Now we just have to wait patiently for the Football."

"And where is it coming from, this ship with the athletic name?"

"Right from Skagway. It does a regular run between there and Vancouver. It's due here on the fourteenth of this month, at the latest."

"Well, Ben, if that's your decision, I wish we were already on the Football."

"You approve of my plan, then?"

"Absolutely, and since we're destined to go to the Klondike, I'm counting on you to get us there the best way possible."

The two cousins would have some time on their hands during their stay in Vancouver. For one thing, they already had all their gear. For another thing, they did not have to buy equipment to work the claim, since Uncle Josias's equipment would be at their disposal. On board the Football they would still find the comfort they had enjoyed on the Pacific Transcontinental. But at Skagway Raddle would have to make special arrangements to acquire some means of transportation to Dawson City. They would need a collapsible boat for crossing lakes and a team of dogs to haul their sleds across ice-covered plains. He would also see whether it might be better to deal with a local carrier who would agree to take them to Dawson City and provide enough food for several weeks in case it might be difficult to obtain any on the way. Obviously, that was bound to be very expensive, but surely one or two good nuggets would be more than enough to make up for that expense.

There would also be the matter of dealing with Canadian customs officials, who were rather difficult, not to say irritating.

There was so much lively activity in the city, such a crowd of travelers, that Skim was not bored for a moment. Nothing could have been more fascinating than the trains arriving from eastern Canada and the United States. Nothing could have been more interesting than the thousands of passengers disembarking from the steamers that brought them to Vancouver. There were so many people wandering about the streets, waiting to leave for Skagway or St. Michael, that most them were reduced to huddling in corners of the port or under the timbers of the electrically lighted docks.

The police were kept busy with surveillance and maintaining order, what with that swarming crowd of adventurers of all types without hearth or home, attracted by fantastic posters promoting the Klondike. At every step of the way police officers, wearing drab uniforms the color of dead leaves, stood ready to intervene in the many quarrels that threatened to end in bloodshed, for a miner is quick with his knife.

In the midst of this seething mass of immigrants from all social classes, and especially perhaps, from the underworld, the constables carried out their difficult and dangerous duties with all the zeal and courage required by their important office. Perhaps, too, they were thinking it would be more profitable and less dangerous to pan for gold in the tributaries of the Yukon. How could they forget that five Canadian constables, at the very beginning of the Klondike gold rush, had gone home two hundred thousand dollars richer? It required great moral courage on their part not to become intoxicated as so many others had done.

Sometimes looking through his guidebook, Summy Skim had been rather impressed to read that the temperature in winter fell to minus fifty degrees centigrade. Surely he thought, that was a bit of an exaggera tion, even though Dawson City is close to the Arctic Circle. But what really set him thinking was to see in a store in Vancouver that sold optical instruments several thermometers that were graduated down to ninety degrees below freezing.

"Clearly," he said to himself, "that's an exaggeration! The Klondikers are proud of their cold weather and like to show it off."

He went into the store and asked to see a few thermometers so that he could choose the one he wanted.

The proprietor took several different models from his window and handed them to him. They were not graduated in the Fahrenheit scale, which is still in use in the United Kingdom, but in centigrade, which is more commonly used in Canada because of the influence of French customs.7

"Are these thermometers accurate?" he asked.

"Yes indeed, sir," was the reply. "I'm sure you will be satisfied ..."

"Not on the day when they register seventy or eighty degrees below zero," said Skim gravely.

"But the main thing," he was told, "is that they show the temperature as it really is."

"As you say, sir. And does the mercury sometimes fall to sixty degrees below zero?"

"Very often, sir, and even lower."

"Come now," said Skim, "it's hard to believe that the temperature can fall so low, even in the Klondike."

"And why not?" There was a note of pride in the proprietor's voice. "Would you care to have an instrument that registers that far down on the scale?"

"No thanks, no thanks," replied Skim. "I'll settle for this one, which only goes down to sixty below."

And after all, he might have said to himself, what is the use of buying this? When your eyes are chapped under eyelids reddened by the bitter north wind, when your breath falls around you in snowflakes, when your half-frozen blood nearly clogs your veins, when you can't touch a metal object without losing the skin off your fingers, when you are freezing in front of a blazing fireplace as if the fire itself had lost all its heat, it makes no difference whether the temperature is sixty degrees below zero or eighty, and you don't need a thermometer to tell you.

The days went by, however, and Ben Raddle, having completed his preparations, could not conceal his impatience as he waited for the Football to arrive. Had the ship been delayed at sea? They knew it had left Skagway on April io. It should have been within sight of Vancouver by now, since it was only a six-day trip.

It was true that the stopover would be very short, just long enough to take on the several hundred passengers who had booked their passage in advance. There would be no cargo to load or unload, since this ship carried immigrants and their luggage, but no merchandise. It would only have to clean out its boilers, fill its bunkers with coal, and take on a supply of fresh water. That would take twenty-four hours, or thirty-six at the most, and there was no cause for concern about the slowness of the trip along the coast, in the lee of islands for most of the way.

Dawson City's food supply was replenished by cargo ships that brought flour, liquids, preserved meat, and dried vegetables to Skagway, but no passengers. After the Football, other passenger ships were expected, which would take on thousands of Klondike-bound immigrants.