CHAPTER XXIV
"Awake! You dreamers, wake!"
Frona was out of her sleeping-furs at Del Bishop's first call; but ereshe had slipped a skirt on and bare feet into moccasins, her father,beyond the blanket-curtain, had thrown back the flaps of the tent andstumbled out.
The river was up. In the chill gray light she could see the icerubbing softly against the very crest of the bank; it even topped it inplaces, and the huge cakes worked inshore many feet. A hundred yardsout the white field merged into the dim dawn and the gray sky. Subduedsplits and splutters whispered from out the obscureness, and a gentlegrinding could be heard.
"When will it go?" she asked of Del.
"Not a bit too lively for us. See there!" He pointed with his toe tothe water lapping out from under the ice and creeping greedily towardsthem. "A foot rise every ten minutes."
"Danger?" he scoffed. "Not on your life. It's got to go. Themislands"--waving his hand indefinitely down river--"can't hold up undermore pressure. If they don't let go the ice, the ice'll scour themclean out of the bed of the Yukon. Sure! But I've got to be chasin'back. Lower ground down our way. Fifteen inches on the cabin floor,and McPherson and Corliss hustlin' perishables into the bunks."
"Tell McPherson to be ready for a call," Jacob Welse shouted after him.And then to Frona, "Now's the time for St. Vincent to cross theback-channel."
The baron, shivering barefooted, pulled out his watch. "Ten minutes tothree," he chattered.
"Hadn't you better go back and get your moccasins?" Frona asked."There will be time."
"And miss the magnificence? Hark!"
From nowhere in particular a brisk crackling arose, then died away.The ice was in motion. Slowly, very slowly, it proceeded down stream.There was no commotion, no ear-splitting thunder, no splendid displayof force; simply a silent flood of white, an orderly procession oftight-packed ice--packed so closely that not a drop of water was inevidence. It was there, somewhere, down underneath; but it had to betaken on faith. There was a dull hum or muffled grating, but so low inpitch that the ear strained to catch it.
"Ah! Where is the magnificence? It is a fake!"
The baron shook his fists angrily at the river, and Jacob Welse's thickbrows seemed to draw down in order to hide the grim smile in his eyes.
"Ha! ha! I laugh! I snap my fingers! See! I defy!"
As the challenge left his lips. Baron Courbertin stepped upon a cakewhich rubbed lightly past at his feet. So unexpected was it, that whenJacob Welse reached after him he was gone.
The ice was picking up in momentum, and the hum growing louder and morethreatening. Balancing gracefully, like a circus-rider, the Frenchmanwhirled away along the rim of the bank. Fifty precarious feet he rode,his mount becoming more unstable every instant, and he leaped neatly tothe shore. He came back laughing, and received for his pains two orthree of the choicest phrases Jacob Welse could select from theessentially masculine portion of his vocabulary.
"And for why?" Courbertin demanded, stung to the quick.
"For why?" Jacob Welse mimicked wrathfully, pointing into the sleekstream sliding by.
A great cake had driven its nose into the bed of the river thirty feetbelow and was struggling to up-end. All the frigid flood behindcrinkled and bent back like so much paper. Then the stalled caketurned completely over and thrust its muddy nose skyward. But thesqueeze caught it, while cake mounted cake at its back, and its fiftyfeet of muck and gouge were hurled into the air. It crashed upon themoving mass beneath, and flying fragments landed at the feet of thosethat watched. Caught broadside in a chaos of pressures, it crumbledinto scattered pieces and disappeared.
"God!" The baron spoke the word reverently and with awe.
Frona caught his hand on the one side and her father's on the other.The ice was now leaping past in feverish haste. Somewhere below aheavy cake butted into the bank, and the ground swayed under theirfeet. Another followed it, nearer the surface, and as they sprangback, upreared mightily, and, with a ton or so of soil on its broadback, bowled insolently onward. And yet another, reaching inshore likea huge hand, ripped three careless pines out by the roots and bore themaway.
