"Couldn't even bring his sled home! Where've you cached it?"
"It's all right—only a few miles back."
Potts relinquished the empty soup-bowl, and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again late in the evening it was to say:
"Found some o' those suckers who were goin' so slick to Minóok; some o' them down at the second village, and the rest are winterin' in Anvik, so the Indians say. Not a single son of a gun will see the diggins till the ice goes out."
"Then, badly off as we are here," says the Colonel to the Boy, "it's lucky for us we didn't join the procession."
When Mac and the Boy brought the sled home a couple of days later, it was found that a portion of its cargo consisted of a toy kyak and two bottles of hootchino, the maddening drink concocted by the natives out of fermented dough and sugar.
Apart from the question of drinking raised again by the "hootch," it is perhaps possible that, having so little else to do, they were ready to eat the more; it is also true that, busy or idle, the human body requires more nourishment in the North than it does in the South.
Certainly the men of the little Yukon camp began to find their rations horribly short commons, and to suffer a continual hunger, never wholly appeased. It is conditions like these that bring out the brute latent in all men. The day came to mean three scant meals. Each meal came to mean a silent struggle in each man's soul not to let his stomach get the better of his head and heart. At first they joked and laughed about their hunger and the scarcity. By-and-by it became too serious, the jest was wry-faced and rang false. They had, in the beginning, each helped himself from common dishes set in the middle of the rough plank table. Later, each found how, without meaning to—hating himself for it—he watched food on its way to others' plates with an evil eye. When it came to his turn, he had an ever-recurrent struggle with himself not to take the lion's share. There were ironical comments now and then, and ill-concealed bitterness. No one of the five would have believed he could feel so towards a human being about a morsel of food, but those who think they would be above it, have not wintered in the Arctic regions or fought in the Boer War. The difficulty was frankly faced at last, and it was ordained in council that the Colonel should be dispenser of the food.