The Bite of the Gold Bug by Barthe DeClements

Author:Barthe DeClements
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group

Overboard

“We’re here, son.” Pa’s voice floated around me, and I felt rough woolen blankets against my face. “Drink this.”

I drank. “Hot chocolate,” I whispered through swollen lips. “It’s good.”

“And you’re good, too.” Pa was sitting on the tent floor beside me. “You made it to the Chilkoot Pass.”

I stayed in the tent most of the days it took Pa and Uncle Tanner to bring up the rest of our gear. When I did poke my head out of the door flap and into the howling wind, I saw my red ribbon flying from a pole. The pole was stuck in a snow-covered mound to mark our pile of supplies. There must have been thousands of white mounds spread over the ground.

We didn’t need the marker after we made the long hike down the other side of the pass and on to Lake Bennett. There were a thousand more crates and sacks sitting in front of tents, but the snow had melted in the May sun. We waited for the ice to melt on the lake.

“I thought the lake would have sand around it instead of chunks of rock,” I told Pa, who was sitting on a log with me.

“Listen,” Pa said. “I think I hear the ice creak.”

“I can’t hear anything,” I complained. “Just pounding and sawing. I can’t even sleep because all the men work on their boats until the sun goes down. And it goes down later and later every night.”

“I don’t think it goes down at all in the summer,” Pa said. “And everyone wants to sail to Dawson instead of walking 500 more miles. Don’t you?”

“I guess so.” I was feeling crabby.

We watched Uncle Tanner walk around the curve of the lake toward us. He was smiling as he plopped himself next to Pa. “I got us our free ride, Clint. It took me all morning to find a watertight craft. Not ten percent of those stampeders have even built a raft before.”

That evening, while I was eating my beans, a low rumble came from the lake. “There she goes,” Pa said.

He was right. By the next morning, huge chunks of ice were bobbing across the lake.

“Where’s all that ice going?” I asked.

Uncle Tanner laughed. “The same place we’re going. Down the Yukon River.”

It was about the first of June when we got on the boat. The last patches of snow had barely melted before the mosquitoes came out. They weren’t as big as hummingbirds, but they flew in huge swarms. Each time I slapped my forehead, I hit fifteen of them.

Two Norwegians had built the boat. They couldn’t talk English very well. They mostly smiled and nodded their heads. Their boat was wide, with railings on the sides. There was a mast in the middle and a long tiller in back.

We sailed across the lake and down the Yukon. Whenever the wind died, Pa and the Norwegians poled the boat around the rocks. Uncle Tanner stayed in back and worked the tiller. I leaned over the railing and watched the shore.

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