not only to make the move but also to
build a new trading post at a site called Rampart.

Unfortunately, the Canadian-American team moved the site the proper
number of miles, not as the crow flies, but along the bank of the
Porcupine river, which wandered this way and that, so that when the
Canadians had finished making the move and were installed in their new
trading post, the next team of surveyors found that they were still on
American soil.  In some disgust the Canadians abandoned their new home,
which would be remembered as Old Rampart, and moved a substantial
distance into Canada, where they named their post Rampart House.  It
had been a trivial affair with comic interest, but hardly the kind of
material on which to base the entire episode I wanted to write.

Of much greater significance was an incident I could use, one which
glows in history because of the restraint with which both Canada and
the United States behaved.  In the years 1877 and 1878 conditions in
America's new territory of Alaska were in dismal shape, primarily
because no responsible form of government had been established for the
vast territory.  Matters deteriorated so precipitously that the few
American settlers in Sitka, once the Russian capital and now the
American, feared that rebellious Tlingit Indians were about to invade
and slaughter all white people.

Justification for their fear has never been established, but in 1879
distraught citizens, unable to obtain protection from their own
government, made a dangerous canoe trip south to the Canadian military
outpost at Prince Rupert, imploring the naval command there to dispatch
a warship to save Alaska on behalf of an American government that
seemed about to lose it.

A daring Canadian officer made a snap decision to aid his American
cousins, and on i March 1879 the Canadian warship Osprey steamed into
Sitka Sound.  This show of force dampened the Tlinglit uprising, if
indeed it had ever existed, and for nearly two months this Canadian
vessel represented organized government in Alaska.  When an American
ship arrived belatedly, the Osprey courteously saluted and retired,
taking with her the gratitude of the American colonists, who would
forever after insist that 'when the Americans would do nothing to
protect us, Canadians saved the day."

That was the totality of what I had to work with regarding Canada's
role on the Alaskan frontier, and it wasn't much, but when I started my
serious research I came upon an American source which said cryptically
that a Canadian writer named Pierre Breton, who from the entry I judged
to have long been dead, had written a book about the gold rush,
published in the United

States as The Klondike Fever, and I asked a research librarian upon
whom I often depended to see if she could track down this old book.  In
less than five minutes she called back: "He is very much alive.  He is
one of Canada's most respected writers.  Six libraries in our district
have copies of his book, which was published in 1958.  And
incidentally, his name is Berton."

Since I could walk to the library nearest my home I soon had a copy of
this excellent work, one written with a powerful sense of organization
and emphasis and in a congenial style, but as I read it in great gulps
I realized that Berton was telling me in a fascinating manner what I
already knew about the joint American-Canadian experience in the gold
fields.  I was not wasting my time reading the book, because Berton was
continually throwing up bits of compelling information I had not
previously known, but I was not getting much material about the
strictly Canadian role in the gold rush.  Then in chapter six, I came
upon a section dealing with the hilarious-tragic stampede out of the
Canadian frontier town of Edmonton.

It was enchanting material, just the kind of story I had been seeking
upon which to construct a Canadian narrative, which would keep my novel
about Alaska from being narrowly parochial.  It had reverberating
overtones, provided correctives to standard accounts and opened my eyes
to the complex role Western Canada had played in the gold rush.  It was
tantalizingly brief, only thirteen pages, but I shall ever be thankful
to Berton for including that short glimpse in his book, for had he not
alerted me to the Edmonton mania I might have missed it completely.  No
other book I used had mentioned it.

However, his material, good as it was, did not provide enough data for
my purpose, so, utilizing all the research knowledge of some very fine
librarians in Alaskan centers, particularly those of the state
historical library in Juneau, I came finally upon a very brief note in
a learned journal.  It said that the Edmonton story had been told in
fascinating detail in J.G. MacGregor's Klondike Rush Through Edmonton
1897-1898, and it was obvious that it must hold the very material I
sought.  Telex calls were spread afar and, when after some days I had
received no response, I concluded that the MacGregor book must have
been privately printed and that no copies were going to be available.
One day, sometime later, the postman arrived with a parcel from a
library in a distant city, and when I opened it, there in my hands lay
the one book I needed to complete my Canadian research.

