"Can't you let the boys who are going up know we've been there?" he said. "It might encourage them to see that somebody has come out alive."
Jimmy called to his quartermaster before he answered the man. "Well," he said, "in a general way the signal wouldn't quite mean that, but it's very likely they'll understand it."
Merril's boat was almost alongside, when the quartermaster broke out the stars and stripes at the Shasta's masthead. A roar of voices greeted the snapping flag, and the heads grew thick as cedar twigs in the shadowy bush along the stranger's rail; while the men who stood higher aft upon her ample quarter-deck flung their hats and arms aloft. Jimmy could see them plainly, and their faces and garments proclaimed that most of them were from the cities. There were others whose skin was darkened and who wore older clothes; but these did not shout, for they were men who had been at close grips with savage nature already, and had some notion of what was before them. Jimmy blew his whistle and dipped the beaver flag, while a curious little thrill ran through him as the sonorous blast hurled his greeting across the clear green water. He knew what these men would have to face who were going up, the vanguard of a great army, to grapple with the wilderness, and it was clear that nature would prove too terrible for many of them who would never drag their bones out of it again.
Once more the voices answered him with a storm of hopeful cries, for the soft-handed men of the cities had also the courage of their breed. It was the careless, optimistic courage of the Pacific Slope, and store-clerk and hotel-lounger cheered the Shasta gaily as, reckless of what was before them, they went by. When the time came to face screaming blizzard and awful cold they would, for the most part, do it willingly, and go on unflinching in spite of flood and frost until they dropped beside the trail. Jimmy, who realized this vaguely, felt the thrill again, and was glad that he had sped them on their way with a message of good-will; but there was no roar from their steamer's whistle, and the beaver flag blew out undipped at her stern. Then, as she drew away from him, his face hardened, and the engineer looked at him with a grin.
"Merril's skipper's like him, and that's 'most as mean as he could be," he said.
Jimmy glanced toward his masthead. "If there were many of his kind among my countrymen, I'd feel tempted to shift that flag aft, and keep it there," he said. "The boys from Puget Sound could cheer."
One of the prospectors who stood below broke into a little soft laugh. "Oh, yes," he said, "it's in them, and all the snow up yonder won't melt it out. Still, it's your quiet bushmen and ours who'll do the getting there. Guess they could raise a smile for you—and they did; but when it comes to shouting, they haven't breath to spare."
He turned and looked after the steamer growing smaller to the northward amidst her smoke-cloud. "One in every twenty may bottom on paying gold, and you might figure on three or four more making grub and a few ounces on a hired man's share. The snow and the river will get the rest."
Then he strolled away, and when Jimmy looked around again there was only a smoke-trail on the water, for the steamer had sunk beneath the verge of the sea. His attention also was occupied by other things that concerned him more than the steamer, for another two or three hours would bring him to Vancouver Inlet, which he duly reached that afternoon, and found Jordan and a crowd through which the latter could scarcely struggle awaiting him on the wharf. Still, he got on board, and poured out tumultuous questions while he wrung Jimmy's hand, and it was twenty minutes at least before Jimmy had supplied him with the information he desired. Then he sat down and smiled.
"Well," he said, "we'll go into the other points to-morrow, and to-night you're coming to Austerly's with me. Got word from Miss Nellie that I was to bring you sure. She wanted me to send a team over for Eleanor."