we reached the following afternoon, was not
half bad. Just before anchoring, we came alongside of the _Ruth_, which
lay there absolutely helpless, her steering-gear smashed beyond
redemption. Much surprised to see W---- on the derelict, I reached over
and shook his hand, and then heard his little tale of woe. When he had
left Nome, nine days before, it was too rough to land freight at Solomon
River, and, having a number of passengers and considerable freight
aboard for Golovin Bay, the _Ruth_ had proceeded thither, only to run
into the ice, smash her rudder, and be almost capsized by the powerful
outgoing floes while held tight in the ice. Nearly the entire crew had
promptly deserted, and only the captain, a sulky engineer, and a few
enforcedly faithful passengers remained. (One of the numerous little
hard-luck stories of life in the Arctic "gold-fields.")

It was fortunate to find at Chenik the _North Star_, a small
stern-wheeler river boat, with whose captain a number of us quickly made
satisfactory arrangements for immediate transportation to White
Mountain, the half-way point to Council City. She soon, duck-like,
flopped over to the side of the _Elmore_; our freight was rustled into
her with all despatch; and, at eight o'clock in the evening, pretty well
laden with passengers and their effects, this gem of the ocean, under
the peculiar care of a crazy old Swede and his motley crew of three, was
puffing and breathing hard and pushing her clumsy way across the bay
toward the hidden delta of the Fish River. It was a matter of lying
about the primitive machinery, by the boilers and wood fuel, to keep
warm, and listening to a not too delightful crowd of alleged miners
swapping lies about the country. Sleep, of course, was out of the
question; a place to stretch out was not available except in the
adjacent bunks of the crew, and on inspection of these I decided that I
would rather not. It would not have seemed at all natural, or homelike,
had we not proceeded, about midnight, to run into fog and upon the
mud-flats. Only two and a half feet of water were requisite to allow the
vessel to navigate, but in order to get that depth it was necessary to
keep strictly in a zig-zag "channel," regarding whose location our
navigator was not precisely expert. While we lingered upon the mucky
bottom, a section of the crew, provided with a pole and a boat, under
the orders of the captain (expressed forcibly and picturesquely,--not to
sa