CHAPTER XXIII
Spring, smiting with soft, warm hands, had come like a miracle, and nowlingered for a dreamy spell before bursting into full-blown summer.The snow had left the bottoms and valleys and nestled only on the northslopes of the ice-scarred ridges. The glacial drip was already inevidence, and every creek in roaring spate. Each day the sun roseearlier and stayed later. It was now chill day by three o'clock andmellow twilight at nine. Soon a golden circle would be drawn aroundthe sky, and deep midnight become bright as high noon. The willows andaspens had long since budded, and were now decking themselves inliveries of fresh young green, and the sap was rising in the pines.
Mother nature had heaved her waking sigh and gone about her briefbusiness. Crickets sang of nights in the stilly cabins, and in thesunshine mosquitoes crept from out hollow logs and snug crevices amongthe rocks,--big, noisy, harmless fellows, that had procreated the yeargone, lain frozen through the winter, and were now rejuvenated to buzzthrough swift senility to second death. All sorts of creeping,crawling, fluttering life came forth from the warming earth andhastened to mature, reproduce, and cease. Just a breath of balmy air,and then the long cold frost again--ah! they knew it well and lost notime. Sand martins were driving their ancient tunnels into the softclay banks, and robins singing on the spruce-garbed islands. Overheadthe woodpecker knocked insistently, and in the forest depths thepartridge boom-boomed and strutted in virile glory.
But in all this nervous haste the Yukon took no part. For many athousand miles it lay cold, unsmiling, dead. Wild fowl, driving upfrom the south in wind-jamming wedges, halted, looked vainly for openwater, and quested dauntlessly on into the north. From bank to bankstretched the savage ice. Here and there the water burst through andflooded over, but in the chill nights froze solidly as ever. Traditionhas it that of old time the Yukon lay unbroken through three longsummers, and on the face of it there be traditions less easy of belief.
So summer waited for open water, and the tardy Yukon took to stretchingof days and cracking its stiff joints. Now an air-hole ate into theice, and ate and ate; or a fissure formed, and grew, and failed tofreeze again. Then the ice ripped from the shore and uprose bodily ayard. But still the river was loth to loose its grip. It was a slowtravail, and man, used to nursing nature with pigmy skill, able toburst waterspouts and harness waterfalls, could avail nothing againstthe billions of frigid tons which refused to run down the hill toBering Sea.
On Split-up Island all were ready for the break-up. Waterways haveever been first highways, and the Yukon was the sole highway in all theland. So those bound up-river pitched their poling-boats and shodtheir poles with iron, and those bound down caulked their scows andbarges and shaped spare sweeps with axe and drawing-knife. Jacob Welseloafed and joyed in the utter cessation from work, and Frona joyed withhim in that it was good. But Baron Courbertin was in a fever at thedelay. His hot blood grew riotous after the long hibernation, and thewarm sunshine dazzled him with warmer fancies.
"Oh! Oh! It will never break! Never!" And he stood gazing at thesurly ice and raining politely phrased anathema upon it. "It is aconspiracy, poor La Bijou, a conspiracy!" He caressed La Bijou like itwere a horse, for so he had christened the glistening Peterboroughcanoe.
Frona and St. Vincent laughed and preached him the gospel of patience,which he proceeded to tuck away into the deepest abysses of perditiontill interrupted by Jacob Welse.
"Look, Courbertin! Over there, south of the bluff. Do you make outanything? Moving?"
"Yes; a dog."
"It moves too slowly for a dog. Frona, get the glasses."
Courbertin and St. Vincent sprang after them, but the latter knew theirabiding-place and returned triumphant. Jacob Welse put the binocularsto his eyes and gazed steadily across the river. It was a sheer milefrom the island to the farther bank, and the sunglare on the ice was asore task to the vision.
"It is a man." He passed the glasses to the Baron and strainedabsently with his naked eyes. "And something is up."
