Day by day they floated down the swift river, and day by day the
shore-ice extended farther out. When they made camp at nightfall, they
chopped a space in the ice in which to lay the boat, and carried the
camp outfit hundreds of feet to shore. In the morning, they chopped
the boat out through the new ice and caught the current. Shorty set up
the sheet-iron stove in the boat, and over this Stine and Sprague hung
through the long, drifting hours. They had surrendered, no longer gave
orders, and their one desire was to gain Dawson. Shorty, pessimistic,
indefatigable, and joyous, at frequent intervals roared out the three
lines of the first four-line stanza of a song he had forgotten. The
colder it got the oftener he sang:
"Like Argus of the ancient times,
We leave this Modern Greece;
Tum-tum, tum-tum; tum-tum, tum-tum,
To shear the Golden Fleece."
As they passed the mouths of the Hootalinqua and the Big and Little
Salmon, they found these streams throwing mush-ice into the main Yukon.
This gathered about the boat and attached itself, and at night they
found themselves compelled to chop the boat out of the current. In the
morning they chopped the boat back into the current.
The last night ashore was spent between the mouths of the White River
and the Stewart. At daylight they found the Yukon, half a mile wide,
running white from ice-rimmed bank to ice-rimmed bank. Shorty cursed
the universe with less geniality than usual, and looked at Kit.
"We'll be the last boat this year to make Dawson," Kit said.
"But they ain't no water, Smoke."
"Then we'll ride the ice down. Come on."
Futilely protesting, Sprague and Stine were bundled on board. For half
an hour, with axes, Kit and Shorty struggled to cut a way into the
swift but solid stream. When they did succeed in clearing the
shore-ice, the floating ice forced the boat along the edge for a
hundred yards, tearing away half of one gunwale and making a partial
wreck of it. Then they caught the current at the lower end of the bend
that flung off-shore. They proceeded to work farther toward the
middle. The stream was no longer composed of mush-ice but of hard
cakes. In between the cakes only was mush-ice, that froze solidly as
they looked at it. Shoving with the oars against the cakes, sometimes
climbing out on the cakes in order to force the boat along, after an
hour they gained the middle. Five minutes after they ceased their
exertions, the boat was frozen in. The whole river was coagulating as
it ran. Cake froze to cake, until at last the boat was the centre of a
cake seventy-five feet in diameter. Sometimes they floated sidewise,
sometimes stern-first, while gravity tore asunder the forming fetters
in the moving mass, only to be manacled by faster-forming ones. While
the hours passed, Shorty stoked the stove, cooked meals, and chanted
his war song.
Night came, and after many efforts, they gave up the attempt to force
the boat to shore, and through the darkness they swept helplessly
onward.
"What if we pass Dawson?" Shorty queried.
"We'll walk back," Kit answered, "if we're not crushed in a jam."
The sky was clear, and in the light of the cold leaping stars they
caught occasional glimpses of the loom of mountains on either hand. At
eleven o'clock, from below, came a dull, grinding roar. Their speed
began to diminish, and cakes of ice to up-end and crash and smash about
them. The river was jamming. One cake, forced upward, slid across
their cake and carried one side of the boat away. It did not sink, for
its own cake still upbore it, but in a whirl they saw dark water show
for an instant within a foot of them. Then all movement ceased. At
the end of half an hour the whole river picked itself up and began to
move. This continued for an hour, when again it was brought to rest by
a jam. Once again it started, running swiftly and savagely, with a
great grinding. Then they saw lights ashore, and, when abreast,
gravity and the Yukon surrendered, and the river ceased for six months.
On the shore at Dawson, curious ones gathered to watch the river
freeze, heard from out of the darkness the war-song of Shorty:
"Like Argus of the ancient times,
We leave this Modern Greece;
Tum-tum, tum-tum; tum-tum, tum-tum,
To shear the Golden Fleece."