machine-propelled devices designed to travel over ice and snow, or on dry land. These machines were manufactured and sold by keen-witted salesmen to the inexperienced and confiding.

After dinner, that first evening out of port, John and George fell into conversation with the owner of the Malamoots. They had seized two of the cots erected in the saloon; and their new friend, seeing them, had taken one next to them. His greeting was friendly.

"Well, gentlemen, getting located?"

"Yes."

"Good act!"

The three were soon in deep conversation, discussing gold-mining as prosecuted in Australia and in the Yukon. After an hour or two they strolled forward between the cots, stepping over sacks and bags and articles of clothing spread upon the floor. They passed several tables at which games of cards were being played.

"The tin-horns are getting down to business," remarked the stranger.

"What are they playing?" asked George.

"Black Jack, the great game for the tenderfoot. It is so easily learned, so easy to cheat at, too; and these greenhorns will get robbed-blind."

"Their eyesight will be improved by the loss of their money," remarked John.

"A fool never learns," said the stranger.

They entered the smoking-room, and found Muggsley still holding forth, "Gentlemen, you just watch me and see how soon I get over these here mountains. It's experience that counts in this kind of work."

The man who had the cows, and he who was the proud possessor of the Klondike ice-locomotive were listening with some disdain; but the dozen other listeners were open-mouthed in envy and astonishment at wonderful Muggsley.

The three passed out on deck. The wind was chill, a frizzle was in the air, and the waves, breaking in dull phosphorescence against the bow of the ship, looked sickly and uncanny through the blackness. "A dangerous coast—the insurance rate for ships travelling this route is fifteen per cent.," remarked the stranger.

John Muggsley was still shaking his fist vociferously in the faces of his listeners as the party returned from deck to seek their beds.

"Good-night, you fellows. Glad I met you. My name's Hugh Spencer," the stranger said, as he settled in his cot.

"The same to you!" answered the others.

The freemasonry of the gold-seeker holds throughout the world, and its handshake is honest. Three gold-seekers have been introduced to the reader in this chapter; and these pages will tell something of what befell them in what was probably the most spectacular gold-rush in the history of the world.

John Berwick, who is by way of being our hero, shall have a chapter to himself.

CHAPTER II

JOHN BERWICK

Like most men whose success in life is largely the whim of fortune, John Berwick had for years accepted her rulings without protest, and regarded passing little incidents as signs of her influence.

One night in the December preceding his setting out for the Klondike, he was lying in his bunk on Judas Creek—one of the innumerable streams in British Columbia in which colours of gold, otherwise "prospects" could be found—reading a month old newspaper that a trapper, who had passed the previous night with him, had brought from the settlement, and in its columns had found an item of news telling of the recent rich discoveries in the Yukon. He read the paragraph carefully again and again, striving to separate exaggeration from truth, and to satisfy himself that there was truth in it.

By the camp stove sat Joe, the French-Canadian whom he employed, smoking and gazing at the glow of the fire with stolid and witless eyes. He would sit thus for hours; to a man of Berwick's temperament he was a satisfactory companion. On the Claim things had gone none too well. True, by great effort they had reached bed-rock at thirty feet, and were beginning to cross-cut in search of a pay-streak. There was certainly little gold in the gravel on the bed-rock already uncovered, and the flow of water into the working was very great: indeed, as much time was taken in keeping the shaft free of water as in all their other works combined. And up to three days previously rain had been incessant, though relief was apparently at hand, owing to the frost that had succeeded. The earth had hardened; Judas Creek was already flowing in less volume, and the boulders in the stream were becoming massed with ice.

Berwick had been but a few months on Judas Creek, having essayed to try his fortune in Canada's most western province. Fortune meant much to him—for lack of it hindered his marriage with the one necessary girl, Alice Peel, the only daughter of Surgeon-Major Peel. This was one cause of his presence on the frontier: another was that he and his religion had "fallen out" years ago. His father had intended him for the Church, and here he was....

"The Creek is falling rapidly, we can hardly hear it now," remarked John.

"Dat's so," was Joe's reply. He was laconic.

John's thoughts went back to his prospects. Much of his small capital had gone into the works. Joe was not in love—he had no capital save his strength of body, and his religion was negligible. When first this French-Canadian had arrived in British Columbia, and started work in a saw-mill, he had refused to work on Sunday, until the foreman told him that the devil never crossed the Rocky Mountains—which silenced his scruples. For sure, the Rocky Mountains were very high!

"I think we should empty the shaft to-morrow with seventy or seventy-five buckets."

"I guess dat's so."

Again Berwick relapsed into silence, and kept his mind on his many problems: had he or had he not better throw up his Judas Creek Claim, and strike out for the scene whence came these wonderful tales?

The volume of the Creek was diminishing with abnormal rapidity. For three days now frost had been upon the canyon, and the flying spray had frozen upon the boulders. The rushing, gurgling stream, falling over rocks and sunken logs, had during that time been sucking down bubbles of cold air, which sealed the fine ice particles to the river bed. For miles Judas Creek was lined with anchor ice, encasing the rocks with a coating, sickly, white, insidious. In the darkness the opaque ice seemed to shine out in phosphorescence; in fact, it threw back the light of the stars overhead, which seemed to have lowered themselves in the heavens—so bright and grand were they.

At a point a mile below the little pool where the nucleus of the mass now filling the river-bed had formed, a tree was stretched across the torrent. It had fallen into the stream above, and floated down until it jammed, holding back the current. The avalanche—as the thickening stream had now become—found this tree, and swept against it but a second, when it snapped. Now the flow of the river became a seething mass of ice and sticks—four feet high—travelling at the rate of several miles an hour, picking up all that came in its way. It passed the mouth of several tributaries, which lent it increase of force: still its speed quickened: the grinding noise increased—logs, sticks, masses of ice and great roots of trees appeared for an instant on its surface and sank again. Now the wave was five feet—now six feet high—broadening out, gaining yet in speed, still more effectually holding back the river's flow.

The gradual silencing of the river's roar was getting on the nerves of John Berwick, who was miles down-stream, far below the ice-flow. The river had tapered into a little