For a quarter of an hour the canoes plied fruitlessly about, then found the dead men gently grounded in an eddy.

A tow-rope was requisitioned from an up-coming boat, and a pair of horses from a pack-train on the bank, and the ghastly jetsam hauled ashore.

Frona looked at the five young giants lying in the mud, broken-boned, limp, uncaring.

They were still harnessed to the cart, and the poor worthless packs still clung to their backs, The sixth sat in the midst, dry-eyed and stunned.

A dozen feet away the steady flood of life flowed by and Frona melted into it and went on.
The dark spruce-shrouded mountains drew close together in the Dyea Canyon, and the feet of men churned the wet sunless earth into mire and bog-hole.