"Hard a-port!" called out the steersman. There, just ahead, was a great white-capped "roller" coming—coming, the biggest wave they had encountered since leaving open sea.
But MacCann, the steersman, swung the boat straight into the crested roller, and the Tulare took it gamely, "bow on." All was going well when, just in the boiling middle of what they had thought was foaming "white-cap," the boat struck something solid, shivered, and went shooting down, half under water; recovered, up again, and seemed to pause in a second's doubt on the very top of the great wave. In that second that seemed an eternity one man's courage snapped.
Potts threw down his oar and swore by——and by——he wouldn't pull another——stroke on the——Yukon.
While he was pouring out the words, the steersman sprang from the tiller, and seized Potts' oar just in time to save the boat from capsizing. Then he and the big Kentuckian both turned on the distracted Potts.
"You infernal quitter!" shouted the steersman, and choked with fury. But even under the insult of that "meanest word in the language," Potts sat glaring defiantly, with his half-frozen hands in his pockets.
"It ain't a river, anyhow, this ain't," he said. "It's plain, simple Hell and water."
The others had no time to realise that Potts was clean out of his senses for the moment, and the Kentuckian, still pulling like mad, faced the "quitter" with a determination born of terror.
"If you can't row, take the rudder! Damnation! Take that rudder! Quick, or we'll kill you!" And he half rose up, never dropping his oar.
Blindly, Potts obeyed.
The Tulare was free now from the clinging mass at the bow, but they knew they had struck their first floe.