Hidden Country
Date: 2021-09-04T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Adventure stories; Alaska -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Yachts -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Hidden Country

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Title: Hidden Country

Author: Henry Oyen

Release date: September 4, 2021 [eBook #66215]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: The Ridgway Company, 1916

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN COUNTRY ***

HIDDEN COUNTRY
by Henry Oyen

Author of “The Snow Burner,” “The Man Trail,” “Gaston Olaf,” etc.

I

George Chanler’s offer of a position as literary secretary of his Arctic expedition came to me one fine May morning when I was sitting at my desk, glooming from an eighteenth-story height down upon the East River, and dreading to begin the day’s work.

I had sat so for many mornings past. I was not happy; I was a failure. I was thirty years old, had a college education; my health was splendid and I was intelligent and ambitious. And I was precariously occupying a position as country correspondent in Hurst’s Mail Order Emporium, salary $25 a week, with every reason to believe that I had achieved the limits of such success as my capabilities entitled me to.

“You ain’t got no punch, Mr. Pitt; that’s the matter vit’ you,” was my employer’s verdict. “You’re a fine feller, but—oof! How you haf got into the rut!”

I had. I was in so deeply that I had lost confidence and was losing hope. That was why I, Gardner Pitt, bookman by instinct and office-cog by vocation, was ripe for Chanler’s sensational offer.

My friendship with Chanler, which had been a close one at school where I had done half his work for him, had of a necessity languished during the last few years. There is not much room for friendship between a poorly paid office man and an idle young millionaire. Yet it was apparent that George had not forgotten, for now he turned to me when he wanted some one to accompany him and write the history of his Arctic achievements.

His offer came in the form of a long telegram from Seattle where he was outfitting his new yacht, Wanderer. Being what he was George gave me absolutely no useful information concerning the nature of his expedition. In what most concerned me, however, his message was sufficient: a light task, a Summer vacation, and at generous terms.

I looked out of the window at the wearying roofs of the city, and the yellow paper crumpled in my fingers as I clenched my fist. There was none of the adventurer in me. I was not in the optimistic frame of mind necessary to an explorer. But Chanler’s offer was, at least, a chance to escape from New York. I bade Mr. Hurst good-by, and went out and sent a wire of acceptance.

Eight days later, shortly before noon, I stood on the curb outside the station in Seattle bargaining with a cabman to drive me to the dock where I had been directed to find a launch from the Wanderer awaiting me that morning. The particular cabman that I happened to hit upon was an honest man. He cheerfully admitted that he did not know the exact location of the dock mentioned in my directions, but he assured me that he knew in a general way in which section of the water-front it must be.

“And when we get down there I’ll step in and ask at Billy Taylor’s,” he said, as if that settled the matter. “Billy’ll know; he knows everything that’s going along the water-front.”

Billy Taylor’s proved to be a tiny waterfront saloon which my man entered with an alacrity that testified to a desire for something more than information concerning my dock. I waited in patience for many minutes with no sign of his return. I waited many more minutes in impatience with a like result.

In my broken-spirited condition I was not fit or inclined to reprimand a drinking cabman, but neither was I minded to sit idle while my man filled himself up. I stepped out of the cab and thrust open the swinging doors of the saloon.

I did not enter. My cabman was in the act of coming out, standing with one hand absently thrust out toward the doors, his attention arrested and held by something that was taking place in a small room at the rear of the saloon. The door of this room was half open. I saw a small, wiry man in seaman’s clothes leaning over a round table, shaking his fist at a large man with light cropped hair who sat opposite him. A bottle of beer, knocked over, was gurgling out its contents on the floor. The large man was sitting up very stiff and straight, but smiling easily at the other’s fury.

“No, you don’t, Foxy; no you don’t! You can’t come any of your ‘Captain’ business on me, you Laughing Devil,” screamed the little man. “Ah, ha! That stung, eh? Didn’t think I knew what the Aleuts called you, eh, Foxy? ‘Laughing Devil.’ An’ you talk like a captain to me, and ask me to go North with you! Here: what became of Slade and Harris, that let you into partnership with ’em after you’d lost your sealer in Omkutsk Strait? And what became of the gold strike they’d made? Eh? And you talk to me about a rich gold find you’ve got, and want me to help you take a rich sucker up North——”

“Still,” said the big man suddenly. “Still, Madigan.”

He had been smiling up till then, his huge, red face lighted up like a wrinkled red sun, but suddenly the light seemed to go out. The fat of his face seemed to become like cast bronze, with two pin-points of fire gleaming, balefully from under down-drawn lids. Several heavy lines which had been hidden in genial wrinkles now were apparent, and, though only the flat profile was visible to me, I saw, or rather I felt, that the man’s face for the while was terrible.

To my amazement the infuriated sea-man’s abuse ceased as abruptly as if the power of speech had been taken from him. He remained in his threatening attitude, leaning across the table, his clenched fist thrust forward, his mouth open; but his eyes were held by the crop-haired man’s and not a sound came from his lips.

“Down, Madigan,” continued the big man. “It is my wish that you sit down.”

A snarl came from the small man’s lips. He seemed about to break out again, but suddenly he subsided and sat down. The big man nodded stiffly, as one might at child who has obeyed an unpleasant command, and the smaller man humbly closed the door.

My cabman came hurtling out through the swinging doors, nearly running me down in his hurry.

“Hullo!” he cried. “Did you see that, too? Whee-yew! That was a funny thing. That little fellow’s Tad Madigan, a mate that’s lost his papers, and the toughest man along the water-front; and he—he shut up like a schoolboy, didn’t he?”

Saloon brawls, even when displaying amazing characters, do not interest me.

I reminded him that he had gone in to inquire about the location of my dock.

“Oh, that’s a good joke on me,” he laughed. “Your dock’s right next door here, and you can see the Wanderer from Billy’s back room.”

A few minutes later I was standing in the midst of my baggage on this dock, looking out across the water to where lay anchored the white, clean-lined yacht, Wanderer.

It was a morning in early June, a day alive with bright, warm sun. A slight breeze with a mingling of sea, and pine, and the subtle scents of Spring in it, was coming up the Sound, and beneath its breath the water was rippling into wavelets, each with a touch of sun on its tiny crest.

An outdoor man might have thrilled with the scene, the sun, the fresh Spring-scent and all. But I was fresh from the asphalt and stone walls of New York, and I was broken-spirited, resigned to anything, elated over nothing, that fate might allot me. I merely looked over the water to the Wanderer to see if the promised launch was on its way.

“Sure enough, Mister, there comes a little gas-boat for you now,” exclaimed my cabman, pointing with his whip to a small launch that was coming away from the yacht’s stern. “You’ll be all right; your friends have seen you. Well, good luck to you, friend, and lots of it.”

“Thank you,” I said, “and the same to you.”

But I felt bitterly that there was little hope that his cheery wish would be realized for me.

As the launch drew nearer the dock I saw that a bareheaded and red-haired young man was in charge, and as it came quite near I saw that the young man’s mouth was opening and closing prodigiously, and from snatches of sound that drifted toward me above the noise of the engine, I heard that he was singing joyously at the top of a strained and thoroughly unmusical voice.

He drove the launch straight at the dock in a fashion that seemed to threaten inevitable collision, but at the crucial moment the engine suddenly was reversed, the rudder swung around, and the little craft came sidling alongside against the timber on which I was standing; the young man tossed a rope around a pile, and with a sudden spring he was on the dock beside me.

“You’re Mr. Gardner Pitt, if your baggage is marked right,” he said, though I had not seen the swift glance he had shot at the initials on my bags.

He stood on his tip-toes, blinking in the sun, and filled his lungs with a great draft of air.

“Gee! It’s some morning, ain’t it, Mr. Pitt? A-a-ah-ah!” he continued with ineffable satisfaction. “It certainly is one grand thing to be alive.”

I could not wholly subscribe to his sentiment at that time, but there was such an aura of wholesome good humor about the young man that I warmed toward him at once. He was probably twenty-three years old, short and boyish of build: his face was a mass of freckles; his eyes were very blue and merry; his nose very snubbed, his mouth large. He wore one of the most awful red ties that ever tortured the eyes of humanity, and the crime was aggravated by a pin containing a large yellow stone; but when he grinned it was apparent that he was one of those whom much is to be forgiven.

“I’m Freddy Pierce,” he said. “Wireless operator and odd-job-man on the Wanderer. Say, Mr. Pitt, will you do me a favor?”

He looked at me with an expression of indescribable comicality on his sun-wrinkled face, and, willy-nilly, I found myself smiling.

“Thank you for them kind words,” he laughed before I had opened my mouth. “Knew you’d do it; knew I had you sized up right. Let me roll a pill before we start back? Thanks.”

With amazing swiftness he had produced tobacco and paper, rolled a cigaret, and sent a ring of smoke rolling upward through the clear air.

“Mr. Pitt,” he said suddenly in a new tone, “do you know Captain Brack?”

“No,” I said. “Who is Captain Brack?”

“Captain of the Wanderer,” was the reply.

“I don’t know him.”

He threw away his cigaret and began easing my baggage down into the launch. He was serious for the moment.

“And—and say, Mr. Pitt, do you know a Jane—I mean, a lady named Miss Baldwin?”

I did not.

“Who is Miss Baldwin?”

Pierce suddenly snapped his teeth together, and the look that came upon his freckled countenance puzzled me for days to come.

“God knows—and the boss,” he said enigmatically. “She—she’s——”

He shook his head vigorously, then sprang into the launch. His serious moment had gone.

“Now get in while I’m holding ’er steady, Mr. Pitt. That’s right.” And now, putt-putt said the engine, and bearing its precious freight the launch sped across the blue water to the noble yacht. “Ah, ha! And there’s old ‘Frozen Face,’ the Boss’s valet, waiting to welcome you on board.”

II

I followed the direction of Pierce’s outstretched arm and on the deck of the Wanderer made out the stiff, precise figure of Chanler’s man, Simmons, waiting in exactly the same pose with which he admitted one to his master’s bachelor apartments in Central Park West. It was Simmons who welcomed me on board, and he did it ill, for it irked his serving-man’s soul to countenance his master’s friendship with persons of no wealth.

“Mr. Chanler is in his room, sir. You are to come there at once. This way, if you please, sir.”

He led the way in his stiffest manner to a stateroom in the forward part of the yacht and knocked diffidently on the door.

“Go away! Please go away!” came the petulant response.

“Mr. Pitt, sir,” said Simmons.

“Oh!” There was the sound of a desk being closed. “Show him in. Hello, Gardy! Glad to see you! I’m fairly dying for somebody to talk to!”

Chanler was sprawled gracefully over a chair before a writing-desk built into the forward wall of the stateroom. He was wearing a mauve dressing-gown of padded silk and smoking one of his phenomenally long cigarets in a phenomenally long amber holder. It had been long since I had seen him and he had changed deplorably; but so rapid and eager was his greeting that I had no time to note just where the change had come.

“You’re a good fellow to come, Gardy,” said he with a genuine note of gratitude in his tones. “I knew you’d help me, though. Simmons—bring a couple of green ones, please.”

“Not for me,” I hastened to interpose. “You know I never touch anything before dinner.”

“That’s so; I forgot. You’ve got yourself disciplined. Well, bring one green one, Simmons. I don’t usually do this sort of thing so early, either,” he continued as Simmons vanished, “but I sat up late with Captain Brack last night, and I’m a little off. Wonderful chap, the captain; head on him like a piece of steel. Well, Gardy, what do you think of the trip?”

“When you have told me something about it I may have an opinion,” I replied. “You know all the knowledge of it that I have was what came in your message.”

“That’s so. Well, what did you think when you got the wire? You must have thought something; you think about everything. What did you think when you heard that I was planning a stunt like this—something useful, you know? Eh?”

“Well, it was something of a shock,” I admitted.

Chanler smiled. But it was not the likable, indolent, boyish smile of old which admitted:

“Quite so. Came as a shock to hear that I was planning to be something besides a loafer spending the money my governor made. I knew it would. You never expected anything like this of me, Gardy?”

“No, I can’t say that I did.”

“Neither did I. Never dreamed of it until three months ago, and then—then I discovered that I had to do—come in, Simmons,” he interrupted himself as the valet knocked.

While he was swallowing his little drink of absinth I studied him more closely.

There had always been something of the young Greek god about George Chanler, an indolent, likable, self-satisfied young god with a long, elegant body and a small curl-wrapped head. Now I saw how he had changed. The fine body and head had grown flabby from too much self-indulgence and too little use. There was a new look about the lazy eyes which hinted at a worry, the sort of worry which troubles a man awake or sleeping. Something had happened to George Chanler, something that had shaken him out of the armor of indolent self-sufficiency which Chanler money had grown around him. The boyish lines about his mouth were gone. It was not a likable face now; it was cynical, almost brutal.

“That’s all, Simmons,” he said, allowing Simmons to take the empty glass from his hand. “What was I saying, Gardy, when I stopped?”

“That you discovered that you had to do——”

“Oh, yes.” He paused a while. “Didn’t you wonder why I was doing this sort of thing when you got my wire, Gardy?”

“Naturally, I did.”

“And you haven’t got any idea, or that sort of thing, about why I’m doing it?”

“You say that your purpose is to explore——”

“I mean, what started me on the trip?”

I shook my head.

“Haven’t you even got a good guess?”

“Well, it might be a bet, doctor’s orders, or just an ordinary whim.”

He shook his head, looking pensively out of the window, or at least, as near pensively as he could.

“No,” he said. “Nothing so easy as that. I’m doing it because of a——”

He caught himself sharply and looked at me.

“What did you think I was going to finish with, Gardy?”

“I had three guesses,” I replied. “I wouldn’t guess again.”

“I’m doing it,” he resumed slowly, “I’m doing it because—I had to do something useful, and this is the sort of thing I like to do.”

I smiled a little.

“What’s that for, Gardy?” he asked.

“I didn’t know you ever recognized the words ‘had to’ as applicable to yourself.”