This is, I think, an almost perfect example of two aspects of writing:
the necessity for a serious writer to keep following even the most
tenuous thread, the slightest hint that somewhere in a distant library
a book will be hiding that provides all the information he seeks; more
important is the other side of this coin, that anyone who writes
anything pertaining to human knowledge must, to complete the task,
lodge that material in some library or archival center.

In my writing life I have worked on some of the most arcane subjects,
topics on which one would gamble that no one had previously written
anything, but with enough searching I have invariably come up with
something, and most often with a full-length, well-written work like
the MacGregor on Edmonton.  I have found that nineteenth-century
English clergymen stuck away in far corners of the world with nothing
much to do wrote some of the most valuable books in an amateur style
reporting on their hobbies such as travel or archaeology or the history
of strange nations and tribes.  German professional scholars, too, have
been remarkably far-ranging.

From repeated experience I can confidently state that I doubt if anyone
can devise a subject of even the slightest significance but that
someone previously has written a substantial book upon it.  The
accumulation of usable knowledge in this world is staggering, and with
the new computerized indexes even the most fugitive document can be
tracked down.

The value of my two books on Edmonton was demonstrated when two
professional readers of the Alaska manuscript protested my having
characters die of scurvy:

Ridiculous.  A full century earlier James Cook had demonstrated an
absolute cure for scurvy.  Surely seasoned explorers like Lord Luton
and Harry Carpenter would know how to prevent it?

Browbeaten and afraid that I had misconstrued something I might have
read too hastily, I went back to Berton and found this passage:

Wind City lay on Wind River, and here were camped fifty or sixty men,
three quarters of whom suffered terribly from scurvy.  When gangrene
set in, their toes were cut off with hacksaws; and when they died,
their corpses were stuffed down the empty mine shafts .. . The death
toll reflected the internationalism of the camp.  On November 30 a man
from Chicago died of scurvy; on December 13 a Frenchman died of scurvy;
in early January two Dutchmen died of scurvy.

Rarely does one settle an argument so conclusively.  Of course my
English travelers would have known how to prevent scurvy, and during
their first long winter in the Arctic, with adequate food, they handled
the problem easily.  But this was the second winter, and a terrible one
it was, with most adventurers penned up in tiny cabins without adequate
food or medicine, and scurvy wiped them out.

The MacGregor book was a treasure house of historical information on
Edmonton's role in the gold rush, and when I finished my first
delighted reading, I saw that the real men and women who trekked
through Edmonton in those days provided such a wealth of character and
incident that I was free to construct my group of men heading for
Dawson as arbitrarily as I wished.

Nothing I could invent would seem preposterous after one read what real
people were doing in those wild days.

And here I reminded myself of a curious rule governing writers.  We are
forbidden by our lawyers to read any books of fiction dealing with the
subject at hand, because a book of fiction is the exclusive property of
the author who invented it and to borrow from it is plagiarism, but the
writer is free to refer to scholarly non-fiction research, if he
acknowledges the reference, for it is considered an addition to the
general reservoir of human knowledge.  I had an amusing experience with
this concept some years ago.  Readers began writing to me, pointing out
that an extremely popular novel had used whole pages from one of my
novels, and when a major magazine printed excerpts side by side, the
similarity was clear and something had to be done.

But now a curious impasse developed, because Publisher A is very loath
to cause trouble for publisher B about unauthorized borrowing from a
work of fiction, because next week A might want to borrow legitimately
from B, so lawsuits are avoided.  In this case my publisher did
complain quietly to the publisher of the offending book, and after some
time received a letter of explanation, which deserves to go into the
history of publishing as the best possible response to such charges:

My client denies that she has ever heard of Mr.  Mich-ener as a writer,
or ever read one of his books, or knew in any way that he had written
on this subject.  But since the similarity between the two excerpts is
undeniable, we can only conclude that both writers borrowed from the
same original source, which we have been unable to identify.

