t snow-shoes, which was a great
comfort to all three, but especially to Jalap Coombs, who had not yet
learned to use the netted frames with "ease and fluency," as Phil said.

To this light-hearted youth the sight of his sailor friend wrestling
with the difficulties of inland navigation as practised in arctic
regions afforded a never-failing source of mirth. A single glance at
Jalap's lank figure enveloped in firs, with his weather-beaten face
peering from the recesses of a hair-fringed hood, was enough at any time
to make Phil laugh. Jalap on snow-shoes that, in spite of all his
efforts, would slide in every direction but the one desired, and Jalap
gazing at a frosty world through a pair of wooden snow-goggles, were
sights that even sober-sided Serge found humorous.

But funniest of all was to see Jalap drive a dog-team. This he was now
obliged to do, for, while they still had three sledges, they had been
unable to procure any Indians at Forty Mile to take the places of
Kurilla and Chitsah. So while Phil, who was now an expert in the art of
dog-driving, and could handle a six-yard whip like a native, took turns
with Serge in breaking the road, Jalap was always allowed to bring up
the rear. His dogs had nothing to fear from the whip, except, indeed,
when it tripped him up so that he tell on top of them, but they cringed
and whined beneath the torrent of incomprehensible sea terms incessantly
poured forth by the strange master, who talked to them as though they
were so many lubberly sailors.

"Port your hellum! Hard a-port!" he would roar to the accompaniment of
flying chunks of ice that he could throw with amazing certainty of aim.
Then, "Steady! So! Start a sheet and give her a rap full. Now keep her
so! Keep her so! D'ye hear! Let her fall off a fraction of a p'int and
I'll rake ye fore and aft. Now, then, bullies, pull all together. Yo-ho,
heave! No sojering! Ah, you will, will ye, ye furry sea-cook! Then take
that, and stow it in your bread-locker. Shake your hay-seed and
climb--_climb_, I tell ye. Avast heaving!" And so on, hour after hour,
while the dogs would jump and pull and tangle their "running rigging,"
as Jalap named the trace-thongs, and the two boys would shout with
laughter.

But while the journey thus furnished something of merriment, it was also
filled with tribulations. So bitter was the cold that their bloodless
lips were often too stiff for laughter or even for speech. So rough was
the way, that