The acquaintance between the Boy Scouts and Swiftwater Jim, which had begun with Rand’s rescue of the old Klondiker, ripened before many days of the voyage had elapsed into something like warm friendship and the miner became a wellspring of joy to the young men in the wealth of adventure narrative that fell from his lips and the quiet humor of his views of life. His removal by Captain Huxley, to the saloon deck on which they were berthed, gave them constant opportunity for meeting him, and as the novelty of the scenery and surroundings gradually wore off, they turned more and more to his companionship and plied him incessantly with cross-examination as to the peculiarities of the new land which they were about to enter.

At one time in command of a whaler in Bering Sea waters, his ship had been one of six crushed in the ice of the Arctic sea, the crews of which had been forced to winter at Point Barrow, the most northerly point of the United States, where the government had established a whaling relief station.

The enormous burden thrown upon this relief station by the influx of so great a number of dependents coming from the whalers, who had no means of getting away, threatened starvation for all and only by the greatest good fortune did word reach the government at Washington, which at once took steps for their relief. Lieut. Jarvis of the Revenue Marine Service, who was in the east at the time on furlough, from his ship, a revenue cutter engaged in patroling Bering Sea to protect the seal fisheries, volunteered to make the effort to relieve the starving men, although he was leaving the bedside of a sick wife whom he might never see again. Bering Sea and the Arctic are frozen over six months at a time, and the relief expedition must be made over the frozen tundra and uninhabited snow waste, eighteen hundred miles in extent, from the Seward Peninsula to the “top of the continent,” as Swiftwater Jim termed it.

The problem as to how to transport the food for these men over this great expanse of country, barren of trails and almost impassible in places, was solved by Lieutenant Jarvis and his aides. By assembling from the various reindeer stations which the government had established in the Far North, a large herd of reindeer which they drove the entire distance to Point Barrow, they arrived just in time to relieve the hundreds of men who were on the verge of starvation.

“I tell ye,” said Swiftwater Jim, in telling the story to the boys, “I have never seen anything on earth since that looked so good as them deer. There we was, a dirty, unsightly mob so near to death that we had lost about all resemblance to humanity, and not a single human feelin’ left for each other. It was every man for himself and mighty little that he could do, then.

“That feller Jarvis was the man for the job. That relief expedition was received very much as I hear explorers are met by the savagest tribes of Africa, and if it hadn’t been for the nerve of those three officers at the head of it, they would have lost their lives and the provision they had brought would not have lasted three weeks. But those fellows took command at once; headed off a mutiny, distributed the provisions daily and for months ran that gang, made up of the off-scourings of the seas, by reg’lar army discipline.

“For the months before the ice broke up, and vessels could come after us, he governed with a mighty stiff hand, and every man who was fed by government relief, and thay wan’t nothin’ else, was compelled to live up to regulations of cleanliness and daily exercise, which is the only thing that will save a man’s health in that deadly Arctic climate where the bill o’ fare is only about one line long, and a healthy body is the only thing that will save a man’s mind from that deadly depression that ends in insanity. When the ships come finally, that mob of whaler men was cleaner and healthier than they ever were in their lives before and they had a mighty lot of love and respect for Jarvis and the officers with him.

“It was about the biggest sacrifice a man ever made, that voluntary trip of Jarvis, and I believe that Congress, after thinkin’ a long time about it finally acknowledged it by votin’ him some kind of a medal. As for me I hain’t been able to look a poor little reindeer in the face since.”

With his vessel a splintered derelict in the ice of the Arctic sea, Swiftwater had taken to mining and had covered a good part of Alaska in his wanderings.

Col. Snow had noticed with considerable interest the growing intimacy between his young charges and the miner and had taken occasion himself to have several talks with the ancient “sourdough” as Swiftwater insisted on calling himself. The Colonel had found among the army officers returning to their posts in the North several old friends of his army days and had taken the opportunity to make some inquiries as to the miner with evidently satisfactory results. These army officers Col. Snow took occasion to introduce to the Boy Scouts and the element of courtesy that is a strong feature of the West Pointers’ character showed itself in the consideration given the boys by these grizzled men, several of whom had won their spurs during Indian outbreaks in the West and later learned the stern demands of war in Cuba and the Philippines.

Their journey was enlivened by many a good story of camp and field and incidentally the officers evinced a strong curiosity in the organization of the Boy Scouts about which they asked many questions.

The day the “Queen” arrived at Ketchikan, the first port in Alaska, Col. Snow, after starting the boys on a sightseeing trip through the town, put in some time in company with Swiftwater Jim in the office of the United States Commissioner, who is practically a local judge. When all had returned to the steamer that night, Col. Snow called the boys together in the big saloon of the vessel for a talk.

“You know,” said the army officer, “that after I have seen you and the machinery disembarked in Skagway, I must leave you to carry out my mission to Controllers Bay and Valdez, and that I shall not be able to join you in the Yukon Country until later in the summer. It has been my purpose, of course, to place you in charge of a competent manager who will really command the expedition the rest of the way until the machinery is installed on the timber land that I intend to exploit. Of course you will be furnished with sufficient expert Indian labor to assist in navigating the streams over which this freight must be transported, for there are no roads, and water at this season of the year is the only transportation available. What do you think of Swiftwater Jim for commander-in-chief, guide, philosopher and friend to this expedition?”

“B-b-bully,” exclaimed Pepper, adopting the vernacular of an ex-President.

“The very man for the place if I understand what we are to do,” commented Rand.

“Faith, now we will see Alaska; and what we don’t see, Swiftwater is the man to tell us about,” cried the enthusiastic Gerald.

