"So I went down Wrangel way, past St. Mary's and even to the Queen
Charlottes, trading, running whiskey, turning the sloop to most anything.
Winter was on, stiff and crisp, and I was back to Juneau, when the word
came. 'Come,' the beggar says who brought the news. 'Killisnoo say,
"Come now."' 'What's the row?' I asks. 'Chief George,' says he.
'_Potlach_. Killisnoo, makum _klooch_.'
"Ay, it was bitter--the Taku howling down out of the north, the salt
water freezing quick as it struck the deck, and the old sloop and I
hammering into the teeth of it for a hundred miles to Dyea. Had a
Douglass Islander for crew when I started, but midway up he was washed
over from the bows. Jibed all over and crossed the course three times,
but never a sign of him."
"Doubled up with the cold most likely," Dick suggested, putting a pause
into the narrative while he hung one of Molly's skirts up to dry, "and
went down like a pot of lead."
"My idea. So I finished the course alone, half-dead when I made Dyea in
the dark of the evening. The tide favored, and I ran the sloop plump to
the bank, in the shelter of the river.
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