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Updated: June 17, 2025
And Tarwater would lift his voice in the cackling chant, as he lifted it at the end, when the boat swung in through driving cake- ice and moored to the Dawson City bank, and all waterfront Dawson pricked its ears to hear the triumphant paean: Like Argus of the ancient times, We leave this modern Greece, Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum, To shear the Golden Fleece,
In short, weighted by his seventy years, in the vast and silent loneliness of the North, Old Tarwater, as in the delirium of drug or anaesthetic, recovered within himself, the infantile mind of the child-man of the early world.
And Tarwater cooked a dinner that was a dinner, washed the dishes, had real pork and beans for supper, and bread baked in a frying-pan that was so delectable than the three partners nearly foundered themselves on it.
While he unlaced his shoes and ran the water out, they had further talk. Next, he fished out a ten-dollar gold-piece and offered it to his rescuer. Old Tarwater shook his head and shivered, for the ice-water had wet him to his knees. "But I reckon I wouldn't object to settin' down to a friendly meal with you."
"My goodness, the first cheerful and hearty-like camp since we hit the beach," Big Bill remarked as he knocked out his pipe and began pulling off his shoes for bed. "Kind of made things easy, boys, eh?" Tarwater queried genially. All nodded. "Well, then, I got a proposition, boys. You can take it or leave it, but just listen kindly to it. You're in a hurry to get in before the freeze-up.
And yet, precisely because of these highly rational acts, it was held that John Tarwater was mildly crazy!
Quickly, Charles plunged into business, and Tarwater heard with great distinctness every word of Charles' unflattering description of him and the proposition to give him passage to Dawson. "A dam fool proposition," was Liverpool's judgment, when Charles had concluded. "An old granddad of seventy! If he's on his last legs, why in hell did you hook up with him?
"Ain't had breakfast?" the little man, who was past forty and who had said his name was Anson, queried with a glance frankly curious. "Nary bite," John Tarwater answered. "Where's your outfit? Ahead?" "Nary outfit." "Expect to buy your grub on the Inside?" "Nary a dollar to buy it with, friend. Which ain't so important as a warm bite of breakfast right now."
By day he cooked as well, and, in the betweenwhiles, helped Anson in the building of the boat beside the torrent as the green planks came down. The days grew shorter. The wind shifted into the north and blew unending gales. In the mornings the weary men crawled from their blankets and in their socks thawed out their frozen shoes by the fire Tarwater always had burning for them.
Tarwater, stoking the fire, would sometimes ask Liverpool, beating now one released hand and now the other as he fought for circulation where he steered in the freezing stern-sheets. "Just break out that regular song of yours, old Forty-Niner," was the invariable reply.
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