st five hundred feet of the ascent. Thus it was long
past noon when, breathless and exhausted, the party reached the summit,
or rather a slope so gentle that the dogs could once more drag the
sledges.

Here, at an elevation of nearly five thousand feet above the sea, they
paused for breath, for a bite of lunch, and for a last look over the way
they had come. From this elevation their view embraced a sweep of over
one hundred miles of mountain and plain, river and forest. It was so
far-reaching and boundless that it even seemed as if they could take in
the whole vast Yukon Valley, and locate points that common-sense told
them were a thousand miles beyond their range of vision. Grand as was
the prospect, they did not care to look at it long. Time was precious;
the air, in spite of its sunlight, was bitterly chill, and, after all,
the mighty wilderness now behind them held too many memories of
hardship, suffering, and danger to render it attractive.

So, "Hurrah for the coast!" cried Phil.

"Hurrah for Sitka!" echoed Serge.

"Hooray for salt water! Now, bullies, up and at 'em!" roared Jalap
Coombs, expressing a sentiment, and an order to his sailor-bred dogs, in
a breath.

In a few moments more the wonderful view had disappeared, and the
sledges were threading their way amid a chaos of gigantic bowlders and
snow-covered landslides from the peaks that rose on both sides. There
was no sharp descent from the summit, such as they had hoped to find,
but instead a lofty plateau piled thick with obstructions. About them no
green thing was to be seen, no sign of life; only snow, ice, and
precipitous cliffs of bare rock. The all-pervading and absolute silence
was awful. There was no trail that might be followed, for the hardiest
of natives dared not attempt that crossing in the winter. Even if they
had, their trail would have been obliterated almost as soon as made by
the fierce storms of these altitudes. So their only guide was that of
general direction, which they knew to be south, and to this course Phil
endeavored to hold.

That night they made a chill camp in the lee of a great bowlder; that
is, in as much of a lee as could be had where the icy blast swept in
circles and eddies from all directions at once. They started a fire, but
its feeble flame was so blown hither and thither that by the time a
kettle of snow was melted, and the ice was thawed from their stew, their
supply of wood was so depleted that they dared not