"Hereafter she will ply
directly between Seattle and Nome. But this time we're doing the Inside
Passage to Juneau and Skagway and will make the Aleutian Passage via
Cordova and Seward. A whim of the owners, which they haven't seen fit to
explain to me. Possibly the Canadian junket aboard may have something to
do with it. We're landing them at Skagway, where they make the Yukon by
way of White Horse Pass. A pleasure trip for flabby people nowadays,
Holt. I can remember--"
"So can I," nodded Alan Holt, looking at the mountains beyond which lay
the dead-strewn trails of the gold stampede of a generation before. "I
remember. And old Donald is dreaming of that hell of death back there.
He was all choked up tonight. I wish he might forget."
"Men don't forget such women as Jane Hope," said the captain softly.
"You knew her?"
"Yes. She came up with her father on my ship. That was twenty-five years
ago last autumn, Alan. A long time, isn't it? And when I look at Mary
Standish and hear her voice--" He hesitated, as if betraying a secret,
and then he added: "--I can't help thinking of the girl Donald Hardwick
fought for and won in that death-hole at White Horse. It's too bad she
had to die."
"She isn't dead," said Alan. The hardness was gone from his voice. "She
isn't dead," he repeated.
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