the Kwikpak. Then arose Malakoff, the Russian half-breed, to lead the
wildest and most ferocious of the hell's broth of mongrel adventurers who
had crossed from Kamtchatka. Subienkow was his lieutenant. They
threaded the mazes of the great delta of the Kwikpak, picked up the first
low hills on the northern bank, and for half a thousand miles, in skin
canoes loaded to the gunwales with trade-goods and ammunition, fought
their way against the five-knot current of a river that ran from two to
ten miles wide in a channel many fathoms deep. Malakoff decided to build
the fort at Nulato. Subienkow urged to go farther. But he quickly
reconciled himself to Nulato. The long winter was coming on. It would
be better to wait. Early the following summer, when the ice was gone, he
would disappear up the Kwikpak and work his way to the Hudson Bay
Company's posts. Malakoff had never heard the whisper that the Kwikpak
was the Yukon, and Subienkow did not tell him.

Came the building of the fort. It was enforced labour. The tiered walls
of logs arose to the sighs and groans of the Nulato Indians. The lash
was laid upon their backs, and it was the iron hand of the freebooters of
the sea that laid on the lash. There were Indians that ran away, and
when they were caught they were brought back and spread-eagled before the
fort, where they and their tribe learned the efficacy of the knout. Two
died under it; others were injured for life; and the rest took the lesson
to heart and ran away no more. The snow was flying ere the fort was
finished, and then it was the time for furs. A heavy tribute was laid
upon the tribe. Blows and lashings continued, and that the tribute
should be paid, the women and children were held as hostages and treated
with the barbarity that only the fur-thieves knew.

Well, it had been a sowing of blood, and now was come the harvest. The
fort was gone. In the light of its burning, half the fur-thieves had