A mile or two of good going brought us in view of the smoke of a human habitation. What a blessed sight often and often this waving column of blue smoke in the distance is! Sometimes it means life itself to the Alaskan musher, and it always means warmth, shelter, food, companionship, assistance; all that one human being can bring to another. "The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn" never "breaks on the traveller faint and astray" with half the rejoicing that comes with the first sight of mere smoke. "I believe I see smoke," cried Arthur, with the quick vision of the native. "Where? Where?" we eagerly inquired, and the doctor left the handle-bars and limped forward to the boy ahead with the axe. "Away yonder on that bank," pointed Arthur. "I see it! I see it!" the doctor shouted; "we're coming to a house, we're coming to people!" The trip was a severe apprenticeship to Alaskan life for a man straight from the New York hospitals, although before the accident to his knee I had declared that if only they could be trained to live on dry fish I thought a team of young doctors would haul a sled very well. He was delighted at coming upon the first inhabited house we had seen since we helped Nelson to build his little cabin--and _that_ was only the second inhabited house in three hundred miles. [Sidenote: BREAKING THROUGH] But, perhaps because we grew less cautious in our excitement, almost immediately after we had spied the smoke of the cabin we got into one of the worst messes of the whole trip. Arthur had pushed ahead and we had followed with a spurt, and almost at the same time all three of us became aware that we were on dangerous ice. Arthur cried, "The ice is breaking; go back!" just as we began to feel it swaying under our feet. I shouted to the doctor, "Go _on_ to the bank quick!" and pushed with all my might, and we managed to make a few yards more towards shallow water, over ice that bent and cracked at every step, before it gave way and let down the sled and the men into two feet of water. Arthur had run safely over the breaking ice and had gained the bank, and as I write, in my mind's eye I can see the doctor, who had been duly instructed in the elementary lessons of the trail, standing in the water and calling to Arthur: "Make a fire quick; make a fire. I'm all wet!" But it was not necessary to make a fire, for the thermometer was no lower than 10° or 15° above zero, and the chief trouble was not the wetting of our legs but the wetting of the contents of the sled. Along the bank was stronger ice, and we managed, though not without much difficulty, to get the sled upon it and to make our way to the Indian cabin.