David Rasmunsen was a hustler, and, like many a greater man, a man of the one idea.  Wherefore, when the clarion¹ call of the North rang on his ear, he conceived an adventure in eggs and bent² all his energy to its achievement.  He figured briefly³ and to the point, and the adventure became iridescent-hued, splendid.  That eggs would sell at Dawson for five dollars a dozen was a safe working premise⁴.  Whence it was incontrovertible that one thousand dozen would bring, in the Golden Metropolis⁵, five thousand dollars.  
On the other hand, expense was to be considered, and he considered it well, for he was a careful man, keenly practical, with a hard head and a heart that imagination never warmed.  At fifteen cents a dozen, the initial cost of his thousand dozen would be one hundred and fifty dollars, a mere⁶ bagatelle⁷ in face of the enormous profit.  And suppose, just suppose, to be wildly extravagant⁸ for once, that transportation for himself and eggs should run up eight hundred and fifty more; he would still have four thousand clear cash and clean when the last egg was disposed of and the last dust had rippled⁹ into his sack.
 
“You see, Alma,”—he figured it over with his wife, the cosy¹⁰ dining-room submerged in a sea of maps, government surveys, guide-books, and Alaskan itineraries,—“you see, expenses don’t really begin till you make Dyea—fifty dollars’ll cover it with a first-class passage thrown in.  Now from Dyea to Lake Linderman, Indian packers take your goods over for twelve cents a pound, twelve dollars a hundred, or one hundred and twenty dollars a thousand.  Say I have fifteen hundred pounds, it’ll cost one hundred and eighty dollars—call it two hundred and be safe.  I am creditably informed by a Klondiker just come out that I can buy a boat for three hundred.  But the same man says I’m sure to get a couple of passengers for one hundred and fifty each, which will give me the boat for nothing, and, further, they can help me manage it.  And . . . that’s all; I put my eggs ashore¹¹ from the boat at Dawson.  Now let me see how much is that?”
 
“Fifty dollars from San Francisco to Dyea, two hundred from Dyea to Linderman, passengers pay for the boat—two hundred and fifty all told,” she summed up swiftly.
 
“And a hundred for my clothes and personal outfit¹²,” he went on happily; “that leaves a margin¹³ of five hundred for emergencies.  And what possible emergencies can arise?”
 
Alma shrugged¹⁴ her shoulders and elevated her brows.  If that vast Northland was capable of swallowing up a man and a thousand dozen eggs, surely there was room and to spare for whatever else he might happen to possess.  So she thought, but she said nothing.  She knew David Rasmunsen too well to say anything.
 
“Doubling the time because of chance delays, I should make the trip in two months.  Think of it, Alma!  Four thousand in two months!  Beats the paltry¹⁵ hundred a month I’m getting now.  Why, we’ll build further out where we’ll have more space, gas in every room, and a view, and the rent of the cottage’ll pay taxes, insurance, and water, and leave something over.  And then there’s always the chance of my striking it and coming out a millionaire.  Now tell me, Alma, don’t you think I’m very moderate?”
 
And Alma could hardly think otherwise.  Besides, had not her own cousin,—though a remote and distant one to be sure, the black sheep, the harum-scarum, the ne’er-do-well,—had not he come down out of that weird¹⁷ North country with a hundred thousand in yellow dust, to say nothing of a half-ownership in the hole from which it came?
 
David Rasmunsen’s grocer was surprised when he found him weighing eggs in the scales at the end of the counter, and Rasmunsen himself was more surprised when he found that a dozen eggs weighed a pound and a half—fifteen hundred pounds for his thousand dozen!  There would be no weight left for his clothes, blankets, and cooking utensils¹⁸, to say nothing of the grub he must necessarily consume by the way.  His calculations were all thrown out, and he was just proceeding¹⁹ to recast them when he hit upon the idea of weighing small eggs.  “For whether they be large or small, a dozen eggs is a dozen eggs,” he observed sagely²⁰ to himself; and a dozen small ones he found to weigh but a pound and a quarter.  Thereat the city of San Francisco was overrun by anxious-eyed emissaries, and commission houses and dairy associations were startled by a sudden demand for eggs running not more than twenty ounces to the dozen.
 