Hoping that I might be able to devise a group of five interesting male
characters to make the run from Edmonton to Dawson, I hit upon the idea
of a group of four interrelated men of London's aristocracy and an
Irish servant, and the more I worked with them, the better I liked
them.  From time to time I regretted that they were not all Canadians,
but my knowledge of Canadian family life was too limited to permit
that; I had done graduate work at a British university and had
personally known moderately well the kinds of men I wished to depict.
Besides, the geographical settings would be Canadian, some of the most
striking in the world, and my five Britons would encounter Canadians on
their journey.

Very early in my planning I decided for two reasons that my five men
would approach the gold fields by the Mackenzie River route.  The
overland route from Edmonton to Dawson was so terrible and so
impenetrable that my characters would simply be bogged down in tragedy
from start to finish, a grinding, grueling, step-by-step descent into
oblivion, and I did not wish to write that kind of tale.  Equally
important was the fact that I had conceived a deep interest in the
Mackenzie River system, and although I had not traveled upon it myself,
I had flown over great stretches of it and had read many accounts of
its discovery and exploration.  It is a majestic river and one
admirably suited to what I wanted to say.  Once I focused my thinking I
discarded all other options.  My tale would be an evocation of this
great, formless, wandering river as it heads for the Arctic.

The three components of my Canadian narrative were now firmed: a river
I respected, an historical incident of some magnitude, and five
characters I understood and liked.  With such material a writer is in
luck.  Holed up in a log cabin in Sitka, Alaska, I wrote diligently for
several months, trying to knock my story on the gold rush into proper
form, and as I toiled through one version after another the segment
that constantly pleased me was the one on the journey of this group of
Britons down the Mackenzie River.  I liked my five men increasingly and
shared their trials with them.  Tears came to my eyes as certain
incidents devastated them and me, and I had an amazingly clear picture
of the survivors: the Irish ghillie who would become a major character
in the remaining portions of Alaska, and the nobleman who would become
an aide to Lloyd George during the 1914-1918 war.

A manuscript is a subtle affair, and long ones such as those I most
often write need to be carefully constructed; components that appear in
an early episode are established there to be put to effective use in
the latter part of the book, and incidents which seem almost irrelevant
may be of considerable importance because they create values which
become important later.

I do not mean by this the use of contrived clues, as in a detective
story.  I mean the inherent components of story telling, whose proper
use is so important in establishing style and winning reader confidence
and participation.  And I mean particularly the phenomenon of
resonance.

The classic example of resonance used with maximum effectiveness is
prepared in one of the early scenes in Anna Karenina when in a railway
station Anna notices the workman tapping the wheel of the engine with
his hammer to ensure the train's safety, a presage of the climactic
scene in which she will commit suicide under these wheels.

Almost any component of a narrative, adroitly used, can produce
resonance.  A novel is an interwoven series of freighted words and
images, of characters who behave in certain ways, of a physical setting
which carries its own unique identification, and of important incidents
in the latter part of the narrative which can be strengthened, or
foreshadowed, by comparable incidents that have occurred earlier.  I
try constantly to introduce words, phrases, incidents and meanings in
one part of the narrative so that when they reappear later they will do
so with intensified significance.  One of the joys of reading is the
friendly recognition of these resonances.

