"And if I dinna?" the Scotsman queried stoutly, though cowering away.

Corliss pressed gently with the knife. The point of the steel entered
Tommy's back just where the heart should be, passed slowly through the
shirt, and bit into the skin. Nor did it stop there; neither did it
quicken, but just as slowly held on its way. He shrank back, quivering.

"There! there! man! Pit it oop!" he shrieked. "I maun gie in!"

Frona's face was quite pale, but her eyes were hard, brilliantly hard,
and she nodded approval.

"We're going to try this side, and shoot across from above," she called
to her father. "What? I can't hear. Tommy? Oh, his heart's weak.
Nothing serious." She saluted with her paddle. "We'll be back in no
time, father mine. In no time."

Stewart River was wide open, and they ascended it a quarter of a mile
before they shot its mouth and continued up the Yukon. But when they
were well abreast of the man on the opposite bank a new obstacle faced
them. A mile above, a wreck of an island clung desperately to the
river bed. Its tail dwindled to a sand-spit which bisected the river
as far down as the impassable bluffs. Further, a few hundred thousand
tons of ice had grounded upon the spit and upreared a glittering ridge.

"We'll have to portage," Corliss said, as Frona turned the canoe from
the bank.

La Bijou darted across the narrower channel to the sand-spit and
slipped up a little ice ravine, where the walls were less precipitous.
They landed on an out-jutting cake, which, without support, overhung
the water for sheer thirty feet. How far its other end could be buried
in the mass was matter for conjecture. They climbed to the summit,
dragging the canoe after them, and looked out over the dazzle. Floe
was piled on floe in titanic confusion. Huge blocks topped and
overtopped one another, only to serve as pedestals for great white
masses, which blazed and scintillated in the sun like monstrous jewels.

"A bonny place for a bit walk," Tommy sneered, "wi' the next jam fair
to come ony time." He sat down resolutely. "No, thank ye kindly, I'll
no try it."

Frona and Corliss clambered on, the canoe between them.

"The Persians lashed their slaves into battle," she remarked, looking
back. "I never understood before. Hadn't you better go back after
him?"

Corliss kicked him up, whimpering, and forced him to go on in advance.
The canoe was an affair of little weight, but its bulk, on the steep