“By jove! And I didn’t, Gardy; I never did in the world—until three months ago. But then something happened.”

He looked out of the window for a long time.

“No, I’m not going to tell you, Gardy. It’s none of your business. No offense, you know.”

“Of course not. I didn’t ask.”

“You’ll know without asking, in time. Well, I’ve told you I found I had to do something—something useful. That was quite a jolt, you know. Never fancied I’d ever have to do anything, and as for doing anything useful—rot, my boy, for me, you know. But I found I had to, and so when I met Brack—By the way, Brack’s the chap who’s responsible for my ‘doing something’ in this way. Wonderful fellow. Met him in San Francisco. Don’t mind admitting to you, old man, that I was traveling pretty fast.

“Went to San Francisco with an idea of going to China, or around the world, or something like that, to forget. Met him in the Palace barroom. Saved me. He’d just come back from the North, where he’d lost his sealing vessel. He said: ‘Why don’t you buy the Wanderer and do some exploring?’ ‘What’s the Wanderer,’ says I. ‘Strongest gasoline yacht in the world,’ he says. I began to pick up; life held interest, you know. Went to see the Wanderer. Belonged to old Harrison, the steel man, who’d done a world tour in her and wanted to sell. ‘Where’s a good place to explore if I do buy her?’ says I, and Brack told me about Petroff Sound. Ever hear of it before this, Gardy?”

“I’ve seen the name some place, nothing more.”

“I wired old Doc Harper about it after Brack had talked to me about the place. Asked if it would be a good stunt to go up there; credit to the old school to have a ‘grad’ get the bones, you know.”

“Bones?” I exclaimed.

“Bones,” said Chanler. “Read that,” and he handed me a long letter signed by the venerable president of our school.

The Petroff Sound territory unquestionably is a district which science demands be explored. Mikal Petroff, the Russian who in 1889 brought out the tibea of a mammoth, (elephas primigenius) and several bone fragments which certainly had belonged to an animal of characteristics similar to the extinct elephant species, was an illiterate fur-trader and therefore his report of a field of similar bones frozen in the never-thawing ice of the Sound must not be accepted as positive information.

In 1892, however, Sturlasson, the Norwegian captain, who reached the Sound after the wreck of his sealing vessel, made entries in his diary before dying which substantiate Petroff’s story. As the location of the Sound, as recorded by Sturlasson, is three minutes west of the location as given by your informant, it is certain that the latter knows of Petroff Sound. No nobler use could be found for your activity and wealth than the expedition you are considering. Before expressing myself further, I will give such data as is obtainable from sources at my command.

Dr. Harper’s data on Petroff Sound was deadly dry scientific matter which explained that while the possible discovery of frozen mammoth bones would be of great interest to the scientific world, the study of the terrain and of conditions surrounding these bones would be of infinitely greater value.

“Then it’s purely a scientific affair,” I said. “To be of any value it must be scientific.”

“Positively, dear boy, positively. I’ll give you a lot of stuff to read up on after luncheon. Old Harper took trouble to wire me to be sure to have an authentic, coherent report made of the expedition’s findings. Well, that’s where you came in. I haven’t got brains, but you have, Gardy, and you’re going to help me out. We sail tonight, by the way, and we won’t be back until cold weather, so ye who have tears prepare to shed them between now and midnight.”

“But who is the scientist of the expedition?”

“Brack. He’s a geologist, mineralogist, oceanographer, and general shark on all that sort of stuff. Expert explorer. Quit exploring and went sealing. Lost his schooner, and had come down and was living at the Palace, waiting for capital to start again. Wonderful mind. He’s ashore at present framing up a little sport to help us pass the afternoon. We’ll get ready for luncheon now, Gardy. He’ll be here then and you’ll meet him. Sure you won’t have a tot of grog before eating, Gardy?”

“No, thanks.”

“Well, I will, just a little. Simmons will show you to your stateroom. Hope you’re witty and full of scandal, Gardy, ’cause I’m awf’ly, awf’ly bored these days and I’ve got to be amused.”

Simmons, summoned by the bell, ushered me into the stateroom next to Chanler’s. The two rooms were nearly identical in size and furnishings, and I wondered idly why Chanler, as owner, did not occupy the owner’s suite forward. Later I had a glimpse into the owner’s suite through a half-open door, and was more puzzled: the suite was obviously furnished for feminine occupation.

Captain Brack had not arrived when we entered the dining-saloon of the Wanderer for luncheon. There were present Mr. Riordan, Chief Engineer, Dr. Olson, physician to the expedition, and the second officer, Mr. Wilson. Riordan was a pale, sour-looking Irishman, tall, loosely built, heavy-jawed, and with a bitter down-curve to the corners of his large, loose mouth. Once I saw him shoot a sly glance at George Chanler’s long, thin hands, and the look was not what a dutiful employee should have bestowed upon so generous an employer.

Opposite Riordan, and beside me, sat Mr. Wilson, second in command, who had come with the Wanderer from her former owner. He was a strongly built, silent, brown-faced man, of about thirty-five who always appeared as if he had just been shaven, as if his clothes had just been brushed, and whose shoes always seemed to be polished to the same degree. His face was square and lean, and against the weather-beaten neck his immaculate collar gleamed with startling whiteness. He spoke seldom except when spoken to and then modestly and to the point. “Yes sir” and, “No sir,” were the words most frequently on his lips.

Dr. Olson was a small, unobtrusive man with a light Vandyke beard, to whom no one paid any attention and who spoke even less than Mr. Wilson.

The introductions were barely over when a quick light step fell on the deck outside and Chanler, languidly waving his hand at the door behind me, said—

“Mr. Pitt, meet Captain Brack.”

I rose and turned with interest. My interest suddenly gave way to consternation. A chill went flashing along my spine. I stood like a dumb man. Captain Brack was the large man whom I had heard called “Laughing Devil” in Billy Taylor’s saloon a short time before.

III

The Captain was bowing to me with the easy impressiveness of the man to whom ceremonial is no novelty. He was smiling. There was in his smile the good humor of an adult toward a half-grown child. He stood up very straight and precise, his shoulders at exact right angles to his thick neck, his out-thrust chest almost pompous in its roundness.

He was, I judged, exactly my own height, which was five feet nine, but so thick was he in every portion of his anatomy that the physical impression which he made was overpowering. His head and face were large and, thanks to a closely cropped pompadour, gave, in spite of considerable fat, the impression of being square. The eyes were out of place in his head. Hidden under half-closed, fat lids they were mere specks in size, yet when I had once looked into them I stared in fascination.

The head, and the fat, square face with its brutalized lines were frankly, flauntingly animal. The eyes betrayed a great mind. In that gross, brutal countenance the gleam of such an intellect seemed a shocking accident, one of those perversions of Nature’s plans which result in the production of abnormalities. What was this man? Was he the common creature of his thick jowls? or was he the developed man to whom belonged those eyes? Was that animal countenance but a mask? Or did the low instincts, which its lines betrayed, dominate, while the mind struggled in vain beneath such a handicap?

Those tiny eyes held mine and studied me cruelly. Before them I felt stripped to the marrow of my soul. My dreams, my weaknesses, my failures seemed to stand out like print for Brack to read. His superior smile indicated that he had read, that he had appraised me for a weakling; and for the life of me I could not control the resentment that leaped within me.

I looked him as steadily in the eyes as I could. He saw the resentment that lay there; for an instant there flickered a new look in his eyes; then they were bland and smiling again. But that instant was enough for each of us to know that one could never be aught but the other’s enemy.

“I am glad to see you on board, Mr. Pitt, as they say in the navy,” said Captain Brack with deepest courtesy.

“I am glad to be on board, Captain Brack,” I replied steadfastly.

“It is a pleasure to have for shipmate a literary man like Mr. Pitt.”

“It is a pleasure to contemplate a voyage in such company as Captain Brack’s.”

“We shall strive to make the voyage as interesting as possible, for you, Mr. Pitt,” said he.

“I am sure of that,” said I, “and I will do my poor best to reciprocate.”

“In a rough seaman’s way I have studied a little—enough to be interested in books. So we have, in a way, a bond of interest to begin with.”

“Mr. Chanler has told me something of your achievements, Captain Brack; I am sure you belittle them.”

It was very ridiculous. Brack had put me on my mettle; so there we stood and slavered each other with fine speeches, each knowing well that the other meant not a word of the esteem that he uttered. Yet as the luncheon progressed I was inclined to agree with George: Brack was a wonderful chap. The man’s mind seemed to be a great, well-ordered storehouse of facts and impressions which he had collected in his travels. Sitting back in his chair he dominated the company, led the talk whither he willed, and having said his say, beamed contentedly. And before the meal was over I had a distinct impression that Brack not Chanler, was master on the yacht.

Chanler, Brack, Riordan and Dr. Olson drank steadily throughout the luncheon. Mr. Wilson and myself drank not at all. As the luncheon neared its end, Chanler, his eyes steady but his under lip hanging drunkenly, broke out:

“Well, how about it, cappy? Did you land your two bad men?”

“Yes,” said Brack. “After luncheon I can promise you a little sport.”

Chanler laughed a dreary, half-drunken laugh.

“Gardy, we’ve fixed up a little sport. Awf’lly dull lying here. Have to pass the time some way.”

“If I may make the suggestion,” said Brack courteously, “perhaps Mr. Pitt has duties or wishes which will prevent him from viewing our little sport.”

“Not ’tall, not ’tall,” said Chanler.

“Perhaps it would be well for Mr. Pitt to wait a few days until—shall we say until he has become more accustomed to our ways—before treating himself to a sight of our little amusements?”

“Why so?” I demanded.

“Oh, it is merely a suggestion. Our sport is rather primitive—the bare, crawling stuff of life without the perfumery, wrappings, or other fanciful hypocrisies of civilization. Mr. Pitt does not look like a man who would admit that life so exists, and therefore must refuse to behold it.”

Chanler turned from Brack to me, his teeth showing in a pleased smile.

“Ha! Hot shot for you, that, Gardy. What say, old peg; where’s your comeback—repartee, and all that?”

As I hesitated for a reply, he tapped the table impatiently.

“Come, come, Gardy! A little brilliance, please. We don’t let him touch us and get away without a counter, do we? Ha! At ’im, boy; at ’im!”

“As Mr. Brack——”

“Ha! Mister Brack! Well, struck, Gardy; go on.”

“As Captain Brack has failed to inform me what it is we are about to see I, of course, can not be expected to express any opinion on it,” I said. “But as concerns ‘the bare, crawling stuff of life,’ I will reply that Life no longer crawls, nor is it bare.”

Chanler turned his eyes upon Brack.

“Your shot, cappy. What say to that?”

Brack bowed.

“I will reply by asking Mr. Pitt why he thinks life no longer is bare and crawling?”

“Because,” said I, “the mind of man has decreed that it should not be so. Because mas has erected a civilization in order to insure that life shall not be bare and crawling.”

“Civilization is not the point,” said Brack. “We spoke of Life. We, as we stand here, clothed, barbered, wearing the products of machinery to hide our bodies, we are Civilization. We, as we enter the bathtub in the morning, are Life—forked radishes.” He rolled his great head far back and looked down his thick cheeks at me appraisingly. “Some are small radishes; others are large.”

“Ha! Rather raw on you with that last one, Gardy. Small and large ones. You are small, you know, Gardy, compared to me or the captain.”

“Size can scarcely matter to radishes,” I said.

“Cappy, cappy! He scored on you there. What say to that?”

“I will say—” began Captain Brack, but Chanler had tired of his sport as suddenly as he had become interested.

“Rot, rot!” he said, tapping on the table. “You were going to amuse us with your new finds. Let’s have it.”

“Very well,” said the captain, arising. “It will be ready in fifteen minutes.”

I was glad of that respite of fifteen minutes. It gave me an opportunity to slip into my stateroom and pull myself together. Brack had shaken and stirred me as I had not thought possible. His terrific personality had exerted upon me the effects of a powerful stimulant. Once or twice in my life I had taken whisky in sufficient quantity to cause me to experience thoughts, emotions, elations which did not properly belong in the normal, self-controlled Me. Now I experienced something of the same sensation. My mind was buzzing with a hundred swift impressions and conjectures upon Brack.

The picture I had beheld and the words I had heard through the swinging doors of Billy Taylor’s repeated themselves to me, and I felt the same sensation of a chill that I had felt upon recognizing in Brack the big man from the saloon. The words which the small man had uttered were fraught with sinister suggestion. From them it was apparent that he recognized in the captain a man who was known as “Laughing Devil,” whose reputation, if the seaman’s words might be taken for truth, was not of the sort that one would care to have in the captain of the yacht on which one was sailing into far seas. Also it was apparent from the man’s words that Brack had made some sort of proposition: “a rich sucker,” had been mentioned.

My course was plain before me: to go to Chanler’s state-room, tell him what I had seen and heard, and demand that he investigate Brack’s actions or permit me to resign my position. I had no definite idea of what the words between Brack and Madigan might portend, but there was no doubt that they established faithfully the captain’s character. In my depressed condition I shuddered at the idea of putting to sea with such a man.

But—Captain Brack had smiled. That smile stopped me. The appalling brutality of the captain’s mental processes had started within me a slow, steady flame. It was ghastly; the man’s expression had shown that he considered me a thing to play with! The brute had looked in my eyes, had stripped me to the marrow, read me for a weakling, and smiled, so that I might know that he had seen all! And the worst of it was that he was doing it with a mind which weighed me calmly, without prejudice, with scientific calmness.

It was not fair, it was not human. The man should at least have refrained from forcing me to see how weak he considered me. And was I so weak? Was I the worm he thought me to be?

“No!” I cried aloud; and I was pacing the floor when Simmons knocked on my door.

IV

Up on the roomy bridge of the yacht I found Chanler and Brack seated on deck stools drawn close to the rail, looking down upon the immaculate fore-deck. As I followed their example I saw near the port side two seamen holding a squat, heavy negro by a rope passed under his arms. The man was trembling and moaning.