Rasmunsen mortgaged the little cottage for a thousand dollars, arranged for his wife to make a prolonged stay among her own people, threw up his job, and started North.  To keep within his schedule he compromised on a second-class passage, which, because of the rush, was worse than steerage; and in the late summer, a pale and wabbly man, he disembarked with his eggs on the Dyea beach.  But it did not take him long to recover his land legs and appetite.  His first interview with the Chilkoot packers straightened him up and stiffened²¹ his backbone²².  Forty cents a pound they demanded for the twenty-eight-mile portage, and while he caught his breath and swallowed, the price went up to forty-three.  Fifteen husky Indians put the straps²³ on his packs at forty-five, but took them off at an offer of forty-seven from a Skaguay Croesus in dirty shirt and ragged²⁴ overalls²⁵ who had lost his horses on the White Pass trail and was now making a last desperate drive at the country by way of Chilkoot.
 
But Rasmunsen was clean grit²⁶, and at fifty cents found takers, who, two days later, set his eggs down intact at Linderman.  But fifty cents a pound is a thousand dollars a ton, and his fifteen hundred pounds had exhausted²⁷ his emergency fund and left him stranded²⁸ at the Tantalus point where each day he saw the fresh-whipsawed boats departing for Dawson.  Further, a great anxiety brooded over the camp where the boats were built.  Men worked frantically³⁰, early and late, at the height of their endurance, caulking³¹, nailing, and pitching in a frenzy³² of haste for which adequate explanation was not far to seek.  Each day the snow-line crept farther down the bleak³³, rock-shouldered peaks, and gale³⁴ followed gale, with sleet³⁵ and slush and snow, and in the eddies³⁶ and quiet places young ice formed and thickened through the fleeting³⁷ hours.  And each morn, toil³⁸-stiffened men turned wan³⁹ faces across the lake to see if the freeze-up had come.  For the freeze-up heralded⁴⁰ the death of their hope—the hope that they would be floating down the swift river ere navigation closed on the chain of lakes.
 
To harrow Rasmunsen’s soul further, he discovered three competitors in the egg business.  It was true that one, a little German, had gone broke and was himself forlornly back-tripping the last pack of the portage; but the other two had boats nearly completed, and were daily supplicating⁴¹ the god of merchants and traders to stay the iron hand of winter for just another day.  But the iron hand closed down over the land.  Men were being frozen in the blizzard⁴² which swept Chilkoot, and Rasmunsen frosted his toes ere he was aware.  He found a chance to go passenger with his freight in a boat just shoving off through the rubble⁴³, but two hundred hard cash, was required, and he had no money.
 
“Ay tank you yust wait one leedle w’ile,” said the Swedish boat-builder, who had struck his Klondike right there and was wise enough to know it—“one leedle w’ile und I make you a tam fine skiff boat, sure Pete.”
 
With this unpledged word to go on, Rasmunsen hit the back trail to Crater⁴⁴ Lake, where he fell in with two press correspondents whose tangled⁴⁵ baggage was strewn from Stone House, over across the Pass, and as far as Happy Camp.
 
“Yes,” he said with consequence.  “I’ve a thousand dozen eggs at Linderman, and my boat’s just about got the last seam caulked⁴⁶.  Consider myself in luck to get it.  Boats are at a premium⁴⁷, you know, and none to be had.”
 
Whereupon and almost with bodily violence the correspondents clamoured to go with him, fluttered greenbacks before his eyes, and spilled yellow twenties from hand to hand.  He could not hear of it, but they over-persuaded him, and he reluctantly consented to take them at three hundred apiece.  Also they pressed upon him the passage money in advance.  And while they wrote to their respective journals concerning the Good Samaritan with the thousand dozen eggs, the Good Samaritan was hurrying back to the Swede at Linderman.
 
“Here, you!  Gimme that boat!” was his salutation, his hand jingling⁴⁸ the correspondents’ gold pieces and his eyes hungrily bent upon the finished craft.
 
The Swede regarded him stolidly⁴⁹ and shook his head.
 
“How much is the other fellow paying?  Three hundred?  Well, here’s four.  Take it.”
 
He tried to press it upon him, but the man backed away.
 
“Ay tank not.  Ay say him get der skiff boat.  You yust wait—”
 
“Here’s six hundred.  Last call.  Take it or leave it.  Tell ’m it’s a mistake.”
 
The Swede wavered.  “Ay tank yes,” he finally said, and the last Rasmunsen saw of him his vocabulary was going to wreck⁵⁰ in a vain effort to explain the mistake to the other fellows.
 