Resonance occurs, to the great advantage of any narrative, when the
reader comes upon a phrase, a complete thought, a character or an
incident with which he or she is already familiar.  The reader then
enjoys the pleasure of recognition or the thrill of renewed
acquaintance or can admire the aptness of the passage.  Classical
composers of longer musical works relied on this device, Richard Wagner
and Cesar Frank with heavy obviousness, Ludwig van Beethoven and
Giuseppe Verdi more subtly.  Certain novelists use the tactic with
marvelous skill-Honore Balzac to name one and few readers seem to be
aware of the extraordinary flood of coincidence in Boris Pasternak's
exquisitely crafted Dr.  Zhivago.  Any young writers who are afraid of
utilizing coincidence lest they be hit with the famous criticism "He
jerks the long arm of coincidence right out of its socket' should read
Pasternak and take comfort.

I have thought of my novels as seamless webs which could start
anywhere, end anywhere, and that, I suppose, is why some have felt that
my concluding chapters are unsatisfying.  The criticism is justified; I
do not tie loose strings together; I do not want to imitate certain
composers of symphonies who start to end their music some four or five
minutes early and proceed with a noisy series of crescendoes until they
finish with a titanic bang.  I prefer to have my novels wind down at
exactly the same pace I used in starting them, as if to let the reader
know that the basic situation goes on and on, and since it can't all be
of maximum intensity I am forced to stop my orchestra somewhere.

When I had finished writing the gold rush episode in Alaska, having
edited and cut certain portions that ran too long, I was happy with the
result and judged that I had at least brought Canada into the narrative
as I had hoped to do.  As well, I had introduced certain events in this
section of the novel that had been carefully foreshadowed by earlier
events or that would be paralleled later in the narrative.

When my finished manuscript was read at my publishers in New York, I
was advised that since the manuscript was too long, my Canadian story
should be cut.  It was not located within the boundary of Alaska, nor
any other part of the States.

This judgment was frustrating, and for the reader to appreciate why,
several important facts about professional writing and publishing must
be told because they pertain to the nature of creative work and the
editorial process.

First, any publisher who has been in business a long time has acquired
a wealth of knowledge about the pitfalls of writing.  His editors may
not themselves be able to write successful novels, but they can spot
with uncanny skill defects in their authors' work.  Sensible writers
listen to cautions voiced by their publishers, as expressed through
their editors; the writers may not accept everything said, but they do
weigh it carefully.  So when I was warned that the Canadian material
was an intrusion, I had to pay heed.

Second, there are writers, and some of the best, who, when they submit
a manuscript, tell the publisher: This is it.  Print it," and permit no
editorial work.  There are others of equal merit who not only listen to
critical opinion but seek it, even altering their novels substantially
if that seems desirable.  I fall within the second group.  Regardless
of the debate as to which attitude is correct and produces the best
results, I avidly seek criticism before the book is published.  After
it's in print I do not because then it's too late, and I would not have
released the book for publication if I hadn't liked it pretty much as
it was.

Third, I had from the very start of my Alaska project desired what my
publisher had not advised: I had a self-set determination to keep this
novel noticeably shorter than some of my previous works, even though my
readers have insisted through the years that my books end too soon.  I
felt obliged this time to keep the total pages to less than a thousand
and, if possible, under nine hundred.  I was therefore attentive when
one reader warned:

There is a vast difference between a book of 1209 pages and one of 918.
Both the critic and the general reader will comment negatively about
the former and allow the latter to pass.  The critic will cry: "Another
thousand-page effort' and in the bookstore the potential reader will
heft the book, and look at the last page and moan: "I can't read a
thousand pages of anything."  In other words, the length of the book
runs the risk of becoming the most important thing about it, and for a
writer to allow that to happen, or even invite it to happen, is
self-destructive.

So I was myself looking for places to cut and had invited my publisher
to identify segments that could be eliminated.  Consequently, his
suggestion for a cut did not come as a surprise, but the fact that the
Canadian story was chosen did.

