Malcolm Dundee was staggering around outside the cabin with half a bottle of Bushmill's in his fist, looking for Josephine. He called her name several times..."Josey stop feckin around, ye hot-blooded vixen! I need ye to help me find me feckin pants!" At this point, Dundee tripped over a sapling and fell head-over-heels, but not spilling a drop. As he rotated in a drunken somersault, his extended right arm miraculously held the bottle in a continuous upright position, as if years of training had put it on a kind of autopilot where booze was concerned.

Dundee came to rest on his massive behind, took a long pull on the whiskey, said "arright! Who feckin pushed me!" Then "Jaysus on a Biscuit its feckin freezin out here!" He stood up, rocking back and forth on tree-trunk legs, but tree trunks that bent and swayed in an alcoholic cyclone. He gazed out at the lake, reflecting an endless glory of stars, and said "feckin lovely." He toasted the lake and the stars, took another enormous swallow, shivered, and was reminded of a poem. He stood in a pose of declamation, weight on his back leg, right leg extended and turned toes out, left arm bent with palm out behind his muddy posterior, right hand held as if tucked into a velvet vest. Quickly, he pulled a long twig out of his beard which he had gathered in his tumble, casting it aside, then resuming the pose. He took a deep breath, then farted as if a cannon had discharged in the frost night. Then he began...

"There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee."

He took another drink and swished it around thoughtfully, gulped it while staring at the ground, said "Shit!...was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee..." Then held out the bottle as if signalling the next line to jump on in. Finally he shouted "Got her, god dammit!!"

"Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows." Perplexed again, Dundee mumbled, drank, mumbled again, and finally, like a Ponderosa Pine with a wedge lopped out of the trunk, went over into a cluster of choke cherry bushes.

From the shadows, a palely luminous figure emerged to stand looming over his gigantic prey. Quickly he knelt down and snapped a pair of extra-large handcuffs on the snoring Dundee, speaking loudly into the big man's ear. "In the name of the people of Canada, I place you under arrest for crimes committed in that country which include but are not limited to burglary, grand larceny, inspiring a riot, contempt of court, car theft, large animal theft, despoiling a woodland, public fornication, public urination, lechery, loitering, and poaching. You may remain silent until you have appointed counsel." York stood and caught his breath, then contemplated his next move. Suddenly, Dundee gave a great abbreviated snort and sat up, saying "FECK! Got her!"

"He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

As Dundee finished the line, he suddenly raised both hairy, cuffed wrists, then glanced with a look of animal malice at a small shiny spot that was the ass of York as he disappeared around the cabin corner.