“Well, if we can get him,” said the cautious Don, “there’s nobody we’d like so well.”

“I might as well tell you that it’s all arranged,” said the Colonel. “He was the best man I could find for the work I want done, and I took the first opportunity to arrange with him; but at the same time I am glad that you are all so well satisfied.

“I must have you understand that Swiftwater will be the leader of the party and in all things you will be under his direction. I do not think it will be necessary for me to tell you that the discipline will be perhaps a little more strict than it has been in the ranks of the patrol at home, and while it will not be on an unrestricted army basis, there will be some resemblance and I shall trust to your experience as Scouts to induce in you cheerful acquiescence.”

“It will be something like a campaign then,” suggested Dick.

“It will be a good deal like a campaign,” smilingly replied the Colonel, “and while there will be much that is enjoyable and novel, there won’t be much peaches and cream about it. Plunging into a wilderness as you must, you leave behind all the comforts and most of the sanitary safeguards of civilization, and it is absolutely necessary for the preservation of your health that you adopt certain rules of diet and comfort.”

“Do we have to diet?” inquired Pepper, doubtfully, whose mind reverted to certain milk and porridge days, imposed after an orgy of green fruit and its consequent painful disturbances.

“I didn’t use the word in the sense that you mean, Pepper,” said Col. Snow. “There will be plenty to eat and I hope well prepared, but you must govern yourself as to how you deal with it. Food in most parts of Alaska is a costly proposition, but I guess we shall have enough to go round unless the wild life increases your already healthy appetites.”

“I hae ma doots,” said Don, falling into his Gaelic-accented English, as he often did when he seemed to be wrestling with a problem, “if yon appetite of Pepper’s can increase much wi’out straining the capacity.”

“Look after your own appetite,” said Pepper, growing red, “I read once in a book that four thousand years of oatmeal porridge, three times a day, had wiped out every appetite and spoiled every stomach in Scotland.”

“There, there,” admonished Jack, “that’ll be about all of that. You fellows are about even now. The smallest sort of an appetite may prove to be an inconvenience before we get out of Alaska.”

“I want to say, Colonel,” said Rand, rising and facing the army officer at “attention,” “that I think I speak for the whole patrol when I promise in their names the most earnest fidelity and strict attention to rules and regulations until our mission up here is finished.”

“Yes, yes,” echoed the Scouts, springing to their feet and saluting the Colonel, who also rose and returned it with a smile of acknowledgment. At the same moment Swiftwater Jim entered the saloon.

“Young men, your commander,” said Colonel Snow, waving a hand toward the miner. With one accord the patrol turned toward the grizzled Alaskan and saluted. Jim turned red with pleasure and waved a knotted hand in recognition.

“Glad to see ye, boys, but salutin’ won’t be necessary ev’ry time we meet. I used ter be satisfied on shipboard if a man jumped about a foot high every time I spoke real serious, but I guess we can get through this job without much loud bossin’. I simply want ter sejest that I ain’t very good at argying, so I hope we shan’t have much of that.”

One by one, the boys shook hands with the miner in token of fealty, and from that time until the steamer reached Skagway spent several hours a day with him in what he called his “first class in gettin’ on the job.” The most of this work included thorough instruction in the geography of Southeastern Alaska and Southern Yukon territory, the Colonel’s land being located in the Canadian dominions. Especially was their attention drawn to numerous waterways as shown on the maps, which must form the highways for all transportation during the summer time, and knowledge of whose location, size and tributaries formed a man’s best safeguard in this almost pathless wilderness.

A visit was paid to the hold, this time with the captain’s permission, to enable Swiftwater to estimate the amount of freight that was to be handled and the best way of distributing it among the transports. The boys went with him to learn something of their new duties in this connection.

“I move,” said Rand, “that that earnest young sleuth, Mr. Jack Blake, be appointed guide to this expedition to the dark and creepy hold. He knows where everything is, for he has fallen over it all, I hear.”

“He might meet Monkey Rae,” said Dick with a mock shudder, “then think of the carnage.”

Dublin and the Raes, fearing Captain Huxley’s possible report to the authorities at Skagway, had “jumped the ship” as the commander of the “Queen” expressed it at Ketchikan, the first port of call in Alaska, and Dick’s fears were therefore groundless, but Jack, who had learned the lesson of taking a joke goodnaturedly grinned feebly, and readily dived into the hatchway and down the ladder. The electric lights had been turned on, and the hitherto Egyptian darkness of the hold had vanished. They readily found their consignment, and the miner went over it carefully.

“What ye got here?” he asked, kicking the heavy case before referred to, which the boys had brought along on their own initiative. “Pianny? Don’t believe we need any pianny, up Yukon way. There’s plenty piannys in Alaska, now, but I remember the first one that was brought in. It’s up in Dawson yet. It was brought in on the first rush in ’98. Cost four hundred dollars in the States and two thousand dollars to haul up from Skagway. The last time I heard it, it was being mauled by a feenominon, who had a patent pianny-playin’ wooden arm on one side, and it sounded like a day’s work in a boiler factory at one end and a bad smash in a glass pantry at the other. I heard some o’ them educated Cheechakos talkin’ about art, but I didn’t care for it much.”

“It isn’t a piano,” said Gerald as the laugh subsided. “It’s a little enterprise of our own, and is to be put in storage in Skagway until we’re through with our work.”

“Wa’al,” replied the guide, as he tested its weight, “we don’t have to handle it then, and that’s something of a load off my mind.”

The next day when the boy Scouts awoke they found the vessel anchored in the picturesque harbor of Skagway, the end of the “Inside Passage.”