Day had broken, and the driving white gorged the Yukon from shore toshore. What of the pressure of pent water behind, the speed of theflood had become dizzying. Down all its length the bank was beinggashed and gouged, and the island was jarring and shaking to itsfoundations.
"Oh, great! Great!" Frona sprang up and down between the men. "Whereis your fake, baron?"
"Ah!" He shook his head. "Ah! I was wrong. I am miserable. But themagnificence! Look!"
He pointed down to the bunch of islands which obstructed the bend.There the mile-wide stream divided and subdivided again,--which waswell for water, but not so well for packed ice. The islands drovetheir wedged heads into the frozen flood and tossed the cakes high intothe air. But cake pressed upon cake and shelved out of the water, outand up, sliding and grinding and climbing, and still more cakes frombehind, till hillocks and mountains of ice upreared and crashed amongthe trees.
"A likely place for a jam," Jacob Welse said. "Get the glasses,Frona." He gazed through them long and steadily. "It's growing,spreading out. A cake at the right time and the right place . . ."
"But the river is falling!" Frona cried.
The ice had dropped six feet below the top of the bank, and the BaronCourbertin marked it with a stick.
"Our man's still there, but he doesn't move."
It was clear day, and the sun was breaking forth in the north-east.They took turn about with the glasses in gazing across the river.
"Look! Is it not marvellous?" Courbertin pointed to the mark he hadmade. The water had dropped another foot. "Ah! Too bad! too bad!The jam; there will be none!"
Jacob Welse regarded him gravely.
"Ah! There will be?" he asked, picking up hope.
Frona looked inquiringly at her father.
"Jams are not always nice," he said, with a short laugh. "It alldepends where they take place and where you happen to be."
"But the river! Look! It falls; I can see it before my eyes."
"It is not too late." He swept the island-studded bend and saw theice-mountains larger and reaching out one to the other. "Go into thetent, Courbertin, and put on the pair of moccasins you'll find by thestove. Go on. You won't miss anything. And you, Frona, start thefire and get the coffee under way."
Half an hour after, though the river had fallen twenty feet, they foundthe ice still pounding along.
"Now the fun begins. Here, take a squint, you hot-headed Gaul. Theleft-hand channel, man. Now she takes it!"
Courbertin saw the left-hand channel close, and then a great whitebarrier heave up and travel from island to island. The ice before themslowed down and came to rest. Then followed the instant rise of theriver. Up it came in a swift rush, as though nothing short of the skycould stop it. As when they were first awakened, the cakes rubbed andslid inshore over the crest of the bank, the muddy water creeping inadvance and marking the way.
"Mon Dieu! But this is not nice!"
"But magnificent, baron," Frona teased. "In the meanwhile you aregetting your feet wet."
He retreated out of the water, and in time, for a small avalanche ofcakes rattled down upon the place he had just left. The rising waterhad forced the ice up till it stood breast-high above the island like awall.
"But it will go down soon when the jam breaks. See, even now it comesup not so swift. It has broken."
Frona was watching the barrier. "No, it hasn't," she denied.
"But the water no longer rises like a race-horse."
"Nor does it stop rising."
He was puzzled for the nonce. Then his face brightened. "Ah! I haveit! Above, somewhere, there is another jam. Most excellent, is itnot?"
She caught his excited hand in hers and detained him. "But, listen.Suppose the upper jam breaks and the lower jam holds
?"
He looked at her steadily till he grasped the full import. His faceflushed, and with a quick intake of the breath he straightened up andthrew back his head. He made a sweeping gesture as though to includethe island. "Then you, and I, the tent, the boats, cabins, trees,everything, and La Bijou! Pouf! and all are gone, to the devil!"
Frona shook her head. "It is too bad."
"Bad? Pardon. Magnificent!"
"No, no, baron; not that. But that you are not an Anglo-Saxon. Therace could well be proud of you."
"And you, Frona, would you not glorify the French!"