“He’s a bad man and near the snakes from gin,” laughed Chanler. “Over there’s Garvin, who fought Sharkey a couple of times.”

The pugilist, a large, young man, flashily dressed, though miserably bedraggled, was leaning against the starboard rail, scowling darkly at the negro.

“Give you gin?” he was saying to the negro. “Give you gin? What yah talkin’ about, Smoke? Give you gin? Nix. I’m the guy who gets the gin. I’m Bill Garvin. That’s why I get the gin and you get hell.”

As the negro broke out into his terrible moaning, the pugilist’s debauched nerves seemed to snap.

“Stop him! —— you! You lousy ——! Stop him! If you don’t I’ll kick his head off—I’ll kick your black head off, Smoke; I’ll kick your head off.”

His mad wandering eyes caught sight of Brack on the bridge.

“How ’bout that, pal? Won’t I kick his —— black head off. I’m Bill Garvin.”

He took a step forward and stood staring at Brack. “Say, you’re the guy who was going to gimme booze, ain’t you? Billy wouldn’t let me run my face any more; you said, ‘Come on, I’ll take you where there’s lots of it.’ Well, how ’bout it, there? Hah! How ’bout it?”

Brack smiled down upon him. And his smile was the same as he had bestowed upon me; Garvin, too, was a thing to play with.

“Well, I don’t know, Garvin,” he replied. “I promised Black Sam the same thing. I think I shall give him drink before you. He said he’d kill you if you got a drink before him.”

The pugilist stared stupidly while the significance of these words seeped into his sodden brain. A weird smile distorted one side of his face.

“He—” pointing to the negro—“said he’d do that to me?” Thumping his chest he roared: “Kill me! Bill Garvin? Sa-a-ay!”

He lurched over to where the negro stood. At first he seemed undecided what to do. Then he suddenly reached forward and caught the black’s head in chancery, and bent furiously over it. There came a horrible growl from Garvin’s throat, a piercing scream from the negro. Garvin had bitten deeply into the black’s ear.

I started back from the rail, every sense revolting, and found Brack studying me, the smile with which he favored me fixed on his lips.

“So? The stomach is not strong enough, Mr. Pitt? You feel a faintness. Yes; I have even seen delicate ladies lose consciousness under similar circumstances.”

“I do not lose consciousness,”’ I replied, drawing a chair up to the railing and seating myself, “but at the same time I fail to see what amusement a civilized man can find in this spectacle.”

“So? You can not see that, Mr. Pitt? If it would not be rude I would say that it is the truly civilized man, so highly civilized that he is not troubled by sentimentality or humanitarian motives, who can appreciate spectacles of this nature. The scientific type of mind is the ultimate product of civilization, is it not, Mr. Pitt? Well, it is only the scientist who can view properly the bare, crawling thing called Life.”

“Rot, rot, rot!” interrupted Chanler, each word punctuated with a rap of his cane on the deck. “Put on your show, Brack. Hope that wasn’t all you dragged me out here for?”

“That was entirely impromptu. I had no idea Mr. Garvin was so versatile. The show follows. Dr. Olson.”

The little doctor appeared on the deck bearing a large bottle of whisky and a tumbler. First he filled the glass full and poured it down the negro’s gaping mouth, then served Garvin in the same way. The negro grew calmer as the stimulant took hold. He examined the rope with which he was imprisoned and seemed to realize his situation.

“Say, boss, ah ain’t done nuffin. What yah got me in heah foh?” he said in a rational tone of voice. “Lemme out, kain’t yah? Ah’m awri’.”

“Let him go,” said Brack.

The two seamen let go the rope and the black fell forward. Garvin waved his hands at the sea.

“That’s where you’ll go, Smoke—overboard in pieces.”

The negro was crouched against the wheel-house, rubbing his hands on his thighs, his small red eyes feasting on the pugilist, a stream of profanity flowing in low tones from his lips.

“Dah he be, Sam, dah he be,” he whispered. “Dah deh white —— what bit you eah. Got you eah, got you eah! What yah goin’ do ’bout it, what yah goin’ do, what you goin’ do?” His words came swifter and swifter; he crouched lower, his hands moved more rapidly. “Goin’ kill ’im, goin’ kill ’im, kill ’im—kill ’im. Ow!”

With such a howl as belonged in no human throat, he launched himself, a ball of black bounding across the deck, straight at Garvin. He came head down, like a bull charging, and, Garvin side-stepping, he plunged head and shoulders between two rods of the port railing, where he stuck.

Chanler laughed drily.

“Not so bad, cappy,” he drawled. “It promises to be amusing, really.”

Garvin fell upon the negro before the latter had freed himself. He caught one of the black’s hands, drew it upward, and bent the arm over the rail till it threatened to snap or tear out the muscles at the shoulders.

“No,” said Brack in the same tone he had used on Madigan in Taylor’s saloon. “No more of that, Garvin.”

The pugilist, his brutality warming with the work in hand, looked up, a leer of contempt on his face.

“You will let go of his arm, Garvin,” said Brack.

The fighter obeyed, releasing his hold reluctantly, but he obeyed nevertheless. The black thrust himself free of the rail and faced his tormentor.

“Get hold ob ’im, Sammy; get hold ob ’im!” he whispered loudly, and moved toward Garvin with slow shuffling steps.

Garvin waited until the instant when the negro had planned the final spring, then his fist flashed up from below his knees and the black fell like a thrown sack of grain against the wheel-house.

“By Jove!” said Chanler. “Your man Garvin is really promising, Brack. Ha! The nigger’s no cripple, either.”

Black Sam had come to his feet with a spring. Again began his slow, determined advance upon Garvin, again Garvin’s fist flew out and the negro dropped with a thud.

This happened four times, and the negro was red from the neck up. The fifth time his small round head dropped suddenly as Garvin launched another terrific blow. The fist and black poll met with a sharp crack. The negro was flung back on his haunches, but Garvin grasped his right hand and swore futilely. Garvin looked up at the bridge, holding forth his hand.

“Hey! Call ’im off; take a look at me meathook!” he shouted.

“You still have your feet,” said Brack.

The fight raged again. Garvin was on his back now, kicking furiously. At last a kick favored him; he knocked the negro down. But this was his undoing, for Black Sam in falling landed full length upon Garvin, and in an instant his short, thick fingers had closed upon the white man’s throat.

After awhile Brack gave a signal to Mr. Riordan, the chief engineer, who was standing below. Without any hurry or excitement, Riordan walked over and kicked the negro in the temple. The stunned black released his hold. With another kick Riordan lifted him clear off Garvin.

Brack turned toward Chanler.

“Well, are they worth keeping?”

“Oh, I s’pose so,” said Chanler, yawning as he rose. “Rather amusing. Suit yourself, cappy.”

“Come ’long, Gardy,” said Chanler, leading the way off the bridge. He chuckled a little pointing back toward the combatants. “Conceited scum, those. Fighting men. Bad men. Be interesting to see Brack make ’em behave.”

“Chanler,” I said, “do you mean to tell me that you found any pleasure watching that bestial fight?”

“Pleasure? Pleasure, Gardy? Ha! It’s a long time since I’ve met the lady, m’boy. But a chap’s got to do what he can to keep from being bored. They did it—a little. I’m bored now. Do something, Gardy, say something. Hang it, man; can’t you do as much for me as those two brutes? Simmons! Some other togs, please. These I’ve got on make me dopy.”

He strode down into the cabin, forgetting me absolutely in this new evanescent whim.

V

I stepped to the port rail and bared my head to the young Spring breeze. I was disgusted. The sense of something uncleanly seemed to cling to me from the spectacle on the fore-deck and I was grateful for the antiseptic feel of the wind with its pure odors.

“Pretty raw, wasn’t it, Mr. Pitt?”

I looked up and saw Pierce, the young wireless operator, standing beside me.

“Yep. I feel that way about it, too,” he went on. “Not that I’ve got anything against seeing a good battle any time, ’cause I was raised back o’ the Yards in Chicago, and no more need be said. But that—that go forward, that was too raw. Garvin, he’s a sure ’nough pug—he stayed ten rounds with Sharkey once when Tom was starting, but the poor stew was about ready to have the ‘willies’; and the poor dinge was seeing snakes. Naw, it was too raw. Ear-eating and that kind of stuff. They hadn’t ought to have matched ’em. They couldn’t put up half a battle, the shape they was.”

“I didn’t object to it on those grounds,” I said, and as I looked at his merry, freckled face I was forced to smile. “Though I can appreciate your artistic disapproval. It disgusted me because it was so useless and brutal.”

“That’s what I said,” he responded promptly. “It was useless, because it wasn’t half a go, and brutal because they wasn’t in shape to stand the punishment.”

“We are slightly apart in our view-points, I am afraid, Mr. Pierce.”

“But you’re with me that it was bum match-making?”

I nodded.

“And that a right guy—you know what I mean: a guy who was right all the way through—couldn’t get any fun out of watching it?”

I nodded again. Pierce placed both hands on the railing, running his fingers up and down as if on a keyboard, whistling softly through his teeth.

“Did you notice how the boss ate it up?” he said abruptly.

“Mr. Chanler?”

“Yep. He eyed it like—like it was a pretty little thing to him.”

I said nothing. Pierce resumed his whistling and finger-practise on the rail. Suddenly he turned and faced me squarely, his countenance uncomfortably serious, as it had been on the dock that morning.

“I suppose you’re thinking what an awful dub I am to be making a crack about the boss to one of his friends, ain’t you, Mr. Pitt?”

“Well, to be frank,” I replied, “I have been wondering at your doing so. How do you know that I won’t go straight to Mr. Chanler with your words? I won’t do it, of course, but I would prefer that you do not discuss Mr. Chanler with me. One doesn’t do such things, you know.”

“No,” he said, “I didn’t know; I was raised back o’ the Yards. But if you say, ‘nix on it,’ nix it is. What—what do you think of the boat, Mr. Pitt? We can discuss that, can’t we?”

“Freely,” I laughed. “From what I’ve seen the Wanderer is a remarkable yacht.”

“And you haven’t seen anything but the gingerbread work. I’m off watch. Come on; let’s walk around and pipe her off. It’ll take the taste of that bum battle out of your mouth.”

I accepted willingly, and for an hour Pierce piloted me about the yacht.

The Wanderer is a craft of wonders. I have Pierce’s word that the yacht is 152 feet long on the water line with her present load, and that the load is the maximum which we could carry with safety. Her size below the cabin deck is amazing. In her engine room are some of the largest gasoline engines ever placed in a yacht, if Pierce’s information is correct. There are two great gleaming batteries of them, each battery capable of driving us at a speed of ten knots an hour, the two combined able to hurry us along at fourteen knots, if necessary. Besides this we have a small auxiliary engine and propeller, a novelty installed by the former owner, Harrison. We could smash both of our major engines and the auxiliary still would move us.

Built into the bows are the reserve gasoline tanks. There is enough fuel in them, says Pierce, to drive the Wanderer twice around the world. Aft of these vast tanks are the storerooms. They are locked. Captain Brack has the key, but Freddy assures me that enough provisions have been loaded into them to keep our company of fifteen men well fed for two years.

“Which certainly is playing safe, seeing as we’re not supposed to get frozen in,” said he, as we completed our tour below decks. “Now, come on and I’ll show you my private office.”

He led the way up a ladder to the little wireless house on the aft of the main cabin. This was Pierce’s room. His bunk was beside the table on which were his instruments, and he had covered the walls—“decorated,” he called it—with newspaper cuts of celebrated baseball players, pugilists, motor-racers, and women of the musical comedy stage. Lajoie’s picture was next to Terry McGovern’s, and Chevrolet’s beside Miss Anna Held’s. I smiled as I seated myself.

“Something of a connoisseur, I see, Pierce.”

“Whatever that means,” he responded. He had become serious again. He took a cigaret paper from his pocket, absently tore it to pieces and sat glancing out over the waters of the Sound.

“So you don’t know a Jane—a girl named Miss Beatrice Baldwin, Mr. Pitt?” he said, as if he had been thinking of saying it for a long time.

“You asked me that this morning,” said I. “Why do you think I might know her?”

“You’n’ the Boss is close friends, ain’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘close friends’.”

“I know. But you know him back East, and train with him, and know the bunch he trains with back there, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, to a certain extent.”

“That’s why I thought you might have heard of this Jane—Miss Baldwin, I mean.”

“I assure you, Pierce,” I said, smiling, “that one would have to possess a much larger circle of acquaintances than I have to know all the young ladies of Mr. Chanler’s acquaintance.”

He looked up.

“Is he that kind of a guy?” he asked.

“What kind do you mean?”

“A charmer, a Jane-chaser, lady-killer?”

The perfect naiveté with which he uttered this outrageous slang brought me to hearty laughter, the first of long time.

“Mr. Chanler,” I said, suppressing my amusement, “is a much sought after man.”

“Sure; he’s got the dough. But does he chase ’em back? Eh? Is he—Here, I’ll put it up to you straight: would you let your own sister go walking with him alone in the park after dark?”

I rose. But for the life of me I could not hold offense in the face of his honest, worried expression.

“Pierce,” I said, “that is another thing one does not do—ask such questions. And I have told you that you are not to discuss Mr. Chanler with me.”

“Aw, the devil!” he blurted. “Why can’t you be human? You’re a reg’lar fellow; I can see it in the back of your eyes. I’m a reg’lar fellow. Why can’t we get together?”

“Not on a discussion of Mr. Chanler behind his back,” I chuckled. “It isn’t done.”

Pierce doubled himself up on the stool which he was sitting on and grasped his thin ankles in his hands.

“All right, then,” he said moodily. “But I want to tell you I’ve been handling messages between the boss and a Miss Beatrice Baldwin; and he sent her one this morning and got a reply; and—I wished I’d never learned wireless, that’s all.”

“Mr. Chanler is a gentleman,” I said severely.

“A gentleman?” said Pierce gloomily. “I suppose that makes it all right, then, eh? But nevertheless and notwithstanding, I wish I hadn’t learned wireless, just the same. And you don’t even ask me what the message was about,” he continued as I remained silent. “That’s the difference: I’d have asked first crack; you’re a gent. You don’t ask at all.”

