deserted harbor.
“There’s a smoke over at Skaguay,” the man said.
Churchill’s eyes were too swollen to see that far, but he said: “It’s she. Get
me a boat.”
The driver was obliging, and found a skiff and a man to row it for ten
dollars, payment in advance. Churchill paid, and was helped into the skiff.
It was beyond him to get in by himself. It was six miles to Skaguay, and
he had a blissful thought of sleeping those six miles. But the man did not
know how to row, and Churchill took the oars and toiled for a few more
centuries. He never knew six longer and more excruciating miles. A
snappy little breeze blew up the inlet and held him back. He had a gone
feeling at the pit of the stomach, and suffered from faintness and
numbness. At his command, the man took the bailer and threw salt water
into his face.
The Athenian’s anchor was up-and-down when they came alongside, and
Churchill was at the end of his last remnant of strength.
“Stop her! Stop her!” he shouted hoarsely. “Important message! Stop her!”
Then he dropped his chin on his chest and slept. When half a dozen men
started to carry him up the gang-plank, he awoke, reached for the grip, and
clung to it like a drowning man.
On deck he became a centre of horror and curiosity. The clothing in which
he had left White Horse was represented by a few rags, and he was as
frayed as his clothing. He had travelled for fifty-five hours at the top notch
LOST FACE
23
of endurance. He had slept six hours in that time, and he was twenty
pounds lighter than when he started. Face and hands and body were
scratched and bruised, and he could scarcely see. He tried to stand
up, but failed, sprawling out on the deck, hanging on to the gripsack, and
delivering his message.
“Now, put me to bed,” he finished; “I’ll eat when I wake up.”
They did him honor, carrying him down in his rags and dirt and depositing
him and Bondell’s grip in the bridal chamber, which was the biggest and
most luxurious state-room in the ship. Twice he slept the clock around,
and he had bathed and shaved and eaten and was leaning over the rail
smoking a cigar when the two hundred pilgrims from White Horse came
alongside.
By the time the Athenian arrived in Seattle, Churchill had fully
recuperated, and he went ashore with Bondell’s grip in his hand. He felt
proud of that grip. To him it stood for achievement and integrity and trust.
“I’ve delivered the goods,” was the way he expressed these various high
terms to himself. It was early in the evening, and he went straight to
Bondell’s home. Louis Bondell was glad to see him, shaking hands with
both hands at the same time and dragging him into the house.
“Oh, thanks, old man; it was good of you to bring it out,” Bondell said
when he received the gripsack.
He tossed it carelessly upon a couch, and Churchill noted with an
appreciative eye the rebound of its weight from the springs. Bondell was
volleying him with questions.
“How did you make out? How’re the boys? What became of Bill
Smithers? Is Del Bishop still with Pierce? Did he sell my dogs? How did
Sulphur Bottom show up? You’re looking fine. What steamer did you
come out on?”
To all of which Churchill gave answer, till half an hour had gone by and
the first lull in the conversation had arrived.
“Hadn’t you better take a look at it?” he suggested, nodding his head at the
gripsack.
”Oh, it’s all right,” Bondell answered. “Did Mitchell’s dump turn out as
much as he expected?”
LOST FACE
24
“I think you’d better look at it,” Churchill insisted. “When I deliver a thing,
I want to be satisfied that it’s all right. There’s always the chance that
somebody might have got into it when I was asleep, or something.”
“It’s nothing important, old man,” Bondell answered, with a laugh.
“Nothing important,” Churchill echoed in a faint, small voice. Then he
spoke with decision: “Louis, what’s in that bag? I want to know.”
Louis looked at him curiously, then left the room and returned with a
bunch of keys. He inserted his hand and drew out a heavy 44 Colt’s
revolver. Next came out a few boxes of ammunition for the revolver and
several boxes of Winchester cartridges.
Churchill took the gripsack and looked into it. Then he turned it upside
down and shook it gently.
“The gun’s all rusted,” Bondell said. “Must have been out in the rain.”
“Yes,” Churchill answered. “Too bad it got wet. I guess I was a bit
careless.”
He got up and went outside. Ten minutes later Louis Bondell went out and
found him on the steps, sitting down, elbows on knees and chin on hands,
gazing steadfastly out into the darkness.
TO BUILD A FIRE
(First published in The Century Magazine, v.76, August, 1908, 525-534)
NOTE: This is the famous, second version of a story first published in a more juvenile
treatment for the Youth’s Companion on May 29, 1902. To compare the two versions
side-by-side, open the earlier version in a new window (you will need to adjust the
browser windows to fit them both on your screen). A concordance (a way to find words
in context, how often they occur, etc.) is also available.
Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, when the man
turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank,
LOST FACE
25
where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce
timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top,
excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock.
There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky.
It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of
things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the
absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack
of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few
more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep
above the sky-line and dip immediately from view.
The man flung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a
mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as
many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations
where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south, as far as
his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hair-line that
curved and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the south,
and that curved and twisted away into the north, where it disappeared
behind another spruce-covered island. This dark hair-line was the trail —
the main trail — that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass,
Dyea, and salt water; and that led north seventy miles to Dawson, and still
on to the north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael on
Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half a thousand more.
But all this — the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of
sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness
of it all — made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long
used to it. He was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his
first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He
was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in
the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of
frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that
was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of
temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general, able only to live within
certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead
him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe.
Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be
guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and
thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty
degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was
a thought that never entered his head.
As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive
crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it