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Do you know that some of the kids are being taught to pray for you?" "Not really?" "Fact. Doctor Swift told me. 'God bless pa, and ma, and Mister Jim Hess, and Miss Burnaby. That's the formula. Swift predicts that the next batch of christenings will include a 'Yim Hess' Swanson and a 'Clyde Burnaby' Brulé. Such is fame! Think you can stand the dizzy popularity?" "Lovely!" cried Clyde.
All that day they pushed steadily forward almost without a pause, holding a westerly course to pass around a deep fiord that penetrated far inland, and might not yet be crossed with safety. Yim ran beside his straining dogs, encouraging the laggards with whip and voice; White led the way and broke the trail, while Cabot brought up the rear and helped the sledge over difficult places.
Miss Beecham considered it would have been more seemly for her nephew to have selected a little boy as a play-thing, but his sentiments regarding boys were that they were machines invented for the torment of adults. "Well, O'Doolan, what sort of a day has it been?" Harold inquired, setting his human toy upon the floor. "Fine wezzer for yim duts," she promptly replied.
"Yu fallers ban fine tu me," Ole began again. "Aye lak yu bully! Ven yu come by St. Paul, take Yim Hill's railroad and come to Sven Akerson's camp, femt'n mile above Lars Hjellersen's gang. Aye ban boss of Sven's camp now. Aye gat yu gude time and plenty flapyack." He turned to go. Allie and I got up and walked firmly down the walk with him.
If he could hold out long enough he would fetch up somewhere sometime. It was merely a question of endurance. Even in that howling wilderness, with death on all sides, there were still three chances for life. The drift with the wind might take him to the igloo that Yim must have built ere this. How bright, and warm, and cosey its lamplighted interior would be.
"Especially when it is so far away that I can't smell anything but cold air." But Yim was right, for, after a while, his companions also smelled smoke, and a little later the yelping of their dogs was answered by shrill cries from within the timber.
"Probably they were taken from them in turn to feed those other Indians. At any rate, they are destitute enough now, and we can't leave them here to die. Go and bring Yim with the sled as quick as you can, while I wake up this fire." "All right," replied White, "only I'm afraid he won't come." "He must come," said Cabot decisively.
When Yim no longer needed his lamp for cooking he removed two-thirds of its wick and allowed the flame thus reduced to burn all night. Over it hung a kettle of melting snow, and above this, on a snowshoe, supported by two others, wet mittens and moccasins were slowly but thoroughly dried.
Half an hour after the lamp was lighted it had converted enough snow into boiling water to provide three steaming cups of tea, and while our lads sipped at these Yim cut slices of thawed pork, laid them in the fry-pan, and holding this over his lamp soon had them sizzling and browning in the most appetising manner. This, with tea and ship biscuit, constituted their supper.
All these reasons for delay seemed so good that the others accepted them, and the work outlined by Yim was immediately begun. In cutting up the caribou, as in building the snow hut, Cabot, from lack of experience, could give but slight assistance, and, realising this, he made a proposal. "Look here," he said. "The wood we have brought along won't last long and I want a good fire to-night.
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