“Naturally not,” I replied. “That’s another thing one doesn’t do. I won’t even permit you to tell me what it was.”

“You won’t?”

“Decidedly not.”

“Not even if I tell you——”

“No.”

“All right then,” he said with a comical air of resignation and relief. “I’ve done me jooty. It’s something out of my class; I wanted to pass it up to somebody with a better nut than I’ve got; but if I can’t—all right. I suppose after you ’n’ me ’ve known each other five or six years we’ll be well enough acquainted to talk together like a couple o’ human beings, eh? I know I hadn’t ought to be talking to you like this, Mr. Pitt; you’re a New York highbrow and I’m from back o’ the Yards; but I’ll make you a nice little bet right now, that before this trip is over—if you’re the guy I think you are, Brains—you ’n’ me’ll tear off more’n one little confab behind the boss’s back, and you’ll be darn glad to do it.”

I rose to go.

“I can imagine no reason why we should,” I said. “This is a scientific expedition; you are the wireless operator, and I am Mr. Chanler’s literary secretary. Under the circumstances, why should you be willing to bet?”

“Under those circumstances, I wouldn’t be willing to bet,” he retorted. “But—scientific expedition!” he exploded in disgust. “Scientific ——!”

VI

I retired precipitately to my stateroom, not wishing to hear more. By this time I had seen enough to realize that the hard-drinking George Chanler of the present was not the same man whom I had been friendly with back East. That Chanler never would have endured the brutal sport with Garvin and the negro. He would not have fallen under the spell of a man like Brack; he would not have sent wireless messages to a girl which would make an honest operator like Pierce wish he had never learned his trade. I remembered the owner’s suite, unoccupied and furnished for a woman’s comfort.

“Scientific ——!” Pierce had said.

But it was too late for me to consider quitting now. Captain Brack and his taunting smile had attended to that. If I left now the contempt in his eyes would be justified: I would be the weakling which his look announced me to be. He would smile that smile as I went over the side; would continue to smile it whenever my name was mentioned.

I was disgusted with Chanler. But in my heart I was afraid of Brack, and, paradoxically, for this reason I was afraid to quit.

“Scientific ——!” What did Pierce mean? Whatever it was I judged it to concern only Chanler, therefore it did not greatly concern me. But Brack—so greatly did his smile distress me that I actually looked forward to meeting him again with something akin to relish.

That evening, near the end of the dinner, Dr. Olson happened to speak of the totem gods of the Northern Pacific tribes.

“Yes,” said Brack, “they whittle their gods out of wood with knives; white men use their minds to whittle theirs. Men are greater than gods. What would gods amount to if they didn’t have men to worship them? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Can you imagine anything more impotent than an unworshiped god? Man creates gods; not gods man. Men are absolutely indispensable to gods; but men can do very well without gods if it pleases them to do so.”

“Has it pleased you to do so, Captain Brack?” I asked.

“Decidedly so. I sail light. Men make a slavery of this job of existence because they encumber themselves with laws, gods, and so on. I decided long ago not to be a slave to gods or anything.” He turned upon me with his devilish smile. “Now, Mr. Pitt, it is easy to see, is a slave to his gods.”

“Which gods, for instance.”

He burst into ready laughter, as if I had fallen into a trap he had laid for me.

“The petty, insignificant gods of civilized conduct!”

“Hear, hear!” interjected Chanler, lazily blowing away the smoke. “What you two doing: making religious speeches? ‘God,’ you said. Stow that. There’s no room for gods of any kind on board this boat.”

“Except the gods of science,” laughed Brack.

“Ha! Science! That’s good, awf’ly good, cappy. You don’t know how good that is. I’ll stand for science, cappy, but not religion. Religion sort of suggests conscience, and conscience—m’boy, I cut the chap dead days ago and refuse to be re-introduced. One bottle to science, men, and then it’ll be time to kiss our native land good-by. Pitt, if you’ve a tender woman’s heart pining for you some place, better go send her your farewell message, ’cause cappy and I are going to make a wet evening of it until we sail in the interests of science! Glor-ee-ous, glorious science! Hah!”

I accepted his suggestion eagerly as a means to escape from the cabin. There was no woman pining for me; there was no woman in my life. I had no farewell message to send to any one. While Chanler, Brack and the doctor made merry over their bottle I sought the solitude of the upper deck.

It was a dark night, and a rising wind was blowing in from the sea. Along the water-front lights twinkled and gleamed, mere red-hot dots in the all-encompassing darkness.

At a dock near by the outline of a long steamer showed beneath the flare of a myriad gasoline torches, and across the water there came from her decks the clang of hammers and the hollow rumble of trucks pouring freight into her hold.

“The City of Nome, sir,” said a voice behind me, and turning I beheld the sturdy figure of Mr. Wilson, the second officer. “They’re rushing the job of preparing her for her first trip of the season. She follows the Wanderer up. She’ll be about forty-eight hours behind us.”

“Will she overtake us?”

“Hardly, sir. We’re as fast as she is, if not faster. No, we’ll show her the way into Bering Sea if nothing happens to check our speed.”

A sudden gust of wind shook us and a splattering of great rain-drops struck the deck. The mate turned toward the sea and sniffed the air.

“Hello!” he exclaimed, as if the wind had told him something. “I hope you’re a good sailor, Mr. Pitt; it may be a little rough outside tomorrow and for a couple of days to come.”

VII

I was awakened next morning by a sensation as of mighty blows being struck against the yacht’s hull, shaking it from stem to stem. My nostrils caught the tang of cold sea air, while gusts of fog-laden wind swept whistling past the open port-hole.

I dressed, went on deck, and swiftly retreated to shelter. The Wanderer was out at sea and boring her twelve-knot way through the smoke and welter of a raw Spring gale from the north.

The entire aspect of the yacht, of its personnel, and of the expedition seemed to have changed overnight. Captain Brack was upon the bridge. His neat, gold-braided uniform had vanished and he wore a rough sheepskin jacket and oilskin trousers. A shaggy cap was pulled down to his eyes and he chewed and spat tobacco.

In the gray light of a raw day, shuddering and washed by spray, the Wanderer had become a grim, serviceable sea-conqueror rather than the magnificent pleasure-boat she had seemed yesterday, and two seamen, roughly clad and dripping, were putting extra lashings on a life-boat forward.

I went down to breakfast with new impressions of the grim potentialities of this expedition.

I had breakfast alone. Chanler was still in his stateroom and the officers all had breakfasted long before. While I was eating, Freddy Pierce popped his head in.

“Oh, hello; it’s you, is it,” he greeted. “I was looking for the boss; another message.”

“Mr. Chanler is in his stateroom,” I said.

“He sent another message to this Jane—to Miss Baldwin, last night,” said Pierce.

I continued to eat.

“This is a reply to it that I’ve got here.”

“Pierce,” said I, looking up, “you will find Mr. Chanler in his stateroom.”

“Right!” said he. Saying which the messenger boy turned and ran. “Oh, Simmons! Come here. Message for the boss.”

Simmons, who was passing, paused and bestowed on Freddy his most freezing look of disapproval.

“Mr. Chanler is not to be disturbed,” said he, and made to pass on.

“Not so, old Frozen Face,” said Freddy, catching him by the arm. “You don’t pass me by with a haughty look this time. This is the reply to the message the boss sent last night. He wants it while it’s hot off the griddle. Get busy.”

Simmons seemed about to choke.

“Mr. Chanler is not to be disturbed,” he repeated with emphasis.

Freddy turned toward Chanler’s door.

“Will you take it in—or shall I?” he asked.

“But you can’t—it is forbidden!” cried Simmons.

Freddy knocked loudly on the owner’s door.

“The reply to your message from last night, Mr. Chanler,” he called. “It just came.”

An instant later he opened the door, to Simmons’s horror, and entered. When he came out he bore another message and went straight up to the wireless house to send it.

Soon after this Captain Brack came to Chanler’s stateroom, knocked and entered. He remained within for some time. When he emerged his look was dark and scowling, and he hurried straight to the bridge. A moment later the Wanderer’s twelve-knot rush began to diminish, and presently we were moving along at a speed that seemed barely sufficient to keep our headway against the sea.

Not long after this came the clash between Brack and Garvin.

I was starting on my morning constitutional when I came upon the pair facing one another on the fore-deck. Chanler was looking on from the bridge. Garvin was an unpleasant-looking brute to behold. His face was swollen and he had evidently slept in his clothes. He was standing lowering ferociously at Brack, who stood leaning against the chart-house, his arms folded.

“Sa-a-ay, sa-a-ay guy; what kind uv a game d’yah think yah’re running? Eh?” the fighter was snarling. “What d’yah think yah’re putting over on me? Hah? D’yah know who yah got hold of? I’m Bill Garvin.”

“That is how I have put you down—as one of the crew,” said Brack. He placed himself more firmly against the wall of the wheel-house.

“Put—put me down?” cried Garvin incredulously. “Me—one of your crew? Guess again, bo, guess again.”

“I never guess,” retorted Brack and there was just a warning hint of coldness in his tones.

“Wa-ll, git next tuh yerself den, bo, an’ quit dat crew talk wid me. When do we git back tuh Seattle?”

“Perhaps never—for you—unless you soon say ‘sir’ when you speak to me.”

“Hah?”

“‘Sir!’” bellowed Brack, and even the sodden plug-ugly blinked in alarm at the menace in his tones. But only for a moment. He was a true fighting brute, Garvin; his courage only swelled at a challenge.

“Step out here an’ put up yer mitts, Bo,” he snapped. “I’m Bill Garvin; who the —— are you?”

From the bridge came Chanler’s cynical cackle.

“He wants an introduction, cappy,” he chuckled. “Come, come; let’s have your come-back.”

Brack smiled in his old suave manner as he looked up at Chanler, but as he turned away the smile changed to a black scowl. He looked steadily at Garvin for several seconds, and it grew very quiet.

Garvin started a little in surprise and fright, as if suddenly he had seen something in Brack’s face which he had not expected to find there. He was a stubborn fighting brute, however, and instinct told him to charge when in fear. He leaped at Brack, his fists held taut; and an instant later he was on his back on the deck, screaming in agony, his hands covering his scalded face.

Then for the first time I saw the hose-nozzle that the captain had concealed beneath his folded arms. He had been standing so that his broad back entirely concealed the hose, running from a fire-plug in the wall. So the fighter had rushed, open-eyed, open-mouthed, against a two-inch stream of hot water which swept him off his feet and left him groveling and screaming on the deck.

“Ha!” said George Chanler. “Sharp repartee that, cappy—though a bit rough.”

Brack found Garvin’s hands, neck, head with the water, and suddenly turned it off.

“Don’t!” cried Garvin. “For Gawd’s sake, don’t.”

“Sir,” said Brack.

“You go to ——!”

The water found him again.

“Sir.”

“Sir,” whimpered Garvin. “Oh, Gawd! You’ve killed me!”

“Sir.”

“Sir.”

Brack tossed the hose aside and wiped his hands.

“Take him below,” he directed a couple of seamen. “Tell Dr. Olson to care for him. I have too much need for Garvin to have him lose his sight.”

He turned abruptly toward Chanler on the bridge.

“The wind is rising, sir,” he said. “At five knots we will barely crawl.”

“Yes?” said Chanler, yawning. “Well, crawling is exactly my mood today.”

“We’ll lose precious days up north if we continue at this speed.”

Chanler smiled the shrewd smile of a man who has a joke all to himself.

“No, cappy; that’s once you’re wrong. It’s just the other way round: I’d lose precious days if we didn’t continue at this speed, as you’ll see when the time comes.”

The captain glared after him as Chanler leisurely went aft to his stateroom. The glare turned for an instant to a smile, of a sort that Chanler would have been troubled to understand had it been seen. Then Brack stamped forward and stood with folded arms, looking ahead over the gray, tossing sea, his face raging with impatience over the slowness of the yacht’s progress.

VIII

I climbed to the wireless house and found Freddy Pierce eagerly looking for my appearance.

“Did you see it?” he demanded. “Did you see it?”

“Brack and Garvin? Yes, I saw it. It was horrible. Is that the way Brack handles the men of the crew?”

“Na-ah! I should say not. That isn’t his regular system. He don’t need to touch ’em; he laughs at ’em and scares ’em stiff. He’s got a fighting grouch on this morning, and Garvin was just something to take it out on. Poor Garvin! He had to come staggering up and make his play just after the captain come out of the boss’s cabin boiling mad. Any other time the cap’ would ’a’ laughed at him so he’d snuck back to his bunk like a bad little boy.”

“Then what was wrong with the captain this morning?”

Freddy shrugged his shoulders.

“You notice we cut our speed down to a crawl, didn’t you? Well, it must have been that that gave Brack his grouch. I haven’t quite got it doped out yet. All I know is, I grab a bunch of words off the air for the boss, I take him the message, he reads it, smiles, slips me a double saw-buck for good luck and says: ‘Kindly tell Captain Brack to step down here at once.’ I do. Captain Brack goes in smiling and comes out with his eyes showing he’d been made to do something he didn’t want to do. Bing! He gets Riordan on the engine-room phone. Zowie! He shouts an order. And then the screw begins easing off little by little, and pretty soon we’ve stopped running and are walking the way we are now. Dope: the boss made cappy cut her down, and it made cappy so sore he burnt Garvin’s face half off to blow off his grouch.”

“But why in the world should Captain Brack grow so angry over that!” I exclaimed. “Chanler is owner. Certainly it is to be expected that he can sail where, when and how he pleases.”

“Sure. It got cap’s goat, though.”

“By Captain Brack’s own statement we may have to wait for the Spring drift-ice to clear when we get up north. Surely there can be no sensible objection to slow running under the circumstances, especially as that is the owner’s wish.”

Pierce doubled up, grasping his thin ankles and staring at the floor, as was his custom when thinking seriously.