"At it again, eh? Throwing bouquets at yourselves." Del Bishopgrinned at them, and made to depart as quickly as he had come. "Buttwist yourselves. Some sick men in a cabin down here. Got to get 'emout. You're needed. And don't be all day about it," he shouted overhis shoulder as he disappeared among the trees.
The river was still rising, though more slowly, and as soon as theyleft the high ground they were splashing along ankle-deep in the water.Winding in and out among the trees, they came upon a boat which hadbeen hauled out the previous fall. And three _chechaquos_, who hadmanaged to get into the country thus far over the ice, had piledthemselves into it, also their tent, sleds, and dogs. But the boat wasperilously near the ice-gorge, which growled and wrestled andover-topped it a bare dozen feet away.
"Come! Get out of this, you fools!" Jacob Welse shouted as he wentpast.
Del Bishop had told them to "get the hell out of there" when he ran by,and they could not understand. One of them turned up an unheeding,terrified face. Another lay prone and listless across the thwarts asthough bereft of strength; while the third, with the face of a clerk,rocked back and forth and moaned monotonously, "My God! My God!"
The baron stopped long enough to shake him. "Damn!" he cried. "Yourlegs, man!--not God, but your legs! Ah! ah!--hump yourself! Yes,hump! Get a move on! Twist! Get back from the bank! The woods, thetrees, anywhere!"
He tried to drag him out, but the man struck at him savagely and heldback.
"How one collects the vernacular," he confided proudly to Frona as theyhurried on. "Twist! It is a strong word, and suitable."
"You should travel with Del," she laughed. "He'd increase your stockin no time."
"You don't say so."
"Yes, but I do."
"Ah! Your idioms. I shall never learn." And he shook his headdespairingly with both his hands.
They came out in a clearing, where a cabin stood close to the river.On its flat earth-roof two sick men, swathed in blankets, were lying,while Bishop, Corliss, and Jacob Welse were splashing about inside thecabin after the clothes-bags and general outfit. The mean depth of theflood was a couple of feet, but the floor of the cabin had been dug outfor purposes of warmth, and there the water was to the waist.
"Keep the tobacco dry," one of the sick men said feebly from the roof.
"Tobacco, hell!" his companion advised. "Look out for the flour. Andthe sugar," he added, as an afterthought.
"That's 'cause Bill he don't smoke, miss," the first man explained."But keep an eye on it, won't you?" he pleaded.
"Here. Now shut up." Del tossed the canister beside him, and the manclutched it as though it were a sack of nuggets.
"Can I be of any use?" she asked, looking up at them.
"Nope. Scurvy. Nothing'll do 'em any good but God's country and rawpotatoes." The pocket-miner regarded her for a moment. "What are youdoing here, anyway? Go on back to high ground."
But with a groan and a crash, the ice-wall bulged in. A fifty-ton cakeended over, splashing them with muddy water, and settled down beforethe door. A smaller cake drove against the out-jutting corner-logs andthe cabin reeled. Courbertin and Jacob Welse were inside.
"After you," Frona heard the baron, and then her father's short amusedlaugh; and the gallant Frenchman came out last, squeezing his waybetween the cake and the logs.
"Say, Bill, if that there lower jam holds, we're goners;" the man withthe canister called to his partner.
"Ay, that it will," came the answer. "Below Nulato I saw Bixbie Islandswept clean as my old mother's kitchen floor."
The men came hastily together about Frona.
"This won't do. We've got to carry them over to your shack, Corliss."As he spoke, Jacob Welse clambered nimbly up the cabin and gazed downat the big barrier. "Where's McPherson?" he asked.
"Petrified astride the ridge-pole this last hour."
Jacob Welse waved his arm. "It's breaking! There she goes!"
"No kitchen floor this time. Bill, with my respects to your oldwoman," called he of the tobacco.
"Ay," answered the imperturbable Bill.
The whole river seemed to pick itself up and start down the stream.With the increasing motion the ice-wall broke in a hundred places, andfrom up and down the shore came the rending and crashing of uprootedtrees.