Fourth, there was another major objection to the Canadian segment,
fearfully obvious and damaging, once voiced.  I was spending a lot of
time on a river that played no further role in Alaskan history, on a
town not in Alaska that never reappeared in the novel, and on five
characters, only one of whom, the Irishman, appeared in the purely
Alaskan material, and his role could be salvaged by creating another
Irishman for my Nome and Juneau segments.  So far as characters
necessary for the narrative were concerned, cutting the Mackenzie River
segment completely, as my editor advised, would lose us little.  Even
as I was writing the Mackenzie River passages I had sometimes the
feeling: "Boy, we're getting pretty far away from Alaska.  These men
are headed to the Arctic Ocean, not the gold fields," but I muffled
that sneaking suspicion by pointing out to myself: "But that's what the
story is all about.  Heading for a gold field but constantly moving
farther and farther away."  However, I never fully disposed of this
unease, and when New York advised exactly what I'd been tentatively
thinking, it struck fire.

All these reasons for eliminating my Canadian story were sound.  They
added up to one unavoidable conclusion: this segment, while a good and
interesting story in itself, did not belong in Alaska.  So the advice
was accepted.  A sequence on which I had labored arduously and which I
cherished for the great scenes it contained, was killed.  The general
narrative was speeded up, and the focus was kept more sharply on Alaska
and not disturbed by a diversion into Canada.  Coincidentally, with
this slice taken out, the book had a chance of coming in at less than a
thousand pages.

The cut had not been forced upon me: I had made the decision and in
retrospect it had many virtues to defend it; specifically, it served as
an interesting example of how publishing decisions are reached.

Of course, when the cut was made many valuable cross-references
productive of resonance were lost, both earlier incidents which
foreshadowed present ones, and present which foreshadowed future.  Two
of the first type were serious losses.  I wanted the ease with which
Captain Cook saved lives by his handling of scurvy to be contrasted
with how Lord Luton lost lives by his mishandling.  And I had planned
for the comic scene in which the Russian tyrant Tsar Peter the Great,
who hated beards, used a dull razor to shave his Cossack to presage the
later scene in which the English dictator Lord Luton shaved Fogarty
with an equally dull blade.

In the present-to-future relationship I wanted Luton's exhibitionist
fifty-mile trek down the middle of the frozen Mackenzie to pave the way
for the ridiculous scene, founded on fact, in which Fogarty's
replacement in Alaska, Murphy, rides a bicycle down the middle of the
frozen Yukon during blizzards, an incredible eight hundred and fifty
miles from the played-out gold fields of Dawson to the rich new field
at Nome.  I wanted this to be the Irishman's subtle comeuppance to his
lordship.

But cutting the Canadian segment was not the end of this adventure, nor
could it be.  I had spent so much energy researching the Canadian
episode that it had become almost a living part of me and I was
disconsolate to think that it would never see print.  Here an important
characteristic of the writer surfaces: I had worked hard to tell the
Canadian part of the gold rush because I had a strong conviction that
this interlocking between North America's two nations which share the
Arctic region ought to be known, just as it ought to be appreciated
that the Soviet Union also shares in that frozen terrain and in the
responsibility for it.  I had said something important, in parable form
it is true and therefore limited in certain significant ways, but also
with the potential of achieving the readership that sometimes accrues
to parables, and I had a strong desire to see it in print and in
circulation, especially among Canadians for whom I had intended it in
the first place.

On the day I agreed to cut the segment, I placed the banished pages
neatly in a folder and vowed: Someday I'll get you into print, and then
I surrendered the matter in the rush of seeing the rest of the
manuscript through the editing process.

But good ideas take a long time dying and the same is doubly true for
characters into whom one has breathed life.  Often in my nightly walks
I would recall incidents on the Mackenzie River and I became forlorn
over my failure to get their story published.  One night it was as if
my five characters rose in revolt, demanding my assistance, and a happy
thought struck: Why not try to place this Canadian story with a
Canadian publisher?  Once that acorn was planted it grew to a very
strong tree.