“Brack has been hurrying ever since we lay in ’Frisco. Hurried about the crew; took Wilson because he couldn’t find another officer in a hurry; and, we ran at maximum all last night after we cleared the Sound.”

“What of that?”

“That would take us to Petroff Sound just a week before we scheduled.”

“Well?”

“On our schedule time we’d probably have to lay offshore a week before the ice breaks up so we could go in. Then what would be the sense of getting there a week ahead of schedule? I saw the log this morning, too, just after Brack’d written it. He had the night’s run down at nine knots an hour; we were going better’n twelve. Put your noodle to working, Mr. Brains. What’s the answer?”

“Apparently Captain Brack wishes to reach Petroff Sound ahead of our schedule.”

“Without letting the boss know we were going to do it. Yep. Go on.”

“It is impossible for me to guess at what his object may be.”

“Same here, Brains. Brack isn’t doing it just for the fast ride though, that’s a cinch. Go on.”

“Chanler’s orders to slow down may be ascribed to one of his whims——”

“Huh!” interrupted Freddy. “I wish you were right there.”

“Why?”

“The boss didn’t play up a whim when he cut down our speed. He’d done some close figuring before he did that.”

“How do you know?”

“I ought to know. I’m operator, ain’t I? I handle his messages, don’t I? Well, that’s how I know.”

“Then the order to slow down was not due to a whim, but to a message?”

“To the one he got this morning in reply to the one he sent last night. Yep.”

“There seems, then,” said I, “to be a conflict of interests on board; Captain Brack wishes to go fast and Mr. Chanler wishes to go slow.”

“Yes,” said Freddy Pierce, scratching his red head, “and if the captain’s reasons are anything like the boss’s I’ve got a feeling that you’ll have some —— funny things to write about before we get back home. What’s more, if one of ’em’s got to have his way about the speed you can put your money on the captain and cash.”

“Nonsense! Mr. Chanler is the owner.”

“Yes, and Captain Brack is—Brack.”

I recalled what I had heard Brack called back in Billy Taylor’s in Seattle.

“Pierce,” I said, “how much do you know about Brack?”

He cast a look of disapproval at me.

“You don’t need to ask me that, Brains,” he said. “I got eyes—I can see you got him sized up, too.”

“You joined the Wanderer in San Francisco two weeks before I did,” I reminded him. “Surely you know more about the man than I do.”

“Well,” he said, “I know that he’s a devil with men.”

“A masterful personality,” I agreed. “Any one can see that.”

“Yep. But that ain’t what’s worrying me.”

“Worrying? Are you worrying about Brack?”

“Oh, sort of.”

“Why?”

“Why,” he said, as his instrument began to crackle. He turned to take a message. “Brack’s a devil toward men, but that ain’t a marker to what he is with women.”

IX

While I stood watching Pierce busied at his instruments Simmons came climbing up with word that Mr. Chanler wished me to come to his stateroom. The sky had begun to clear to the eastward by now; a rift of clean blue Spring heaven was showing through the great pall of Winter-like gray clouds; and as I entered Chanler’s stateroom the sun broke through and relieved the ugly monotony of the raw day.

Chanler was trailing his mandarin-like dressing-gown behind him as he paced the room, and his face was not the face of a man at ease.

“Gardy,” he said, “I want to talk with you. Got to talk with you. Brack’s all right to drink with; Doc Olson doesn’t talk at all; you’re the only one fit to talk to on board. ’Member I started to tell you yesterday how I discovered I had to do something useful, and then I changed my mind and didn’t tell you after all? Well, I’m going to tell you the whole story now. Gardy, how much do you know about women—girls?”

By this time I was prepared for any turn of thought on Chanler’s part and replied—“Not as much as you do, that’s sure.”

The careless reply seemed exactly what he wished to hear. He nodded gravely.

“That’s right. You don’t know how right that is. You may know a lot about ’em, Gardy, but I know more. I’ve learned a lot about ’em lately, a whole lot. You think that Brack, and those Petroff Sound mammoths, and old Doc Harper are responsible for this little trip we’re on. Well, they’re not.”

He paused, then concluded slowly—

“Gardy, it’s a girl.”

I recalled Chanler’s bachelor fear that some day a shrewd mama would snare him for her young daughter, and the determination with which he had fled whenever he found himself growing interested in a girl in a way that threatened his bachelor’s liberty.

“Arctic Alaska is a long way to run away,” I laughed.

“Hang it, Gardy!” he snapped. “Don’t talk that way. I’m not running away.”

“No?”

“No. I—I’m doing this because I want to—want to—I know it will shock you—but, hang it, Gardy! I want to marry her.”

I had an uncomfortable series of visions: Chanler entangled by some woman, a light actress, probably; family objections, and George being sent away to the Arctic Circle while the family money convinced the woman that she had made a mistake.

“You mean that you’re being sent up here?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, his chin sunk on his chest. “Yes, that’s it; I’m being sent up here.”

“By——”

“By—her.” He looked straight out of the window, gnawing his underlip nervously. “By a little girl, almost a kid, by Jove!”

He paused again, then went on didactically:

“The trouble with girls, Gardy—young girls; pretty, clever, charming girls, you know—the trouble is they’re too popular. Too many pursuers. Men are too eager to marry ’em. Fact. Girls have too many chances. Get an exaggerated idea of their own importance, and pick and pick before they decide on a chap, and then they demand that the one they’ve picked is—is a little, white god. Fact. Even the common ones. Ordinary man try to marry one—hah! Got to show ’em. Money? Oh, yes; big percentage, show ’em money and they don’t ask anything else. Limousine and poodle-dog type.

“But, hang it, Gardy, there’s a new kind of girl growing up in this country at present, and she’s the one who makes a man trouble. New American breed. She doesn’t look back over her shoulder to make you follow her. Hang it, no! She stands right up to you and looks you square in both eyes. She won’t notice when you show her money; what she’s looking at is you. Fact. Not what you got; but what you are. New type.

“Rotten world for men it’s getting to be. Our own fault, though. We chase ’em; make ’em think themselves worth too much. Men ought to quit—lose interest. That’d bring ’em to their senses, and they wouldn’t ask a man uncomfy questions. But hang it, it’d be too late now to do me any good,” he concluded gloomily. “I’m shot.”

I said nothing, and he soon went on.

“Shot, by Jove! Shot by a little girl. Just like a kid fresh from school. Hit so hard I’ve got to have her, and, hang it! She’s one of that—that new kind.”

Still I remained silent, and for many seconds Chanler struggled with his next words.

“Gardy!” he broke out in mingled anger and awe. “She wouldn’t have me!”

Once more we sat in silence, an uncomfortable silence for me. I had no desire to discuss affairs of the heart with any one. Up to that time I had never felt the need of any woman in my life.

Presently Chanler opened his writing-desk and drew out a small photograph which he passed to me.

“There she is, there’s the cause of this expedition, Gardy.”

I looked with interest at the picture in my hand.

It was as poor a specimen of the outdoor picture as any amateur ever made on a sunny Sunday. It represented a bareheaded girl in tennis costume, her hair considerably tousled as if she had just finished a set; but as the picture had been taken against the sun the face was so dark as to be scarcely discernible. Just an ordinary outdoor girl, apparently, as ordinary as the photograph.

“That’s the reason for this trip,” said George, carefully returning the picture to its place. “She isn’t anybody you know or have heard of. She’s nobody. She’s just a common doctor’s daughter from a little town in the Middle West, and I want to marry her, Gardy, and by Jove—she wouldn’t have me!”

He was started now, and there was no opportunity to stop him had I so wished. I listened in humble resignation. I was Chanler’s hired man. I was engaged as his literary secretary, but probably he counted me paid for listening to him while he poured out his amazement and despair at having been refused.

“She wouldn’t have me, Gardy,” he repeated over and over again; and, considering how many girls had fished for Chanler’s name and money, I wondered what sort of a girl this could be.

“I met her down at Aiken last Winter. She was visiting some folks—but that didn’t count. I met her at the tennis court. By Jove!” A new light came into his cynical eyes, a clean light, and for the time being his face was almost fine. “Can’t stand athletic girls as a usual thing, you know that, Gardy; but she—she was different.”

They had danced together that night at the club ball. If she had been stunning on the courts, she was overwhelming in evening dress. He scarcely had dared to touch her.

They had spent a great part of the next day rolling slowly about country roads in one of his roadsters. Sometimes they had stopped at convenient points along the road and had sat silent and looked at each other. Again they had halted and picked flowers along the roadside. And between times they had rolled along at six miles an hour and—talked.

“Oh, hang it, Gardy. For the first time in my life I wished I was clever like you and had done something. It ain’t fair. Nobody ever made me do a thing; what chance have I had to amount to anything? And then a fellow meets a girl like this, who likes you from the start and when she asks you what you’re doing, or have done, or are going to do, and you say nothin’, she looks at you in a certain way as if to say: ‘Why, what excuse do you make to yourself for cumbering the earth?’ No, by George, it ain’t fair; is it, Gardy?

“I told her I had money, and she laughed and said she didn’t understand how a man could be satisfied to have money and nothing else, and money that his father had earned at that. Then I asked her to marry me, so I would have something besides money. Hang it, old man, she cried. Yes, she did, just for a little while. Then she looked up and laughed at me, and said: ‘George, I’ve known you less than two days, and I’ve learned to like you so much that I wish I dared like you more. But if I liked you any more,’ she says, ‘I’m afraid I’d want to marry you, and have to depend upon you for my future happiness, and to be the father of my children,’ and says she, ‘you haven’t the right to ask that, George, so long as you play around like a thoughtless boy, and do nothing that a man should do.’

“Jove! That was enough to make a fellow pull up and think, wasn’t it? I said to myself right there: ‘I’m going to do something.’ And I am. I ain’t clever like you, Gardy, and I haven’t got business experience like some fellows, but—” he smiled with self-satisfaction—“I have got money.”

It all ended there. He had money; he need have nothing else. The new look vanished from his eyes and they became cynical and supercilious again. His underlip protruded cunningly.

“Science is a great help if you know how to use it, Gardy,” he chuckled. “What’s your opinion of our little expedition now?”

“I don’t see any reason why what you have told me should alter my opinion of the expedition.”

“Ha! I thought maybe that old conscientious streak in you would get troublesome. You don’t quibble about motives then, Gardy?”

“Why should I? I am your hired writing man——”

“Oh, hang it, Gardy! Don’t put it that way. Don’t be so precise. As one chap to another, you know—what do you think?”

“I see nothing wrong with your motive, Chanler. In fact, I think it rather fine. As I understand it you are undertaking this expedition because you wish to prove to this girl that you can and will do something useful.”

“Right-o. That’s why I undertook it—in the first place.”

“That surely established an excellent motive, for a man in your sentimental frame of mind, at least.”

“Yes,” he said with a hollow laugh, “there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“And if the expedition is successful the results will be a credit to you—a genuine success—irrespective of what your motives might be.”

“Now you’re shouting, Gardy!” he cried vehemently, striking the desk. “The results, that’s what counts. Not the motive or the means. Who asks a winner why or how? Win out! Get what you want! That’s the idea. And, by Jove! What I want I get; and I want Betty Baldwin to be my wife!”

X

The Wanderer wallowed her faltering way northward, a new atmosphere of sinister suggestion about her spray-damped decks. Yet even now, with Chanler’s sudden confession ringing in my ears, I thought, not of him and his plans, not of the owner’s empty stateroom furnished for a woman, not of the Miss Baldwin mentioned, but of Brack. Brack was the great force on board. Chanler might plan well or evil; but it would be Brack’s will that would determine the fate of these plans, and of any one who came aboard. And I had not gaged Brack. Though by this time I was ready to credit him with Machiavellian cunning and power, my estimate of the man failed to do him full justice.

It was on the fourth day out that this conclusion was forced upon me. As Wilson had predicted, the weather remained rough and raw, and the Wanderer lifted and rolled leisurely through a smother of fog and spray from the long, slow North Pacific rollers.

In the middle of the afternoon the sun broke through for a period, the fog disappeared, and I climbed to the wireless deck to enjoy the cheeriness of unwonted sunshine and Pierce’s company combined. I found Pierce squatted on the starboard edge of the cabin roof, absorbed in watching the deck below. At the sound of my footsteps he looked up, grinned and crooked his finger for me to come to his side.

“Garvin’s out again,” he whispered. “He’s just come up from the aft on the starboard side. Brack’s forward just now, but he’s been hiking the starboard promenade for the last five minutes. He’s in a sweat again about our running half speed, and if Garvin doesn’t see him and duck they’re going to meet.”

I looked aft and saw Garvin, the pugilist, standing bareheaded in the sunlight, steadying himself easily to the pitch and rise of the Wanderer’s deck.

Surprise and relief came to me as I saw him look around, blinking against the sun. I had feared to hear that he had been blinded, or that he had been scalded so fearfully that he might succumb, or lie helpless for weeks. Yet here he was, save for the bandages that covered most of his face, apparently in better physical condition than when he had come aboard. In reality this was true. Two days of medical treatment and rest had given his splendid vitality that opportunity to throw off the load of alcoholic poison with which it had been surcharged. His bony face, hardened by training and blows, had withstood without serious damage the stream of boiling water that would have blinded, probably killed, a normal man.

As he moved slowly forward along the port rail in the bright sunlight there was none of the weakened, defeated look of a badly injured man about him. With his head and shoulders thrust forward, the short neck completely hidden, the long arms hanging easily, and moving with the sure step of the man whose muscular feet grip the ground, he was formidable to look at, a fighting animal, unafraid and undefeated.

“One bad, tough guy!” whispered Pierce in admiration. “Say, Brains, even money that he takes a swing at Brack before the cruise is over.”

Brack had made a swift, impatient turn near the bow and was coming aft along the starboard rail. He was wearing his rough sea-clothes and he walked with his eyes on the deck, chewing tobacco viciously.

