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Updated: June 6, 2025
A cup of coffee, set aside to cool and forgotten, a few minutes later was found coated with half an inch of ice. At eight o'clock, when Sprague and Stine, already rolled in their blankets, were sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, Kit came back from a look at the boat. "It's the freeze-up, Shorty," he announced. "There's a skin of ice over the whole pond already." "What are you going to do?"
Sprague looked at Stine. "I'm damned if I do," said that gentleman. "If you're not afraid to stand here and look on, I'm not." "Who's afraid?" Sprague demanded hotly. Stine retorted in kind, and their two men left them in the thick of a squabble. "We can do without them," Kit said to Shorty. "You take the bow with a paddle, and I'll handle the steering sweep.
For three days Kit and Shorty laboured, carrying the ton and a half of outfit from the middle of the river to the log-cabin Stine and Sprague had bought on the hill overlooking Dawson. This work finished, in the warm cabin, as twilight was falling, Sprague motioned Kit to him. Outside the thermometer registered sixty-five below zero. "Your full month isn't up, Smoke," Sprague said.
This made a rough sea, against which it was almost impossible to pull the boat. Added to their troubles was driving snow; also, the freezing of the water on their oar-blades kept one man occupied in chopping it off with a hatchet. Compelled to take their turn at the oars, Sprague and Stine patently loafed.
Stine complained of frosted fingers, and Sprague of his nose, while the pain in Kit's cheeks and nose told him that he, too, had been touched. With each accretion of daylight they could see farther, and as far as they could see was icy surface. The water of the lake was gone. A hundred yards away was the shore of the north end.
"Forgive me," said Ebbo, abashed, "forgive me;" and, as his mother broke from him, he fell upon his knee; but he only heard his father's cry, "Ah! Stine, Stine, thou alone art the same," and, looking up, saw her, with her face hidden in the white beard, quivering with a rapture such as he had never seen in her before.
"Aren't we ever going to get started?" Shorty dipped in turn, and passed the spoon to Kit. Nor did either speak till the pot was empty and the bottom scraped. "Of course we ain't ben doin' nothing," Shorty said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "We ain't ben doin' nothing at all. And of course you ain't had nothing to eat. It was sure careless of me." "Yes, yes," Stine said quickly.
Yet, when Kit arrived at the tent of Messrs. Sprague and Stine, he did not find them stirring. By a fire, under the shelter of a tarpaulin, squatted a short, thick man smoking a brown-paper cigarette. "Hello," he said. "Are you Mister Sprague's new man?"
Grumbling and complaining, Stine and Sprague were forced to get under way two hours earlier than ever before. If anything, the gale was stiffer, and in a short time every man's face was iced up, while the oars were heavy with ice. Three hours they struggled, and four, one man steering, one chopping ice, two toiling at the oars, and each taking his various turns.
For three days Kit and Shorty labored, carrying the ton and a half of outfit from the middle of the river to the log-cabin Stine and Sprague had bought on the hill overlooking Dawson. This work finished, in the warm cabin, as twilight was falling, Sprague motioned Kit to him. Outside the thermometer registered sixty-five below zero. "Your full month isn't up, Smoke," Sprague said.
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