The technical situation was this: I had written a strong novel, which
would be published by what many consider the foremost house in the
United States, but I had eliminated from that novel a segment to which
I was for many reasons deeply attached.  The eliminated material could
be worked into a manuscript in its

IK

own right, and I was free to search for a Canadian publisher and, if I
could find one, to publish the book in Canada.  I became almost
obsessively determined to do so.  But I decided to wait until Alaska
was safely published, and on its way to finding its own level.  As soon
as that was ensured, I would initiate inquiries as to the possibility
of publishing my Canadian narrative in Canada for Canadian readers.

Here, I must make an observation.  The Mackenzie River story that lay
un quietly in my files was far shorter than the one I would try to
place with a Canadian publisher because I had cut portions of the
original manuscript and had refrained from writing parts I had planned
because it was already running far too long.  In preparing the deleted
manuscript for my Canadian publisher, I was able to set down the full
story I had originally wanted to write.  Parts cut were restored and
parts originally intended but not written were added.  Now that I was
working on a short novel, not a segment of a novel, I was able to
research my story further and to develop incidents and passages that I
had not previously imagined.  In short, I was able to give flesh to
what had been bare bones, but in not one word was the story modified to
make it more palatable to the Canadian reader.  This was and is a story
conceived for two purposes: to acquaint American readers with facts
about Canadian existence, and to demonstrate to Canadian readers my
respect for the history and achievements of their country.

To friends in the modern metropolis of Edmonton I apologize for having
dwelt so heavily upon the mis behaviour of their ancestors in
1897-1899, but the propaganda about routes from Edmonton to the
Klondike in those years was reprehensible and as a result many died.
In later years, of course, the frontier town transformed itself into a
major center and a force for good in Canada's westward expansion and in
the development of the Prairies.

Only another novelist or a trained researcher will appreciate the quiet
joy I experienced in the final days of editing this book.  My editor in
Toronto, now aware of my infatuation with the Edmon-ton photograph of
the intrepid woman gold seeker had urged the custodians of the
Provincial Archives of Alberta to ransack their files to see if the
name of the young woman could be determined, and one morning Toronto
called to say: "Great news!  They've identified her name.  Mrs.
Garner."

I gasped, for my high school Spanish teacher, a graduate from
Swarthmore College who had arranged for the scholarship that sent me to
Swarthmore, thus paving my way into the academic career I had enjoyed
so much, had been a Miss Garner, so that to me the name was revered.

"Where was she from?"  The archivists did not know.

"What route did she take north?"  No one knew.

"Canadian or American?"  They did not even know that, but she was a
real woman; she had been in the studio of Ernest Brown, photographer,
in Edmonton in August of 1897, and as far as anyone knew, she had left
that town for the Klondike.  Even with that meager information I was
content, for it dramatically changed her from a ghostly shadow to a
living woman.

Then, as we were about to go to press, Toronto called again: "Even
better news.  We've found out more about Mrs.  Garner.  She came from
Fresno, California, with a party of eighteen men.  They bought eighty
horses in Edmonton and headed out on the overland trail with a great
determination to find the gold fields

That's all we know, but the phrases haunt me, for the questions are
limitless.  Was her husband, or brother, among the eighteen men?  How
did he allow her to go to Edmonton?  And why in the world should she
have gone there when Seattle was so much closer and was the start of a
much simpler route?  What happened to those horses?  What happened to
her?  If she raised children somewhere and they had grandchildren, I
hope that someone informs them that their great-grandmother was the
guiding light of this book.

It is strange what sometimes transpires when we go prowling about
through old photographs.

JAMES A. MICHENER is one of the world's most popular and beloved
writers.  Born in 1907 of unknown parents, he began his writing career
when he was forty years old.  His first book, published in 1947, was
Tales of the South Pacific.  It won the Pulitzer Prize and was turned
by Rodgers and Hammerstein into the musical South Pacific.

In the forty-two years since then, Michener has written thirty-six
books, including the bestsellers Sayonara, Hawaii, Centennial,
Chesapeake and Alaska.  His works have been published in virtually
every major language in the world, with countless millions of readers
worldwide.