From the aft Garvin advanced slowly, and from the bow came Brack. And as I looked from one to the other now I was shocked with the impression that they were much alike. The same thickness about the neck and shoulders, the same sense of force about them both. But in Garvin it was a blind force, stupid and unenlightened as the force of a thick-necked bull, while in Brack the force was directed by one of the most efficient minds it had been my fortune to come in contact with.

“Pipe ’em off, pipe ’em off!” whispered Pierce excitedly. “They’re going to meet face to face in the companionway. Brains, a dollar says there’ll be something doing when Garvin looks up and sees himself alone with the guy who cooked him.”

“Hush!” I warned.

A sudden stillness and tension seemed to have settled down on the yacht. Above a hatchway aft I saw the heads of a pair of the crew eagerly watching Garvin as his steps carried him toward Brack. In the bow the cook and Simmons followed the captain with their eyes; and from the bridge, Wilson, the mate, erect and stanch, looked down with his calm, serious expression unchanged.

And then they met. It was almost directly beneath where Pierce and I sat. They stopped and looked at one another. I had the sensation of a calm before a storm. And then——

“Hello, cap,” said Garvin in a low voice, and I could see in spite of his bandages that he winked. “How’s tricks?”

Brack smiled.

“All right, Garvin. How are you coming on?”

“Oh, I’m all right.” Garvin stepped to one side. “Little thing like that don’t bother me.”

“Good!” Brack actually patted him on the shoulder. “You’re the kind of man I want. I suppose you’ve taken worse beatings than that when it’s paid you to throw a fight?”

“——! That wasn’t even a knock-out. Just a little hot water. I’d take more’n that to be let in on a job like this.”

“That’s the way to talk,” said the captain heartily. “And this will bring you more than any fight you ever won or lost.”

That was all. They passed on, Brack toward the aft, Garvin toward the bow.

I looked at Pierce. He shivered slightly.

“I feel cold,” he whispered.

I looked up at Wilson. His eyes had widened a little. He swung around and began to pace the bridge. He knew what his duty was; he would do it no matter what went on between captain and crew.

“It’s getting chilly,” said Pierce.

We retired to the wireless house. Pierce shut the door and stared at me.

“Now what—now what do you make of that, Brains?”

I shook my head. I, too, felt inclined to shiver.

“Something’s wrong, Brains, something’s wronger than a fixed fight. The captain’s framing something. He’s let Garvin in on it. What is it—what is it? Can you dope it out?”

“No. Perhaps you’re mistaken.”

“Don’t talk that way; you know better’n that. Come to bat. Didn’t you hear him say this’d get him more’n he ever got in a fight? Garvin’s got thousands. The cap’s framed something, and he’s taken Garvin in. Now, what is it? I’ve had a hunch something was going on. I’m all ice below the ankles. What d’you s’pose they’re going to do? By God! I wouldn’t put it past ’em to steal the yacht!”

“Easy, Pierce,” I laughed. “People don’t do such things nowadays.”

“‘People don’t’? D’you call Brack and Garvin ‘people’? Garvin’s a gorilla and the captain’s—Brack. Come on. Brains, can’t you dope out what they’re framing?”

“Roll yourself a cigaret,” I advised laughingly. “If you’re so eager to find out what Brack is planning, suppose we ask him?”

“Don’t,” he sputtered, horrified. “Don’t do anything like that.”

“Why not?”

“‘Why not?’” he repeated, growing calm. “Oh, just because I kind o’ like your company and I don’t want you to go overboard into the briny.”

I laughed. Pierce, I felt, was given to extravagant expressions.

At dinner that evening I sat down resolved to lead the conversation around to Garvin’s new-born docility, but, face to face with Brack, I admit that I feared to attempt it. I was no match for him. His terrible eyes, I felt, would have read the thoughts in my mind try as I might to hide them, and I smiled and replied as best I could to his sallies, and wondered in vain over what was going on behind that gross, smiling mask.

The weather grew suddenly rougher toward the end of the meal.

“That’s the tail of it,” said Wilson in reply to my question. “Now we’re getting the blow that has been chasing the rough weather down from the north, where it’s been a lot worse than we’ve been having. It’ll kick up hard for a few hours. Ought to die down and clear off by tomorrow morning.”

The smashing storm drove Brack and Wilson to their duties on deck. Riordan went, too, presently, and while Chanler and Dr. Olson, agreeing that the dining salon was the best place on a night like this, ordered another bottle, I found an oilskin and sou’wester and followed.

As I stepped out on deck I wished for a moment to be back in the warm, lighted cabin. The wind had increased to what seemed to me a tornado, and the night was so dark that only in the beam of the Wanderer’s search-light could one see the tossing water.

The sea had changed with the rising of the wind, and in place of the long, slow rollers, sharp, spiteful waves shot their crests high over the yacht’s bridge, and with the driving rain which was falling made the decks uncomfortable, even dangerous. I recoiled from the dark, the wind and the rain.

A gust of wind and a slanting deck swept me off my feet and sent me slithering on my knees, gasping for breath, into the scuppers. I grew angry. My anger was with myself. I was timid, and I was weak; and, so, moved probably by some inherited streak of stubbornness, I forced myself to my feet, forced my face to meet the wind and rain without flinching, and so forced myself, much against a portion of my will, to remain outside, with the warmth and comfort of the cabin only a step away.

The storm grew worse. A life-boat on the port side was torn loose from a davit and swung noisily along the side. Through the brawl of the storm Wilson’s voice rang out sternly, there was a rush of feet on the deck and suddenly men were swinging the boat back to its place, making it fast, while the wind and waves snatched at them hungrily. Then the decks were empty again.

The wind strove to force me back to the cabin, and with a new stubbornness I refused to go. It was boyish, it was silly, but the harder the wind blew, the more the spray drenched me, the more determined I was to remain. I began to glow with the struggle.

New and strange sensations came and went. I felt an inexplicable desire to shout back at the storm. For the first time in years I was thrilled by the impulse of a physical contest, and I fought my way to the bow and stood spread-legged, leaning forward against the wave-crests which drenched me. Then I went leisurely aft, hanging onto the rail, denying the wind the right to hurry me. And in the noise and darkness I all but walked squarely into Captain Brack and Riordan.

They were standing in the lee of the engineer’s cabin. I did not see them, for I was moving by hand-holds along the cabin wall when, in a lull of the storm, I heard their voices and stopped.

“You got a bad one, sir, when you picked Larson,” Riordan was saying.

“Larson?” repeated Brack, as if trying to place the name. “Oh, the young hand from the Sound boat? What’s wrong with him?”

“He knows Madigan.”

“——!” said Brack. “Is he the only one?”

“Yes. I’ve sounded the others a second time to make sure. But Larson knew Madigan in some little town up the Sound. What’s more he’s no good to us. He’s ambitious and he’s working for a mate’s certificate, got a good family, and he won’t keep his mouth shut. I know he won’t.”

Brack made a sound in his throat like a bear growling.

“Oh, yes he will,” he said. “I’ll have a talk with him. He’ll keep his mouth shut when he understands there’s something in it for him. He’s one of the lookouts tonight, isn’t he? All right. Tell Garvin I want to see him in your cabin in half an hour.”

“Yes sir.”

A door slid open and shut as Riordan slipped back into his cabin, and I heard Brack’s heavy breathing as he came around the corner toward where I was hiding.

I retreated, swiftly and noiselessly, and slipped back into my stateroom. All hope that Pierce’s interpretation of Brack’s conversation with Garvin was wrong now had vanished. Brack was plotting something, and Riordan was partner to it, whatever it was. I did not sleep much that night.

In the morning I went in to breakfast early and found Wilson sitting staring at a cup of black coffee which he had ordered. One glance at the gravity of his lean, brown face and I knew that something was wrong.

“What has happened, Mr. Wilson?” I asked nervously.

Without lifting his eyes he said—

“Lookout Larson was swept overboard and lost from his watch last night.”

XI

I sat staring across the table at Wilson for many minutes before my wits returned to me. The mate’s words seemed too awful to be true; they seemed words heard in a hideous nightmare. Throughout the night I had fought and denied the still whisperings of potential horrors aboard which had striven for room in my thoughts; and here the blackest depths of these horrors were realized by Wilson’s simple words. For in my mind’s eye I did not see the picture that his words should have conjured up: of a seaman swept from his post, falling into the sea by mischance, drowning in the dark, without a chance to be saved—I saw Brack talking to young Larson, I saw the brutal gleam of Garvin’s bandaged eyes, I saw—Good God! I was afraid to admit to myself what I did see.

“Lost?” I repeated stupidly. “You mean drowned?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good God!” I chattered. “How can you sit there and talk about it so calmly.”

“I have followed the sea since I was fourteen, Mr. Pitt,” he replied respectfully. “I have seen many men lost, good men, better men than myself. The sea is hard.”

“But how—how could it happen?”

“I don’t know, sir; it wasn’t in my watch.”

As he rose to go he added, with a puzzled shake of his head—

“He was a good seaman, too, Larson was, and a clean, sober young fellow.”

I was still too much of the coward, still too much the indoor man, to face brutal facts honestly.

“But it must have been an accident!” I said. “An accident might overtake even a good and sober seaman.”

“Yes sir,” said Wilson.

“You don’t think it was anything but an accident, do you?”

He thought for a while before replying.

“Well, sir, Larson and the rest of the crew didn’t get on together. He was from the Sound, you see, sir, and the rest of the hands, except Garvin and the negro, were shipped at ’Frisco. Larson was different from them, sir; he was young, and sober, and ambitious. He came from a good family in Portland, and he had his whole life in front of him, and he was living it so he was bound to rise, sir. He was a credit to the Wanderer, Larson was, sir.”

“Then you mean that the rest of the crew is not?”

“I didn’t say that, sir.”

“It was what you meant, though.”

“I don’t say so. I said that Larson and the rest of the crew didn’t get on together. He kept himself apart, and they saw he was too good for them, and they had trouble.”

“What do you mean by trouble?”

“Well, for one thing he wouldn’t join their crap-game, and they had words and Larson smashed a couple of their faces.”

“Good Heavens, Wilson! You don’t mean to say that you think the crew was responsible——”

“No, sir. I don’t say anything of the sort.”

He opened the door to step out.

“Wilson!” I said. “Do you think everything is right on board?”

“I don’t, sir,” he said promptly. “I would be blind if I did. But I know that I am right, sir, and I know my duty to my ship.”

Chanler came in for breakfast at that moment. He was apparently pleased at something, but at the sight of our faces his expression changed. He stood for a few seconds, looking first at Wilson, then at myself, greatly displeased.

“You’re a fine looking pair of grouches for a man to look at first thing he gets up,” he said irritably. “Hang it! Here I’ve had my first decent night’s sleep in months: get up feeling like a boy, by Jove! And here you chaps greet me with faces that look like before the morning drink. I won’t have it, you hear! You’re too sober both of you, anyhow. Hang you water-wagon riders! Smile—you! Can’t you look cheerful when you see I want it?”

A slight flush showed beneath Wilson’s tan.

“Not this morning, sir,” he said.

“Hah?” Chanler looked at him, looked at me, with alarm in his eyes. “What’s the matter? Eh? Whatd’ you know—what’re you so serious about? Out with it, Wilson? What is it?”

“Lookout Larson was swept overboard and lost in the dog-watch last night, sir.”

Chanler sank into his chair, actually relieved.

“Hang it! Is that all——”

“Good God, Chanler!” I cried springing up. “‘Is that all?’ Isn’t that enough?”

He looked at me, surprised and a little amused.

“Hello! Getting excited, Gardy? I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“I didn’t think you had this in you, Chanler!” I retorted indignantly. “Didn’t you hear Wilson say that one of the men—Larson, a fine young man—was drowned last night, while we slept?”

He looked at me steadily.

“Yes, I heard,” he said carelessly.

“And you said, ‘is that all?’ And it was a relief to you. Did you expect to hear something worse than that—that one of your seamen had lost his life?”

“Gardy,” he said softly, “who do you think you are talking to?

“I don’t know,” I said hotly. “I thought I knew you, Chanler. I find I am mistaken.”

“By Jove, Gardy!” he repeated. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Oh, drop that! That’s a pose, Chanler, and this is no time for posing. A man has lost his life from your yacht, and you are relieved because that is all. What sort of a condition of affairs is this?”

“I didn’t think you had it in you, Gardy,” he repeated. “No, I didn’t think you’d dare to talk to me this way face to face.”

“Dare!” I cried, and he sat up and looked at me strangely.

“By Jove! Gardy, you’re growing. The sea air is doing wonders for you. As for this chap—this hand—what’s his name, Wilson——”

“Larson, sir.”

“Larson. He was paid and paid well, and came on board of his own free will.”

“And your feeling of responsibility ends there?” I asked.

“Feeling of responsibility? My dear, excited Gardy! What are we going to have—a lecture on the responsibility of employer to employed, and that sort of rot?”

“No,” I said, “it would be wasted here.”

“Sensible man. Wilson, you may tell Captain Brack to step in, please.”

Brack came promptly, bustling in with a smile on his face.

“H’llo, cappy,” said Chanler indolently. “I hear we had an accident last night.”

“Yes sir.”

“Well—” Chanler’s face was working angrily—“Well, after this if anything unpleasant happens you give orders to keep it from me until after breakfast, d’you hear? I don’t like to hear of unpleasant things; I don’t like it. This—thing has spoiled my appetite for the whole morning!”

“Why not,” I said, staring hard at Brack, “why not ask Captain Brack to prevent such accidents from happening?”

“Hah?” Chanler started at the sound of my voice; I was startled at it myself. Even Brack’s smile vanished. “What’s this, Gardy—some more of your unpleasant rot? I won’t have it: I——”

“For I am sure if Captain Brack utilized his great ability in an effort to prevent accidents such as happened to young Larson, they would not occur.”

Not a shade did Brack’s florid face lose in color, not a flicker of change showed in his eyes. But he drew himself up a little, and in that moment I knew that my worst fears concerning the loss of Larson were true.

“Mr. Pitt flatters me, I fear,” said Brack, smiling again. “I——”

“You ‘fear’?” I said. “What do you fear? Have you any reason for using the phrase, ‘I fear,’ Captain Brack? It sounds so strange on your lips.”

