is was the man
who had given him what might have been his chance, had he only been
able to use it aright. Like a tawdry curtain drawn up at a Christmas
pantomime on a dazzling transformation scene, so, at the memory, the
veil of the present was instantly removed, revealing only the flashing
splendours of past things, which lay behind. This same body which now
crouched basely here before him had belonged to a hero once--to the
man who, five long years since, had pushed on in spite of defeat,
carrying with him by his courage his despairing companion over the
deadly Skaguay trail. The Skaguay, where bodies of horses lay
unburied, spreading pestilence abroad every hundred yards of the way;
where the army of gold-seekers turning back was as great as the army
pressing on; and those of the attack had momentarily to stand aside,
so narrow was the path, for the wounded and spent of the retreat, who
passed them by with ashen faces, some of them with death in their
eyes, bidding them, "Turn back! Turn back! You will never get through
alive."

Many a time when his shoulders were bruised and broken, and he ached
in every limb, and his clothes were sodden with rain, which he knew
must shortly become stiff as boards when night had fallen and it had
begun to freeze, and perhaps another horse had fallen and been left
beside the trail, he also would have joined the retreat right gladly,
unashamed of his cowardice, had not Spurling picked up his load with a
laugh and dragged him on. What a fine brave fellow he had been in
those early Yukon days! Why, it was he who, when they had reached the
summit of that heart-breaking pass, had rescued young Mordaunt. Jervis
Mordaunt, with a single horse, had packed his entire outfit
single-handed to the topmost point of the trail, and then, when the
hardest part of his journey had been accomplished and his goal was
already in sight, his horse had given out and died. When they had come
up with him, his beast had been dead three days, and, because he could
not afford a new one, he had been packing his stuff on his own narrow
shoulders into Bennett, whence the start by water for Dawson had to be
made--a hopeless task, for Mordaunt was not a strong fellow, but slim
and extraordinarily girlish in frame. Many of the travellers who had
already attained the summit were flinging away their outfits and
turning back in panic, terrified by stories which they had heard of
winter and starvation in the Klondike; tho