hat for others," answered Uncle Dick, "and charged
them ten dollars a boat for doing it, too. But as I said, we'll have
to run our scows down on the right-hand passage. That's the fun I was
talking about."

Rob came up to him now excitedly. "Tell me, Uncle Dick, can't I go
through--couldn't I go through with you in the very first boat?"

His uncle looked at him for a time soberly before he replied. "Well, I
don't like to mollycoddle any of you," said he, "but I'll tell you
what we'll do. We'll have to leave John and Jesse here on the island.
If Francois says it's safe I'll let you go through with me on the
first boat. It's no place for us to be in this country if we're going
to sidestep every little bit of risk there is. That isn't a manly
thing to do. But the other two boys will have to wait for a while.

"There's bad news," he said to Rob, a little later, aside. "Word has
just come up by canoe from the Long Rapids below here that four men
were drowned day before yesterday. They were going down to McMurray,
and although they had a native pilot they got overturned in the
rapids and couldn't get out. The Mounted Police are looking for the
bodies now."

It was with rather sober faces that our young travelers now watched
the boatmen at their portage-work, although the latter themselves were
cheerful as always, and engaged, as before, in friendly rivalry in
feats of strength. Everything was confusion, yet there was a sort of
system in it, after all, for each man was busy throughout the long
hours of the day. As a scow came in its cargo was rapidly taken out,
as rapidly piled up ashore, and quite as rapidly flung on top of the
flat-cars for transport across the great portage.

Our young adventurers saw with interest that a good many of the
boatmen were quite young, boys of fifteen, sixteen, and eighteen years
of age. Some of these latter did the full work of a man, and one
slight chap of seventeen, with three sacks of flour, and another youth
of his own weight on top of it all, stood for a time supporting a
staggering weight of several hundred pounds while Jesse fumbled with
his camera to make a picture of him.

At about eleven o'clock in the morning of the second day Uncle Dick
came to Rob and drew him aside.

[Illustration: AN ENCAMPMENT OF ESKIMOS ON THE BEACH AT FORT
McPHERSON]

"The first boat is going through," said he. "Francois will take it
down. It's a Company scow with about a quarter of its cargo left in