nd that steel knife had
come. Subienkow bullied, and cajoled, and bribed. Every far-journeyer
or strange tribesman was brought before him. Perils unaccountable and
unthinkable were mentioned, as well as wild beasts, hostile tribes,
impenetrable forests, and mighty mountain ranges; but always from beyond
came the rumour and the tale of white-skinned men, blue of eye and fair
of hair, who fought like devils and who sought always for furs. They
were to the east--far, far to the east. No one had seen them. It was
the word that had been passed along.

It was a hard school. One could not learn geography very well through
the medium of strange dialects, from dark minds that mingled fact and
fable and that measured distances by "sleeps" that varied according to
the difficulty of the going. But at last came the whisper that gave
Subienkow courage. In the east lay a great river where were these blue-
eyed men. The river was called the Yukon. South of Michaelovski Redoubt
emptied another great river which the Russians knew as the Kwikpak. These
two rivers were one, ran the whisper.

Subienkow returned to Michaelovski. For a year he urged an expedition up
the Kwikpak. Then arose Malakoff, the Russian half-breed, to lead the
wildest and most ferocious of the hell's broth of mongrel adventurers who
had crossed from Kamtchatka. Subienkow was his lieutenant. They
threaded the mazes of the great delta of the Kwikpak, picked up the first
low hills on the northern bank, and for half a thousand miles, in skin
canoes loaded to the gunwales with trade-goods and ammunition, fought
their way against the five-knot current of a river that ran from two to
ten miles wide in a channel many fathoms deep. Malakoff decided to build
the fort at Nulato. Subienkow urged to go farther. But he quickly
reconciled himself to Nulato. The long winter was coming on. It would
be better to wait. Early the following summer, when the ice was gone, he
would disappear up the Kwikpak and work his way to the Hudson Bay
Company's posts. Malakoff had never heard the whisper that the Kwikpak
was the Yukon, and Subienkow did not tell him.

Came the building of the fort. It was enforced labour. The tiered walls
of logs arose to the sighs and groans of the Nulato Indians. The lash
was laid upon their backs, and it was the iron hand of the freebooters of
the sea that laid on the lash. There were Indians that ran away, and
when they were caught the