In vain I begged him not to let that grieve him. I assured him again and again that I had no one dependent on me in England, or anywhere; that my people were well off; that a month or two, or even a year or two, was of no great moment; that even if we had to winter there we should resume work in the spring, and go home with still larger piles in the summer.
He would listen to these remarks, patiently and calmly, but with a smile on his face apparently of unbelief.
Then he would talk gently to me about himself. How he had looked forward with such intense pleasure to going home that fall with plenty, to relieve his loved mother and sisters from all future money worries. He told me a great deal about them, where they lived, and how.
He had been in Australia for two years, and had done some gold-digging there. He had been four years in Canada; like me, he had brought a little money with him, had taken up land in Assiniboia, had struggled there for a couple of years, living wretchedly and prospering not at all, then he had sold all he had, cattle and gear, and had come West.
He took service in the Rockies with the Canadian Pacific Railway at section work, which is, I believe, what is called "plate-laying" in Britain. From there he had gradually drifted to the coast, to Vancouver City, where he had obtained employment on a wharf. There his education helped him, he became a foreman, next he got the post of purser on one of the steamers trading between Puget Sound and the North.
The spring before I met him he was up at St. Michael's, in Behring Sea, where he fell in with a man who told him about the gold which was being got away up the Yukon. He had acted on this man's advice, with the result he had already related to me.
He sent his mother a large portion of what he found the year before, told her of his projected expedition with me, and promised that he would "come out" in September, he believed with what would be regarded as a fortune, even in England.
"And now," said he, with a sad sigh, "here I am, laid by the heels—and you too, my friend, on my account—not able even to let them know that I'm alive!"
I did my very best to comfort him. I begged him to have patience, that I hoped before many weeks—when the snow came—that we should get out, "and surely," I added, "from Dawson there is some way of communicating with civilisation."
You understand we really knew very little about the country. We had heard many yarns about the awful winter, and generally had the idea that it would be extremely dismal and melancholy. But we had also been told that with plenty of grub and light and fuel—which we had—people could exist with some little comfort. So we struck the middle opinion, and found it would be bad but bearable.