He looked at Chanler and back at me.

“Mr. Pitt flatters me, I think,” he said, his old smile back in place. “Does that sound better?”

Guilty! As guilty as the devil, he was, and I knew it; yet he stood and smiled as if nothing was wrong in the world; not a thing troubling his conscience.

“Gardy, you’re—unpleasant company this morning, I must say that,” interrupted Chanler. “Why, hang it! Captain, what d’you suppose he’s been putting up to me? That I ought to feel responsible about this hand, Carson, Larson, whatever his name was. Now he’s jumping on you. You ought to be responsible too, I suppose. Gardy, you’re impossible.”

The captain smiled upon me tolerantly. Chanler’s explanation of my words and wafted away the whispers of suspicion.

“Mr. Pitt, having an exaggerated idea of the value of a human life, is greatly upset by our accident. I appreciate his condition. If his philosophy were less tainted with sentimentality——”

“I might smile over the loss of a young, hopeful life? Thank you, that is a mental level which I hardly hope to achieve.”

I went out on deck and climbed up to the wireless house. Pierce greeted me with a sorry shake of the head.

“Gee! That was a dirty shame about poor Larson. He was the only white man in the crew. If anything had to happen why couldn’t it happen to one of the bums?”

I saw that Pierce knew nothing that might make him suspect that Larson’s disappearance was not accidental and I told him hurriedly of the conversation between Riordan and Brack which I had overheard last night.

“Oh, my God!” he groaned. “The dirty dogs! Young Larson, as nice a lad as you ever talked with, against Brack, and that gorilla, Garvin! Oh, they’re a fine bunch of crooks, the bunch in this crew. As fine a bunch o’ crooks as ever went to sea to duck the police. Brack and Riordan picked ’em, you know, in San Fran’. Wilson’s all right, and besides him I think they made just one mistake in their picking.”

“How so?”

“The nigger they got at Seattle. He’s a crook, too, but he certainly has got it in for Garvin.”

The rest of that day was a trying one to me. Save for Pierce, Wilson and myself, not a soul on board seemed to have a single serious thought about Larson’s disappearance. The weather had cleared; the wind had shifted to the south and was only a gentle breeze; the sun was shining; and to the rest of the company life aboard the Wanderer seemed like a holiday.

Chanler seemed both elated and impatient. At times he lolled in a deck-chair and chaffed me good humoredly, and the next moment he would be up, pacing the promenade nervously.

“Gad! Time goes slow, doesn’t it, Gardy?” he exclaimed half a dozen times during the day. “Well, we’ll have a little something to break the monotony soon. The City of Nome will overtake us about nine tomorrow morning.”

And Captain Brack, as he heard, smiled secretively; and I wondered what joke he might be keeping to himself.

Next morning at dawn a rush of feet outside my stateroom put an end to my efforts to sleep. I dressed and went on deck. A seaman came hurrying past, running toward an excited group gathered on the after-deck. I shouted to ask the cause of the excitement.

“We’ve run a man down in an open boat at sea,” he called back, “and he’s lousy with gold!”

XII

I followed the man, caught by the electricity of excitement which seemed to dominate all on deck.

On the after-deck of the Wanderer, near the rail, was a long settee, and about this eight or nine men were grouped closely. In the half light of dawn their figures loomed bulkily and strangely alike. As I drew near I made out Captain Brack, Riordan and Garvin. Pierce was there, too, I saw on closer scrutiny, in the center of the throng, apparently as excited as any of them.

A black figure, dripping wet, was lying on one end of the settee. I saw that it was a man, and that Dr. Olson was bending over him, a bottle of brandy in his right hand.

“He’s coming to again,” said the doctor. “He’ll be all right.”

No one paid any attention; not a man turned to look. They were bending over something that lay on the other end of the settee, and so eager were their attitudes that I, too, paid no attention to Dr. Olson, or the man he was nursing, but crowded in among the close-pressed shoulders for a sight of what the magnet might be.

“Go-o-old!” the pugilist, Garvin, was repeating in awe-stricken whispers.

“Go-o-old! My Gawd! Look at it. And he said there was barrels of it—barrels—where that comes from!”

A water-soaked canvas bag, roughly slit open, was spread out on the settee. What appeared to be a score or so of small pebbles was lying on the canvas, beside what seemed to me to be a handful of sand; but at that moment the first rays of the sun reached the Wanderer’s decks, the pebbles and sand began to gleam dully, and I saw that I was looking at a pile of gold nuggets and gold dust.

“Two men to carry him below, cap’n,” came Dr. Olson’s voice from the other end of the settee. “He’s all right; in surprisingly good condition; but we’ve got to strip him and get dry clothes on him.”

Not one of us turned our heads. The others were fascinated by the gold, and I was fascinated by the expression on their faces. Each face bore the same expression; to a man they had dropped such masks of civilization as they possessed, and greed, pure, primitive greed, shone frankly from their strangely lighted eyes.

Life—raw and crawling! Brack’s words flashed through my mind. He was right, then. Raw and crawling! It was the first time I had viewed the souls of men, naked and unashamed of their nudity, and the vision was appalling.

“Schwartz—Dillon,” Captain Brack spoke over his shoulder. “To the doctor. Jump!”

The two men named withdrew reluctantly. I heard them marching behind, bearing the dripping man below, but I did not turn to look. My eyes were on Garvin. He was standing so that I had a fair view of his eyes and his unbandaged mouth, and I stared in fascination, as one is fascinated by something grewsome, which one has not believed possible.

I became conscious that somebody was watching me. It was Brack. He was smiling.

“Raw and crawling, Mr. Pitt,” he said, reading my thoughts like print. “You wouldn’t believe it when I told you; but there it is, all over Garvin’s face. Now what do you say?”

Garvin swung his head around viciously.

“What’s the matter with my face?” he snarled.

“It is the face of a frankly carnivorous animal with a bone in sight,” laughed Brack, “and it does not please our friend, Mr. Pitt.”

“Oh, him!” said Garvin, turning back. “To —— with him.”

“To —— with everybody!” growled another man. “Look at it—gold! And he said he just scraped that up with his bare hands.”

“And it’s only a few hundred miles away—the place he got it.”

“And we’re going up north hunting bones, for thirty a month! ——!”

“Enough!” With a swoop of his hands Brack gathered the gold into the bag and stuffed it into his pocket. “Get out! Get below!”

He swept them out of sight with a commanding gesture. They went, but they looked back with threats in their excited faces.

“You have seen it now, Mr. Pitt,” Brack said, turning to me. “What do you say now—is not life raw and crawling?”

“As an exhibition of the primal instinct of greed the spectacle was quite worth seeing,” I replied. “Now tell me what it was all about?”

“This!” said he, striking the bag of gold in his pocket. “All about this. For this the man whom we picked up in an open boat a short time ago risked and all but lost his life. For this the men of the crew are ready to cut the throats of any one who opposes them. And why? Because it is gold. Because it is power; because it means the gratification of all that is encompassed in—life.

“So you see what is behind life, with all its veneer and politeness, Mr. Pitt. The primal instincts, as you expressed it—raw and crawling. You must excuse me now; I must go down and see the man we picked up. If he should happen to die it would not be right to let the secret of the source of this gold die with him. Besides, I want Olson to save him. He can take Larson’s place in the crew.”

I walked to the bow of the Wanderer and back. A new atmosphere seemed to have descended upon the yacht. The movements of the men of the watch, the sullen, slovenly manner in which they attended to their duties, reeked with menace. It seemed to me that the decks of the Wanderer merely hid a cauldron of seething elements, ready to explode and destroy.

Then Wilson came on deck to take the watch in Captain Brack’s absence, and at the sight of his trig seaman’s figure I felt assured. There was one man at least who had not lost his sense of duty toward ship and owner. The yacht might be a mad-house, surcharged with dangerous greed, but Wilson would do his duty as if nothing were out of the way.

“Yesterday morning we had news of losing a man, this morning we pick one up,” I said.

“Yes sir,” he said, and looked at me narrowly.

“A strange coincidence.”

“Yes sir.” He looked at me again, and turned his eyes out over the sea.

“Mr. Pitt,” he said after awhile, “yesterday you spoke of Larson’s disappearance as if you believed it might have been something besides an accident, and that things were not as they should be aboard. Well, now I know that you are right; things are not as they should be on this yacht.”

“What have you discovered?”

He took his time about replying.

“That man never was picked up in an open boat at sea, Mr. Pitt,” he said quietly. “The land where he claims to have come from is about six hundred miles away. No small boat could have lived five minutes in the storm we have been having, and that storm was stronger farther north.”

He spoke as if he were stating an ordinary fact, and his calmness helped me to control myself.

“What does it mean, then, Wilson?” I asked as easily as I could.

“I don’t know, sir. I’m a seaman; I can’t follow such a queer course. I only know that this man was not picked up, after a long voyage as he claims; because his boat could not have lived through.”

“Captain Brack must know that, too?”

“Any seaman who has sailed these waters in Springtime knows that, sir.”

“Yet Brack seemed to accept the man’s story as true. Oh!” I gasped as I saw him smile. “Then it was Captain Brack who claimed to have picked him up?”

“I can’t discuss that, sir; Captain Brack is my superior. But I know that what I have told you is the truth; and I thought it right you should know.”

“Why do you tell me, Wilson? Mr. Chanler is the owner.”

“Yes sir.” He hesitated a moment, then added: “You are near to the owner. You’ll tell him if you see fit.”

XIII

Chanler was in fine fettle that morning. He arose early, snatched a cup of coffee for breakfast and came out to pace the deck, frequently turning his glasses on the horizon over the yacht’s stern.

“Greetings and salutations, Gardy!” he exclaimed as we met. “Down with the long face, up with the merry-merry! Hang it, Gardy, get enthused. Can’t you see I’m actually not bored this morning?”

Captain Brack soon appeared with a detailed account of the new man’s adventures. The man had been one of the crew of a sealing schooner which had been blown far off its course and lost the Autumn before with all hands, save our man and one companion.

Clinging to an upturned boat they had been driven ashore in an inlet which appeared on no map of Alaska to that date, a region so secluded that the man called it the “Hidden Country.” The pair had wintered precariously. With the beginning of the Spring break-up they had discovered that in the upper reaches of a river running into the inlet they had but to turn up the sand and find gold in quantities unheard of.

Rendered desperate by lack of food, they had set forth in their open boat in hope of somehow striking the first steamers going North. The man’s companion had died of hardships two days before. They had called the inlet Kalmut Fiord, after the wrecked sealer; it was so well hidden behind an island that a thousand boats might sail past and never guess of its existence, never know there was a hidden country there in which nature had hoarded a great amount of the stuff men prize above all other things material.

“By Jove!” cried Chanler, as Brack finished. “Sounds like a book, doesn’t it? Have the beggar up, cappy, and let’s have a look at him; let’s see the gold and hear his story.”

We were sitting on the long settee in the stern at the time. A couple of hands were working near by, polishing brass work.

As word was sent below to bring the miner up, the number of men near by gradually increased to half a dozen, and half of these loafed around boldly, making no pretense at being occupied. They looked at Chanler and myself with hard, insolent eyes. They did not fancy the notion of going bone-hunting for wages while fortunes waited to be dug from the sands of the nearest shore.

I looked idly back over the yacht’s wake. On the horizon appeared what seemed to be a peculiar cloud. I watched it curiously, and saw that with each minute the cloud grew larger. It became a long smudge on the horizon, and I was about to call Chanler’s attention to it, when——

“City of Nome overhauling us, sir!” megaphoned Pierce from the wireless house. “They say: ‘Heave to. Have passenger for you.’”

“Ah, ha!” cried Chanler springing up, for the moment his blasé countenance flushing with life. “Never mind about the gold-hunter, cappy. We’ll have him another time. Just have Riordan shut down, will you, and lay to for our passenger?”

He started for his state-room, when, seeing the men lounging about, he added:

“Send ’em below, cappy. They look tough; they’d give any one a bad impression. Simmons! Come here.”

Not a man moved. No order was given as he had requested. Captain Brack laughed shortly and went forward to the engine-room telephone.

The men smiled with an evil showing of teeth at Chanler’s retreating back. When he had disappeared in his stateroom they spat generously upon the Wanderer’s immaculate deck, lounged over to the rail and stood looking back toward the rapidly approaching steamer. I stared at them with a sickening weakness at my knees.

I scarcely noticed the steamer. For what had just taken place told as plainly as words that Chanler no longer was master of his own yacht, that the men, and Brack, had thrown off the cloak and were in open revolt.

The City of Nome came to a stop a good distance away to port. A boat, well loaded with baggage, and with four oarsmen and an officer in place, was swung briskly out from the davits and dropped into the water. A slender, be-capped figure, sheathed in a coat that reached from chin to ankles, flashed down the ladder and leaped to a seat in the stern. Along the rail of the City of Nome ranged crew and passengers, waving and shouting farewells. The passenger in the boat stood up bowing, cap in hand, and at that a sharp-eyed seaman near me blurted out:

“Well, I’ll be ——! It’s a woman—a girl!”

Wilson was standing near our lowered ladder, looking through his glasses, and I hurried to him.

“Was the man right, Mr. Wilson?” I asked. “Is it a woman?”

“Yes sir,” said he and handed me his glasses.

I placed them to my eyes, swept the sea until I picked up the boat, and let the glasses rest on the passenger in the stern.

The seaman was right; it was a girl. She was probably twenty-one or two, and she was laughing. I had but a glimpse of her face, for as the men pushed off from the steamer she leaned forward and spoke to the officer in charge. The men stopped rowing. One of them let go his oar and crawled forward, and the girl took his place and swung the long oar in a fashion that brought cheer after cheer from the watching passengers and crew.

Chanler now emerged from his stateroom and took the glasses from my hand. For several seconds he studied the girl in the boat as she swung herself easily against the oar.

“Gad!” he whispered excitedly. “Gad!”

He looked around and saw the men gathered aft.

