freight, at least--"

"I understand," she interrupted, "and I, too, am behaving as though I
were perishable. And I am sorry for the trouble I am giving you,
but--but--" She turned quickly and pointed to the shore. "Do you
see that big log-house? Between the clump of pines and the river? I
was born there."

"Guess I'd be in a hurry myself," he muttered, sympathetically, as he
piloted her along the crowded deck.

Everybody was in everybody else's way; nor was there one who failed to
proclaim it at the top of his lungs. A thousand gold-seekers were
clamoring for the immediate landing of their outfits. Each hatchway
gaped wide open, and from the lower depths the shrieking donkey-engines
were hurrying the misassorted outfits skyward. On either side of the
steamer, rows of scows received the flying cargo, and on each of these
scows a sweating mob of men charged the descending slings and heaved
bales and boxes about in frantic search. Men waved shipping receipts
and shouted over the steamer-rails to them. Sometimes two and three
identified the same article, and war arose. The "two-circle" and the
"circle-and-dot" brands caused endless jangling, while every whipsaw
discovered a dozen claimants.

"The purser insists that he is going mad," the first officer said, as
he helped Frona Welse down the gangway to the landing stage, "and the
freight clerks have turned the cargo over to the passengers and quit
work. But we're not so unlucky as the Star of Bethlehem," he reassured
her, pointing to a steamship at anchor a quarter of a mile away. "Half
of her passengers have pack-horses for Skaguay and White Pass, and the