Corliss and Bishop laid hold of Bill and started off to McPherson's,and Jacob Welse and the baron were just sliding his mate over theeaves, when a huge block of ice rammed in and smote the cabin squarely.Frona saw it, and cried a warning, but the tiered logs were overthrownlike a house of cards. She saw Courbertin and the sick man hurledclear of the wreckage, and her father go down with it. She sprang tothe spot, but he did not rise. She pulled at him to get his mouthabove water, but at full stretch his head, barely showed. Then she letgo and felt about with her hands till she found his right arm jammedbetween the logs. These she could not move, but she thrust betweenthem one of the roof-poles which had underlaid the dirt and moss. Itwas a rude handspike and hardly equal to the work, for when she threwher weight upon the free end it bent and crackled. Heedful of thewarning, she came in a couple of feet and swung upon it tentatively andcarefully till something gave and Jacob Welse shoved his muddy faceinto the air.
He drew half a dozen great breaths, and burst out, "But that tastesgood!" And then, throwing a quick glance about him, Frona, Del Bishopis a most veracious man."
"Why?" she asked, perplexedly.
"Because he said you'd do, you know."
He kissed her, and they both spat the mud from their lips, laughing.Courbertin floundered round a corner of the wreckage.
"Never was there such a man!" he cried, gleefully. "He is mad, crazy!There is no appeasement. His skull is cracked by the fall, and histobacco is gone. It is chiefly the tobacco which is lamentable."
But his skull was not cracked, for it was merely a slit of the scalp offive inches or so.
"You'll have to wait till the others come back. I can't carry." JacobWelse pointed to his right arm, which hung dead. "Only wrenched," heexplained. "No bones broken."
The baron struck an extravagant attitude and pointed down at Frona'sfoot. "Ah! the water, it is gone, and there, a jewel of the flood, apearl of price!"
Her well-worn moccasins had gone rotten from the soaking, and a littlewhite toe peeped out at the world of slime.
"Then I am indeed wealthy, baron; for I have nine others."
"And who shall deny? who shall deny?" he cried, fervently.
"What a ridiculous, foolish, lovable fellow it is!"
"I kiss your hand." And he knelt gallantly in the muck.
She jerked her hand away, and, burying it with its mate in his curlymop, shook his head back and forth. "What shall I do with him, father?"
Jacob Welse shrugged his shoulders and laughed; and she turnedCourbertin's face up and kissed him on the lips. And Jacob Welse knewthat his was the larger share in that manifest joy.
The river, fallen to its winter level, was pounding its ice-glutsteadily along. But in falling it had rimmed the shore with atwenty-foot wall of stranded floes. The great blocks were spilledinland among the thrown and standing trees and the slime-coated flowersand grasses like the titanic vomit of some Northland monster. The sunwas not idle, and the steaming thaw washed the mud and foulness fromthe bergs till they blazed like heaped diamonds in the brightness, orshimmered o
palescent-blue. Yet they were reared hazardously one onanother, and ever and anon flashing towers and rainbow minaretscrumbled thunderously into the flood. By one of the gaps so made layLa Bijou, and about it, saving _chechaquos_ and sick men, were groupedthe denizens of Split-up.
"Na, na, lad; twa men'll be a plenty." Tommy McPherson sought abouthim with his eyes for corroboration. "Gin ye gat three i' the canoe'twill be ower comfortable."
"It must be a dash or nothing," Corliss spoke up. "We need three men,Tommy, and you know it."
"Na, na; twa's a plenty, I'm tellin' ye."
"But I'm afraid we'll have to do with two."
The Scotch-Canadian evinced his satisfaction openly. "Mair'd be abother; an' I doot not ye'll mak' it all richt, lad."
"And you'll make one of those two, Tommy," Corliss went on, inexorably.
"Na; there's ithers a plenty wi'oot coontin' me."
"No, there's not. Courbertin doesn't know the first thing. St.Vincent evidently cannot cross the slough. Mr. Welse's arm puts himout of it. So it's only you and I, Tommy."
