"Bring your baggage aboard, and I'll fix you up somehow, later on."
The boys went aboard the steamer and there bid farewell to Jack Wumble. They had left some things at Dawson, and these they turned over, on a written order, to the old miner, telling him to do as he pleased with them.
"Good-bye to ye!" cried Wumble, on parting. "An' good luck," he added, and shook hands all around.
After the rough experiences in the wilds of Alaska, the boys felt quite at home on the big steamer. The purser managed to find a large stateroom for them, containing three berths. And, what was even better, he introduced Dick and Sam to a doctor who chanced to be on board. The physician was a man of experience, who lived in San Francisco, and he readily agreed to take Tom under his care and do all he could for the sufferer.
"I think all he needs is rest—absolute rest," said the doctor, after an examination. "He ought not to go to college again—at least, not for a year or two."
"It's hard to keep him quiet, Doctor—he has always been such a lively fellow—the liveliest boy in our family," said Dick.
"Well, then, let him travel. Anything to keep his mind from his books and from himself."
The voyage down the mighty Yukon to Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean was a long and tedious one to Dick and Sam. For several days the steamer had a hard time of it, crushing her way through the ice, which was rapidly forming. In a few days more navigation would be completely closed, so far as that portion of our globe was concerned.
"We got out just in time," said Dick to Sam, when the Yukon was at last left behind and they saw ahead of them the blue waters of Bering Sea.
The trip on the ocean seemed to do Tom a world of good. Daily he grew stronger, until he could walk on deck. The doctor attended him from time to time, but gave the sufferer little medicine.