The German slipped and broke his ankle on the steep hogback above Deep Lake, sold out his stock for a dollar a dozen, and with the proceeds hired Indian packers to carry him back to Dyea.  But on the morning Rasmunsen shoved off with his correspondents, his two rivals followed suit.
 
“How many you got?” one of them, a lean little New Englander, called out.
 
“One thousand dozen,” Rasmunsen answered proudly.
 
“Huh!  I’ll go you even stakes I beat you in with my eight hundred.”
 
The correspondents offered to lend him the money; but Rasmunsen declined, and the Yankee closed with the remaining rival, a brawny⁵¹ son of the sea and sailor of ships and things, who promised to show them all a wrinkle or two when it came to cracking on.  And crack on he did, with a large tarpaulin⁵² square-sail which pressed the bow half under at every jump.  He was the first to run out of Linderman, but, disdaining⁵³ the portage, piled his loaded boat on the rocks in the boiling rapids.  Rasmunsen and the Yankee, who likewise had two passengers, portaged across on their backs and then lined their empty boats down through the bad water to Bennett.
 
Bennett was a twenty-five-mile lake, narrow and deep, a funnel⁵⁴ between the mountains through which storms ever romped⁵⁵.  Rasmunsen camped on the sand-pit at its head, where were many men and boats bound north in the teeth of the Arctic winter.  He awoke in the morning to find a piping gale from the south, which caught the chill from the whited peaks and glacial valleys and blew as cold as north wind ever blew.  But it was fair, and he also found the Yankee staggering past the first bold headland with all sail set.  Boat after boat was getting under way, and the correspondents fell to with enthusiasm.
 
“We’ll catch him before Cariboo Crossing,” they assured Rasmunsen, as they ran up the sail and the Alma took the first icy spray over her bow.
 
Now Rasmunsen all his life had been prone⁵⁶ to cowardice⁵⁷ on water, but he clung to the kicking steering-oar with set face and determined⁵⁸ jaw⁵⁹.  His thousand dozen were there in the boat before his eyes, safely secured beneath the correspondents’ baggage, and somehow, before his eyes were the little cottage and the mortgage for a thousand dollars.
 
It was bitter cold.  Now and again he hauled in the steering-sweep and put out a fresh one while his passengers chopped the ice from the blade.  Wherever the spray struck, it turned instantly to frost, and the dipping boom of the spritsail was quickly fringed with icicles.  The Alma strained and hammered through the big seas till the seams and butts⁶⁰ began to spread, but in lieu of bailing⁶¹ the correspondents chopped ice and flung it overboard.  There was no let-up.  The mad race with winter was on, and the boats tore along in a desperate string.
 
“W-w-we can’t stop to save our souls!” one of the correspondents chattered⁶², from cold, not fright.
 
“That’s right!  Keep her down the middle, old man!” the other encouraged.
 
Rasmunsen replied with an idiotic⁶³ grin.  The iron-bound shores were in a lather⁶⁴ of foam⁶⁵, and even down the middle the only hope was to keep running away from the big seas.  To lower sail was to be overtaken and swamped.  Time and again they passed boats pounding among the rocks, and once they saw one on the edge of the breakers about to strike.  A little craft behind them, with two men, jibed⁶⁶ over and turned bottom up.
 
“W-w-watch out, old man,” cried he of the chattering⁶⁷ teeth.
 
Rasmunsen grinned and tightened⁶⁸ his aching grip on the sweep.  Scores of times had the send of the sea caught the big square stern of the Alma and thrown her off from dead before it till the after leach⁶⁹ of the spritsail fluttered hollowly, and each time, and only with all his strength, had he forced her back.  His grin by then had become fixed⁷⁰, and it disturbed the correspondents to look at him.
 
They roared down past an isolated⁷¹ rock a hundred yards from shore.  From its wave-drenched top a man shrieked⁷² wildly, for the instant cutting the storm with his voice.  But the next instant the Alma was by, and the rock growing a black speck⁷³ in the troubled froth.
 
“That settles the Yankee!  Where’s the sailor?” shouted one of his passengers.
 
Rasmunsen shot a glance over his shoulder at a black square-sail.  He had seen it leap up out of the grey to windward, and for an hour, off and on, had been watching it grow.  The sailor had evidently repaired damages and was making up for lost time.
 
“Look at him come!”
 
