Overhead the woodpecker knocked insistently, and in the forest depths the partridge boom-boomed and strutted in virile glory.
But in all this nervous haste the Yukon took no part.

For many a thousand miles it lay cold, unsmiling, dead.

Wild fowl, driving up from the south in wind-jamming wedges, halted, looked vainly for open water, and quested dauntlessly on into the north.

From bank to bank stretched the savage ice.

Here and there the water burst through and flooded over, but in the chill nights froze solidly as ever.