ed was full, and the place
groaned with sounds of strangulation, asphyxiation, and other
disagreeable demises. The bunks were peopled by tortured bodies, which
seemed to cry of throttlings, garrotings, and sundry hideous
punishments. My nervous system, unable to stand it, had risen a-quiver,
then shrieked for mercy.

From the nearest sleeper came the most unhappy sounds. He snored at
free-and-easy intervals with the voice of a whistling-buoy in a ground
swell--a handsome, resonant intake that died away reluctantly, then
changed to a loathsome gurgle, as if he blew his breath through a tube
into a pot of thick liquid. Now and then he smacked his lips and ground
his teeth until the gooseflesh arose on my neck.

"That's the fellow that drove me out," said my new acquaintance as we
went back to our seats beside the stove. "I had the berth below him. I
sleep light, anyhow, since I woke up one night down on the Texas
Panhandle and found a Chinaman astraddle of my brisket with a
butcherknife."

"That must have been nice," said I at random. "What did you do?"

"I doubled up my legs and kicked him into the camp-fire." The stranger
was dealing the cards again, this time into a fanlike, intricate
solitaire much affected by gamblers. "I tried the trick again to-night,
but I went wrong. I wanted to stop the swan-song of the guy over my
head, so I lifted up my feet and put them where the canvas sagged
lowest. Then I stretched my legs like a Jap juggler, but I fetched away
my own bunk and came down on the man below. I broke a snore short off in
him. He'll never get it out unless he has it pulled. That was us you
heard two hours ago."

I was too tired and sleepy to talk, for I had come down from the hills
the previous afternoon to find the equinoxial raging, and as a result
the roadhouse full from floor to ridge-pole with the motley crew that
had sifted out from the interior. The coastwise craft were hugging the
lee of the sandy islet, waiting for the blow to abate; telephone-wires
were down, and Bering's waters had piled in from the south until they
flooded the endless sloughs and tide flats behind Solomon City,
destroyed the ferries, and cut us off both east and west, by land and by
sea. It were better, I had thought, to wait on the coast for a day or
so, watching for a chance to dodge to Nome, than to return to the mines,
so I had lugged my war bag into Anderson's place and made formal demand
for shelter.

The proprietor had