"'Come and take me, Tommy,' she says when we bid good-by on the beach.
'Ay,' I answers; 'when you give the word.' And I kissed her, white-man-
fashion and lover-fashion, till she was all of a tremble like a quaking
aspen, and I was so beside myself I'd half a mind to go up and give the
uncle a lift over the divide.

"So I went down Wrangel way, past St. Mary's and even to the Queen
Charlottes, trading, running whiskey, turning the sloop to most anything.
Winter was on, stiff and crisp, and I was back to Juneau, when the word
came. 'Come,' the beggar says who brought the news. 'Killisnoo say,
"Come now."' 'What's the row?' I asks. 'Chief George,' says he.
'_Potlach_. Killisnoo, makum _klooch_.'

"Ay, it was bitter--the Taku howling down out of the north, the salt
water freezing quick as it struck the deck, and the old sloop and I
hammering into the teeth of it for a hundred miles to Dyea. Had a
Douglass Islander for crew when I started, but midway up he was washed
over from the bows. Jibed all over and crossed the course three times,
but never a sign of him."

"Doubled up with the cold most likely," Dick suggested, putting a pause
into the narrative while he hung one of Molly's skirts up to dry, "and
went down like a pot of lead."

"My idea. So I finished the course alone, half-dead when I made Dyea in
the dark of the evening. The tide favored, and I ran the sloop plump to
the bank, in the shelter of the river. Couldn't go an inch further, for
the fresh water was frozen solid. Halyards and blocks were that iced up
I didn't dare lower mainsail or jib. First I broached a pint of the