Both passengers stopped chopping ice to watch.  Twenty miles of Bennett were behind them—room and to spare for the sea to toss up its mountains toward the sky.  Sinking and soaring like a storm-god, the sailor drove by them.  The huge sail seemed to grip the boat from the crests⁷⁴ of the waves, to tear it bodily out of the water, and fling it crashing and smothering⁷⁵ down into the yawning troughs.
 
“The sea’ll never catch him!”
 
“But he’ll r-r-run her nose under!”
 
Even as they spoke⁷⁶, the black tarpaulin swooped⁷⁷ from sight behind a big comber.  The next wave rolled over the spot, and the next, but the boat did not reappear.  The Alma rushed by the place.  A little riffraff of oats and boxes was seen.  An arm thrust up and a shaggy head broke surface a score of yards away.
 
For a time there was silence.  As the end of the lake came in sight, the waves began to leap aboard with such steady recurrence⁷⁸ that the correspondents no longer chopped ice but flung the water out with buckets.  Even this would not do, and, after a shouted conference with Rasmunsen, they attacked the baggage.  Flour, bacon, beans, blankets, cooking-stove, ropes, odds⁷⁹ and ends, everything they could get hands on, flew overboard.  The boat acknowledged it at once, taking less water and rising more buoyantly.
 
“That’ll do!” Rasmunsen called sternly, as they applied⁸⁰ themselves to the top layer of eggs.
 
“The h-hell it will!” answered the shivering one, savagely⁸¹.  With the exception of their notes, films, and cameras, they had sacrificed their outfit.  He bent over, laid hold of an egg-box, and began to worry it out from under the lashing⁸³.
 
“drop it!  drop it, I say!”
 
Rasmunsen had managed to draw his revolver, and with the crook⁸⁴ of his arm over the sweep head, was taking aim.  The correspondent stood up on the thwart⁸⁵, balancing back and forth⁸⁶, his face twisted with menace and speechless anger.
 
“My God!”
 
So cried his brother correspondent, hurling⁸⁷ himself, face downward, into the bottom of the boat.  The Alma, under the divided attention of Rasmunsen, had been caught by a great mass of water and whirled around.  The after leach hollowed, the sail emptied and jibed, and the boom, sweeping⁸⁸ with terrific force across the boat, carried the angry correspondent overboard with a broken back.  Mast and sail had gone over the side as well.  A drenching⁸⁹ sea followed, as the boat lost headway, and Rasmunsen sprang to the bailing bucket.
 
Several boats hurtled past them in the next half-hour,—small boats, boats of their own size, boats afraid, unable to do aught but run madly on.  Then a ten-ton barge⁹⁰, at imminent⁹¹ risk of destruction, lowered sail to windward and lumbered⁹² down upon them.
 
“Keep off!  Keep off!” Rasmunsen screamed.
 
But his low gunwale ground against the heavy craft, and the remaining correspondent clambered aboard.  Rasmunsen was over the eggs like a cat and in the bow of the Alma, striving with numb⁹³ fingers to bend the hauling-lines together.
 
“Come on!” a red-whiskered man yelled at him.
 
“I’ve a thousand dozen eggs here,” he shouted back.  “Gimme a tow!  I’ll pay you!”
 
“Come on!” they howled in chorus.
 
A big whitecap broke just beyond, washing over the barge and leaving the Alma half swamped.  The men cast off, cursing him as they ran up their sail.  Rasmunsen cursed back and fell to bailing.  The mast and sail, like a sea anchor, still fast by the halyards, held the boat head on to wind and sea and gave him a chance to fight the water out.
 
Three hours later, numbed⁹⁴, exhausted, blathering like a lunatic, but still bailing, he went ashore on an ice-strewn beach near Cariboo Crossing.  Two men, a government courier and a half-breed voyageur, dragged him out of the surf, saved his cargo⁹⁵, and beached the Alma.  They were paddling out of the country in a Peterborough, and gave him shelter for the night in their storm-bound camp.  Next morning they departed, but he elected to stay by his eggs.  And thereafter the name and fame of the man with the thousand dozen eggs began to spread through the land.  Gold-seekers who made in before the freeze-up carried the news of his coming.  Grizzled old-timers of Forty Mile and Circle City, sour doughs⁹⁶ with leathern jaws⁹⁷ and bean-calloused stomachs, called up dream memories of chickens and green things at mention of his name.  Dyea and Skaguay took an interest in his being, an............