"I'll not be inqueesitive, but yon son of Anak's a likely mon. He maunpit oop a guid stroke." While the Scot did not lose much love for thetruculent pocket-miner, he was well aware of his grit, and seized thechance to save himself by shoving the other into the breach.
Del Bishop stepped into the centre of the little circle, paused, andlooked every man in the eyes before he spoke.
"Is there a man here'll say I'm a coward?" he demanded without preface.Again he looked each one in the eyes. "Or is there a man who'll evenhint that I ever did a curlike act?" And yet again he searched thecircle. "Well and good. I hate the water, but I've never been afraidof it. I don't know how to swim, yet I've been over the side moretimes than it's good to remember. I can't pull an oar without battingmy back on the bottom of the boat. As for steering--well, authoritiessay there's thirty-two points to the compass, but there's at leastthirty more when I get started. And as sure as God made little apples,I don't know my elbow from my knee about a paddle. I've capsized damnnear every canoe I ever set foot in. I've gone right through thebottom of two. I've turned turtle in the Canyon and been pulled outbelow the White Horse. I can only keep stroke with one man, and thatman's yours truly. But, gentlemen, if the call comes, I'll take myplace in La Bijou and take her to hell if she don't turn over on theway."
Baron Courbertin threw his arms about him, crying, "As sure as God madelittle apples, thou art a man!"
Tommy's face was white, and he sought refuge in speech from the silencewhich settled down. "I'll deny I lift a guid paddle, nor that my windis fair; but gin ye gang a tithe the way the next jam'll be on us. Formy pairt I conseeder it ay rash. Bide a wee till the river's clear,say I."
"It's no go, Tommy," Jacob Welse admonished. "You can't cash excuseshere."
"But, mon! It doesna need discreemeenation--"
"That'll do!" from Corliss. "You're coming."
"I'll naething o' the sort. I'll--"
"Shut up!" Del had come into the world with lungs of leather andlarynx of brass, and when he thus jerked out the stops the Scotsmanquailed and shrank down.
"Oyez! Oyez!" In contrast to Del's siren tones, Frona's were purestsilver as they rippled down-island through the trees. "Oyez! Oyez!Open water! Open water! And wait a minute. I'll be with you."
Three miles up-stream, where the Yukon curved grandly in from the west,a bit of water appeared. It seemed too marvellous for belief, afterthe granite winter; but McPherson, untouched of imagination, began acrafty retreat.
"Bide a wee, bide a wee," he protested, when collared by thepocket-miner. "A've forgot my pipe."
"Then you'll bide with us, Tommy," Del sneered. "And I'd let you havea draw of mine if your own wasn't sticking out of your pocket."
"'Twas the baccy I'd in mind."
"Then dig into this." He shoved his pouch into McPherson's shakinghands. "You'd better shed your coat. Here! I'll help you. Andprivate, Tommy, if you don't act the man, I won't do a thing to you.Sure."
Corliss had stripped his heavy flannel shirt for freedom; and it wasplain, when Frona joined them, that she also had been shedding. Jacketand skirt were gone, and her underskirt of dark cloth ceased midwaybelow the knee.
"You'll do," Del commended.
Jacob Welse looked at her anxiously, and went over to where she wastesting the grips of the several paddles. "You're not--?" he began.
She nodded.
"You're a guid girl," McPherson broke in. "Now, a've a wumman to home,to say naething o' three bairns--"
"All ready!" Corliss lifted the bow of La Bijou and looked back.
The turbid water lashed by on the heels of the ice-run. Courbertintook the stern in the steep descent, and Del marshalled Tommy'sreluctant rear. A flat floe, dipping into the water at a slightincline, served as the embarking-stage.
"Into the bow with you, Tommy!"
The Scotsman groaned, felt Bishop breathe heavily at his back, andobeyed; Frona meeting his weight by slipping into the stern.
"I can steer," she assured Corliss, who for the first time was awarethat she was coming.
He glanced up to Jacob Welse, as though for consent, and received it.
"Hit 'er up! Hit 'er up!" Del urged impatiently. "You're burnin'daylight!"