increase your stock
in no time."

"You don't say so."

"Yes, but I do."

"Ah! Your idioms. I shall never learn." And he shook his head
despairingly with both his hands.

They came out in a clearing, where a cabin stood close to the river.
On its flat earth-roof two sick men, swathed in blankets, were lying,
while Bishop, Corliss, and Jacob Welse were splashing about inside the
cabin after the clothes-bags and general outfit. The mean depth of the
flood was a couple of feet, but the floor of the cabin had been dug out
for purposes of warmth, and there the water was to the waist.

"Keep the tobacco dry," one of the sick men said feebly from the roof.

"Tobacco, hell!" his companion advised. "Look out for the flour. And
the sugar," he added, as an afterthought.

"That's 'cause Bill he don't smoke, miss," the first man explained.
"But keep an eye on it, won't you?" he pleaded.

"Here. Now shut up." Del tossed the canister beside him, and the man
clutched it as though it were a sack of nuggets.

"Can I be of any use?" she asked, looking up at them.

"Nope. Scurvy. Nothing'll do 'em any good but God's country and raw
potatoes." The pocket-miner regarded her for a moment. "What are you
doing here, anyway? Go on back to high ground."

But with a groan and a crash, the ice-wall bulged in. A fifty-ton cake
ended over, splashing them with muddy water, and settled down before
the door. A smaller cake drove against the out-jutting corner-logs and
the cabin reeled. Courbertin and Jacob Welse were inside.

"After you," Frona heard the baron, and then her father's short amused
laugh; and the gallant Frenchman came out last, squeezing his way
between the cake and the logs.

"Say, Bill, if that there lower jam holds, we're goners;" the man with
the canister called to his partner.

"Ay, that it will," came the answer. "Below Nulato I saw Bixbie Island
swept clean as my old mother's kitchen floor."

The men came hastily together about Frona.

"This won't do. We've got to carry them over to your shack, Corliss."
As he spoke, Jacob Welse clambered nimbly up the cabin and gazed down
at the big barrier. "Where's McPherson?" he asked.

"Petrified astride the ridge-pole this last hour."

Jacob Welse waved his arm. "It's breaking! There she goes!"

"No kitchen floor this time. Bill, with my respects to your old
woman," called he of the tobacco.

"Ay," answered the imperturbable Bill.

The whole rive