to see about building a boat. We
thought of whipsawing our own boards, but the timber near us was poor or
thinned out, so that in the end we bought lumber, paying for it twenty
cents a foot. We were all very unexpert carpenters; however, by watching
others, we managed to make a decent-looking boat.

These were the busy days. At Bennett the two great Cheechako armies
converged, and there must have been thirty thousand people camped round
the lake. The night was ablaze with countless camp-fires, the day a buzz
of busy toil. Everywhere you heard the racket of hammer and saw, beheld
men in feverish haste over their boat-building. There were many fine
boats, but the crude makeshift effort of the amateur predominated. Some
of them, indeed, had no more shape than a packing-case, and not a few
resembled a coffin. Anything that would float and keep out the water was
a "boat."

Oh, it was good to think that from thenceforward, the swift, clear
current would bear us to our goal. No more icy slush to the knee, no
more putrid horse-flesh under foot, no more blinding blizzards and
heart-breaking drift of snows. But the blue sky would canopy us, the
gentle breezes fan us, the warm sun lock us in her arms. No more bitter
freezings and sinister dawns and weary travail of mind and body. The
hills would busk themselves in emerald green, the wild crocus come to
gladden our eyes, the long nights glow with sunsets of theatric
splendour. No wonder, in the glory of reaction, we exulted and laboured
on our boat with brimming hearts. And always before us gleamed the
Golden Magnet, making us chafe and rage against the stubborn ice that
stayed our progress.

The days were full of breezy sunshine and at all times the Eager Army
watched the rotting ice with anxious eyes. In places it was fairly
honeycombed now, in others corroded and splintered into silver spears.
Here and there it heaved up and cracked across in gaping chasms; again
it sagged down suddenly. There were sheets of surface water and
stretches of greenish slush that froze faintly overnight. In large,
flaming letters of red, the lake was dangerous, near to a break-up, a
death trap; yet every day the reckless ones were going over it to be
that much nearer the golden goal.

In this game of taking desperate chances, many a wild player lost, many
a foolhardy one never reached the shore. No one will ever know the
number of victims claimed by these black unfathomable waters.

It was the