"He creeps!" the baron exclaimed. "The man creeps, he crawls, on handand knee! Look! See!" He thrust the glasses tremblingly into Frona'shands.
Looking across the void of shimmering white, it was difficult todiscern a dark object of such size when dimly outlined against anequally dark background of brush and earth. But Frona could make theman out with fair distinctness; and as she grew accustomed to thestrain she could distinguish each movement, and especially so when hecame to a wind-thrown pine. Sue watched painfully. Twice, aftertortuous effort, squirming and twisting, he failed in breasting the bigtrunk, and on the third attempt, after infinite exertion, he cleared itonly to topple helplessly forward and fall on his face in the tangledundergrowth.
"It is a man." She turned the glasses over to St. Vincent. "And he iscrawling feebly. He fell just then this side of the log."
"Does he move?" Jacob Welse asked, and, on a shake of St. Vincent'shead, brought his rifle from the tent.
He fired six shots skyward in rapid succession. "He moves!" Thecorrespondent followed him closely. "He is crawling to the bank. Ah!. . . No; one moment . . . Yes! He lies on the ground and raises hishat, or something, on a stick. He is waving it." (Jacob Welse firedsix more shots.) "He waves again. Now he has dropped it and liesquite still."
All three looked inquiringly to Jacob Welse.
He shrugged his shoulders. "How should I know? A white man or anIndian; starvation most likely, or else he is injured."
"But he may be dying," Frona pleaded, as though her father, who haddone most things, could do all things.
"We can do nothing."
"Ah! Terrible! terrible!" The baron wrung his hands. "Before ourvery eyes, and we can do nothing! No!" he exclaimed, with swiftresolution, "it shall not be! I will cross the ice!"
He would have started precipitately down the bank had not Jacob Welsecaught his arm.
"Not such a rush, baron. Keep your head."
"But--"
"But nothing. Does the man want food, or medicine, or what? Wait amoment. We will try it together."
"Count me in," St. Vincent volunteered promptly, and Frona's eyessparkled.
While she made up a bundle of food in the tent, the men provided andrigged themselves with sixty or seventy feet of light rope. JacobWelse and St. Vincent made themselves fast to it at either end, and thebaron in the middle. He claimed the food as his portion, and strappedit to his broad shoulders. Frona watched their progress from the bank.The first hundred yards were easy going, but she noticed at once thechange when they had passed the limit of the fairly solid shore-ice.Her father led sturdily, feeling ahead and to the side with his staffand changing direction continually.
St. Vincent, at the rear of the extended line, was the first to gothrough, but he fell with the pole thrust deftly across the opening andresting on the ice. His head did not go under, though the currentsucked powerfully, and the two men dragged him out after a sharp pull.Frona saw them consult together for a minute, with much pointing andgesticulating on the part of the baron, and then St. Vincent detachhimself and turn shoreward.
"Br-r-r-r," he shivered, coming up the bank to her. "It's impossible."
"But why didn't they come in?" she asked, a slight note of displeasuremanifest in her voice.
"Said they were going to make one more try, first. That Courbertin ishot-headed, you know."
"And my father just as bull-headed," she smiled. "But hadn't youbetter change? There are spare things in the tent."
"Oh, no." He threw himself down beside her. "It's warm in the sun."
For an hour they watched the two men, who had become mere specks ofblack in the distance; for they had managed to gain the middle of theriver and at the same time had worked nearly a mile up-stream. Fronafollowed them closely with the glasses, though often they were lost tosight behind the ice-ridges.
"It was unfair of them," she heard St. Vincent complain, "to say theywere only going t
o have one more try. Otherwise I should not haveturned back. Yet they can't make it--absolutely impossible."
"Yes . . . No . . . Yes! They're turning back," she announced. "Butlisten! What is that?"
A hoarse rumble, like distant thunder, rose from the midst of the ice.She sprang to her feet. "Gregory, the river can't be breaking!"
