“Well, you can study those things right here, and while you are learning what fifty below zero means you’ll be glad enough to have a well-warmed house near by in which to study the results of your lesson. You’ll find plenty to occupy your time in this immediate vicinity for the next few months. So don’t think any more of the crazy scheme you have just proposed, for I can’t possibly give my consent to it. If I should thus lose sight of you I should spend the rest of my days in mortal terror of meeting Mr. John Ryder and having him demand to know what I had done with his boy. Now I shall have to ask you to leave me for a while, as I am too tired to talk any more.”
As soon as the boys were outside Phil asked, “How do you drive dogs, Serge? Do you have lines to each one, or only to the leader?”
“You don’t drive them with lines at all,” laughed the other. “Nor do you go near them. You sometimes run beside the sledge, but generally behind it, so as to push on the handle-bar over obstructions, or to hang on and hold back in going down steep places. From there you talk to the dogs, and encourage them with a whip of walrus-hide or seal-skin that has a handle about sixteen inches long and a lash of about eighteen feet. To produce the slightest effect on your team you must be able to crack that lash with a report like a pistol-shot in either ear of any dog, or to fleck any one of them on any designated part of the body. You must also learn the language that your dogs are accustomed to, for they will pay no attention to any other.”
“And are snow-shoes a necessity?”
“Certainly they are, for without them you would often sink out of sight in drifts, while even in soft snow of moderate depth they are indispensable.”
“Well,” sighed Phil, “it seems as though one had to learn a great deal before he can travel far in this country; but I suppose if others have, I can. So let’s go and borrow a pair of snow-shoes and have a lesson at once. I suppose I might as well begin the Eskimo whip-practice and dog-language, too; for with such a long journey ahead of us we mustn’t waste any more time than is absolutely necessary on preliminaries.”
“What long journey?” asked Serge.
“Our journey up the river to Forty Mile, and so on to Chilkat, of course. You didn’t imagine we were going to loaf here all winter, did you?”
“But the captain won’t give his consent.”
“Oh, we’ll manage that. Besides, we’ve got to get to Sitka some time, you know, or our parents will be getting anxious about us.”