"No, no; surely not. See, it is gone." The noise which had come fromabove had died away downstream.
"But there! There!"
Another rumble, hoarser and more ominous than before, lifted itself andhushed the robins and the squirrels. When abreast of them, it soundedlike a railroad train on a distant trestle. A third rumble, whichapproached a roar and was of greater duration, began from above andpassed by.
"Oh, why don't they hurry!"
The two specks had stopped, evidently in conversation. She ran theglasses hastily up and down the river. Though another roar had risen,she could make out no commotion. The ice lay still and motionless.The robins resumed their singing, and the squirrels were chatteringwith spiteful glee.
"Don't fear, Frona." St. Vincent put his arm about her protectingly."If there is any danger, they know it better than we, and they aretaking their time."
"I never saw a big river break up," she confessed, and resigned herselfto the waiting.
The roars rose and fell sporadically, but there were no other signs ofdisruption, and gradually the two men, with frequent duckings, workedinshore. The water was streaming from them and they were shiveringseverely as they came up the bank.
"At last!" Frona had both her father's hands in hers. "I thought youwould never come back."
"There, there. Run and get dinner," Jacob Welse laughed. "There wasno danger."
"But what was it?"
"Stewart River's broken and sending its ice down under the Yukon ice.We could hear the grinding plainly out there."
"Ah! And it was terrible! terrible!" cried the baron. "And that poor,poor man, we cannot save him!"
"Yes, we can. We'll have a try with the dogs after dinner. Hurry,Frona."
But the dogs were a failure. Jacob Welse picked out the leaders as themore intelligent, and with grub-packs on them drove them out from thebank. They could not grasp what was demanded of them. Whenever theytried to return they were driven back with sticks and clods andimprecations. This only bewildered them, and they retreated out ofrange, whence they raised their wet, cold paws and whined pitifully tothe shore.
"If they could only make it once, they would understand, and then itwould go like clock-work. Ah! Would you? Go on! Chook, Miriam!Chook! The thing is to get the first one across."
Jacob Welse finally succeeded in getting Miriam, lead-dog to Frona'steam, to take the trail left by him and the baron. The dog went onbravely, scrambling over, floundering through, and sometimes swimming;but when she had gained the farthest point reached by them, she satdown helplessly. Later on, she cut back to the shore at a tangent,landing on the deserted island above; and an hour afterwards trottedinto camp minus the grub-pack. Then the two dogs, hovering just out ofrange, compromised matters by devouring each other's burdens; afterwhich the attempt was given over and they were called in.
During the afternoon the noise increased in frequency, and by nightfallwas continuous, but by morning it had ceased utterly. The river hadrisen eight feet, and in many places was running over its crust. Muchcrackling and splitting were going on, and fissures leaping into lifeand multiplying in all directions.
"The under-tow ice has jammed below among the islands," Jacob Welseexplained. "That's what caused the rise. Then, again, it has jammedat the mouth of the Stewart and is backing up. When that breaksthrough, it will go down underneath and stick on the lower jam."
"And then? and then?" The baron exulted.
"La Bijou will swim again."
As the light grew stronger, they searched for the man across the river.He had not moved, but in response to their rifle-shots waved feebly.
"Nothing for it till the river breaks, baron, and then a dash with LaBijou. St. Vincent, you had better bring your blankets up and sleephere to-night. We'll need three paddles, and I think we can getMcPherson."
"No need," the correspondent hastened to reply. "The back-channel islike adamant, and I'll be up by daybreak."
"But I? Why not?" Baron Courbertin demanded. Frona laughed."Remember, we haven't given you your first lessons yet."
"And there'll hardly be time to-morrow," Jacob Welse added. "When shegoes, she goes with a rush. St. Vincent, McPherson, and I will have tomake the crew, I'm afraid. Sorry, baron. Stay with us another yearand you'll be fit."
But Baron Courbertin was inconsolable, and sulked for a full half-hour.