“Wilson,” he commanded, “drive that bunch below. Where’s Brack? On the bridge? All right.”

I moved away, but he called: “No, Gardy, you stay right here; you look civilized. I need you. Stay and get introduced.”

I remained, but my interest was all for Wilson as he walked briskly toward the lounging men. Brack had been ordered to send the men below, and he had gone forward laughing, and the men had remained. Would they obey the command of the second officer?

Wilson’s first order was given in a tone too low for us to hear. In reply the men grinned at him, and Garvin, through his bandages growled—

“Who the —— are you?”

Wilson’s voice raised itself slightly.

“I am one officer on board that you can’t talk back to or get chummy with,” he said. “Get below or, by glory, I’ll show you what it means to give slack to an officer. Move there! You—Garvin! Get below!”

And they went. Bad men that they were, and in revolt, they were not able to defy Wilson when his blood was up. Chanler looked up at the bridge, puzzled.

“I told cappy to send them below,” he said. “Why didn’t he do it?”

“He gave no order at all,” I volunteered.

George looked at me unsteadily, his tongue wetting his lips.

“He didn’t give any order—after I told him to?”

“No.”

He looked up at the bridge again, hesitated, and smiled carelessly.

“Oh, well, what’s the difference? Here’s the boat. Ah! By gad!”

The boat was alongside our grating and the girl was springing out. A seaman offered to assist her, and she laughed and ran up the swaying stairway. Half-way she stopped and threw back her head, looking up at us.

“Yo-hoo, George!” she called and came running up the rest of the way, landing on the deck with a leap.

“Oh, George!” she cried. “Isn’t it glorious!”

She turned to the rail and waved her farewells to the sailors in the boat. They touched their hats and rowed away, their eyes upon her.

“And what a beautiful yacht you’ve got, George. And, oh! This wonderful sea! Isn’t it all splendid!”

She paused and looked at George carefully. The animation of her countenance disappeared for a moment; something she saw disappointed her.

“You—you’re not—looking quite as well as you were, George,” she said slowly.

“I’ve been awf’ly lonesome, Betty,” he replied. “I—it was awf’ly good of you to come.”

“Good of me? Why, it was a privilege. It was too sweet of your sister to invite me to come.”

“No, no! Don’t—don’t say that. I—” He stopped confused. “Betty, I was desperate to see you—just see you, you understand.”

She reached out and took his hand impulsively.

“You poor boy! And your sister, Mrs. Payne——”

Chanler was tugging at his collar.

“Here, here! I’ve forgotten,” he interrupted nervously, “Here’s Gardy—Miss Baldwin, Mr. Gardner Pitt.”

And Miss Beatrice Baldwin looked at me squarely for the first time. Her look was frankly appraising. We shook hands. I do not remember that we spoke a word. She looked up at George Chanler’s drink-hardened face; her eyes turned again to me, and after awhile she looked away.

There was a tiny up-flaring of lace about her neck. It was this picture that stuck in my mind: the delicate femininity of the lace collar, its suggestion of defenselessness, and, rising out of it, the firm, white neck, the slightly tanned face, girlishly delicate, but with the look on it of the outdoor girl who is not afraid.

Miss Baldwin was not afraid. She stood firmly upright; for my eyes, dropping in confusion, saw how the red rubber soles of her tan shoes gripped the deck, and the strong slim ankles above them. Her chin was almost childishly round, her hair was dark and wavy, and her mouth seemed eager to smile. Yet there was a seriousness about her frank eyes which told that while on the surface she might be a laughing, romping girl, in reality the woman was full grown.

There was a moment of silence while she looked out to sea and I looked at the deck; and then the men come rushing back on deck. They had been reinforced by two or three of their fellows, and with Garvin at their head they came marching forward in determined fashion.

At the sight of Miss Baldwin they paused. Some remaining shred of respect for womanhood held them, and they stood, a compact, menacing mob, some twenty feet away, undecided on their next move.

“Come along, Betty, I’ll show you to your stateroom,” said Chanler hurriedly.

He led the way toward the unoccupied owner’s suite, the suite which from the beginning had been furnished for her coming.

Miss Baldwin hesitated.

“But where’s Mrs. Payne, George?” she called.

Chanler paused and looked away. “Well, you see, Betty, I was crazy to see you, and—and, Sis’ took ill, and—” He pulled himself together in desperation. “She didn’t come with us, Betty, that’s all there is to it.”

Miss Baldwin had stopped at the cabin door.

“Then I am the only woman on board?” she asked.

“Yes.”

I expected her to shrink, to demand that she be sent back to the City of Nome.

Instead, she looked around calmly, looked out upon the sea, at the rough faces of the men who were staring at her curiously, at the free sweep of the Wanderer’s deck and said with quiet resignation—

“Oh, how jolly!”

XIV

Captain Brack and Riordan had joined the men by the time Chanler returned from showing Miss Baldwin to her stateroom. The entire crew of the Wanderer now was assembled, and Chanler ran his eyes nervously over the group.

“Cappy,” he said, “what is the meaning of this?”

Brack stepped forward.

“Mr. Chanler,” he said solemnly, “it has become necessary to tell you that this crew will not go to Petroff Sound—directly, at least.”

Chanler looked around. The men were standing in a semicircle about him, watching him menacingly.

“What do you mean?” he demanded. “Do you mean that you refuse to fulfil your contract?”

Brack shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, for myself, I don’t say,” he said. “Perhaps I would be willing to go to Petroff Sound, even after picking up this gold-hunter. But that doesn’t matter. I can’t sail the Wanderer without the crew, and the crew refuses to go any place but to the hidden country at Kalmut Fiord, where this man’s gold came from.”

“That’s what we said,” supplemented Garvin. “Give us boats and grub, if you want to, and turn us loose; or go with us in the yacht. But we ain’t goin’ bonehuntin’ when there’s gold laying round loose so close by.”

An inarticulate growl came from the rest of the men. Too stupid to put their plans in words they uttered a single, primitive sound which told better than Garvin’s words what was working in their primitive minds. They had seen gold; they had been told there was enough of it to make them all rich; their sluggish desires had been aroused, and consequently they growled.

They were white men, as to skin, but they were savages at heart. And into this company Chanler had brought Miss Baldwin.

“Cappy,” said Chanler, falling back into his blasé manner, “what are you trying to do? Do you mean to tell me that you’re letting this crew walk over you? D’you mean to tell me that you no longer can run ’em? Come, come! I won’t have such poppycock.”

Riordan now stepped forward.

“It is not only the crew that wants to quit, Mr. Chanler,” said he. “I’m through, too. Here is our proposition: Kalmut Fiord, where this miner came from, is about three days’ sailing due north. We want to go there and take a look. If you’ll let the yacht go there, and we find there’s no gold there, we’ll go on with you to Petroff Sound, and there’s only a week lost, which you can dock from our pay. If you won’t let the yacht go there—well, we’re going there anyhow.”

Chanler laughed his dry, cynical laugh.

“Cappy,” said he, “this is what they call mutiny in stories, isn’t it?”

“No, sir,” said Brack promptly. “Mutiny is the refusal of seamen to obey their captain. None of these men has refused to obey me.”

“Hah? Come again, cappy.”

“I have given them no orders which they have refused to obey.”

“You mean—you’re in with ’em, eh?”

“I mean that it would be a crime against us for this expedition to continue on its original course without first investigating, at least, the story which the miner has told. There may be much gold there; certainly there is some. You have more money than you need, Chanler; we haven’t enough to make our lives comfortable.”

“This voyage is a pastime to you; to us it’s a means of making a living. The bones at Petroff Sound will keep. I have this suggestion to make: that we alter the course of the yacht and go to Kalmut Fiord. There will be more credit for you if you lead the way to a new gold field than if you come back with a hold full of old bones. And it will be much easier and pleasant, I assure you.”

“You—you’re not threatening, cappy?” said George.

“Not at all. I am merely asking you to see this thing from our point of view.”

“‘Our? Our point of view?’ You’re not one of the crew are you, cappy?”

Brack did not reply.

“What shall it be, Mr. Chanler?” he said curtly. “Petroff Sound or Kalmut Fiord?”

Chanler looked once more at the crew. He had no special reason for going to Petroff Sound, but as he saw himself defied by his servants a flare of anger showed in his eyes.

“This may not be mutiny, but it is —— insolent, cappy,” said he. “I can’t say I like it at all.”

Garvin laughed. Chanler, looking at Brack, waved a hand toward the pugilist.

“Kindly have that man removed, cappy.”

The captain merely smiled; the scene was pleasing him. Chanler swore at him, and once more I saw that swift, terrible change come over Brack’s countenance.

“Careful, Chanler,” he said softly.

“Careful! On my own yacht!” Chanler’s voice was strong, but his eyes were wavering before Brack’s.

I stepped to his side, and as I did so, Miss Baldwin, a shimmering blue sweater in place of her rain-coat, and a tiny white tasseled cap on her head, came running out of the cabin toward us. Her eyes were taking in the Wanderer’s beauty and her nostrils were quivering with excitement.

“Oh, what a jolly boat!” she cried. “George, take me round; I want to see it all at once.”

Then she noticed the crew.

“Why!” She looked at the threatening faces of the men. “Why, George, what’s the matter?”

Chanler laughed easily.

“Oh, nothing much, Betty. We picked up a man in a boat last night with a bag of gold nuggets on him, and he told a story about a new gold field in a hidden country not far away, and the men want to go there instead of to Petroff Sound, that’s all.”

Her eyes widened.

“Really, George?” she asked incredulously.

“Really,” he said.

“But—do such things really happen, picking up men in boats with bags of gold on them?”

“It happened this time, at least,” he replied.

“Oh, how perfectly thrilling! A hidden country. And there’s more gold to find in the place he came from?”

“So the man says.”

“Oh, George!” cried Miss Baldwin eagerly “let’s go to this hidden country, and let me dig some gold with my own hands!”

Chanler looked puzzled, then relieved. Here was a creditable way out of an unpleasant situation, and his interest in Petroff Sound already was gone.

“Would you rather do that than go bone-hunting, Betty?” he asked.

“Of course. Wouldn’t you? Who cares for old bones? And think of the thrill and adventures in exploring a hidden country and of hunting gold!”

Chanler turned and nodded curtly to Brack.

“We go to Kalmut Fiord then, cappy.”

“All right, men,” snapped Brack. They broke at his orders; he was the captain again. “Full speed ahead, Mr. Riordan, please; I’ll take the bridge myself.”

He stood for a moment looking at Miss Baldwin. When George introduced them she first looked at Brack’s brutal features and wonderful eyes as casually as if he had been an ordinary member of the crew. Then her look became interested. After awhile she blushed and looked away, confused.

Brack bowed, and spoke and smiled courteously, but as he hurried up on the bridge there was a new look in his eyes. I could compare it only to the look that was in Garvin’s eyes when he had seen the little raw pile of gold.

XV

The Wanderer seemed galvanized into new life. The sullenness and tension that had hung over her decks all morning vanished as a fog vanishes before the rising sun. The men jumped to their tasks, grotesque grins on their faces where truculence had reigned a moment before.

Down below decks the engines began humming, slowly at first, rising steadily, until presently we were racing along at a speed that sent the water hissing along our sides. On the bridge Brack paced energetically, now speaking to the wheelman, now down the engine-room telephone. Our course was changed so abruptly that we felt the impact when the wheel went over, and minutes later we were holding steady and true on a course nearly at right angles to the one we had been following.

“Ha!” said Chanler. “Apparently cappy knows where he’s going, and is going there as fast as the old scow can travel.”

Miss Baldwin, bracing herself against the breeze, laughed nervously. Chanler reached down and took her hand. She looked up at him; then she drew her hand away.

I turned to go. A sailor, dragging a hose aft, blocked my way for a moment and I was forced to hear what they said.

“George,” said she, “tell me the truth; did Mrs. Payne ever intend to come on this voyage? Or did you deceive me altogether?”

“I—I had to see you, Betty,” he faltered. “I——”

“Don’t say any more, please.”

As I entered the cabin she was looking out over the sea. Chanler was chewing his under lip and staring hard at the deck.

I had barely settled myself in my stateroom to try to think coherently on the events of the morning when Freddy Pierce slipped in, closing the door noiselessly behind him.

“It’s all right, Brains,” he said. “Brack’s too busy on the bridge to pay any attention to me. Let me roll one before you say anything; I’m forty miles up in the air.”

“Pierce,” I said, as he manufactured his cigaret, “what sort of message did Mr. Chanler send Miss Baldwin?”

“Ah ha! You’ll let me tell you now will you? Well, he sent two kinds; one from himself, saying Mrs. Payne was on board, and one that he signed ‘Dora Payne’, inviting Miss Baldwin to come on this voyage. Oh, it’s a fine piece of business, I tell you——”

“Stop!” I said. “Don’t tell me any more; that’s plenty.”

He drew strongly at his cigaret and blew a shaft of smoke at the ceiling.

“And a Jane—I mean, a girl like that, for anybody to do what Chanler did! What’s his game, Brains? He isn’t so raw——”

“He isn’t himself,” I interrupted. “That’s the stuff; stick up for your pals. But, think of me. I had a hand in getting this girl on board ship.” He rose and tramped the room. “Chanler must be crazy, especially after this morning, to let a girl come aboard. Can’t he see what Brack is? And what do we know about where we’re going now? It’s bad enough for us; I’d blow the job myself if there was any way out and it didn’t look like being a quitter; but for a girl like this to be pulled into it, it’s a fine business—I don’t think!”

“Pierce,” said I, “could we get that steamer to turn back to us?”

“Sure—if Chanler would give the order. They know he can pay for their time, even if they are carrying mail.”

“Then you may have a message to send them soon,” I said, and went out to seek Chanler and Miss Baldwin.

I did not find Chanler. Miss Baldwin was alone in a deck-chair under the awning on the forward deck. She was sitting with her chin in her hand, and to my surprise a look of relief came upon her face as she glanced up and saw me. Before I could speak she said.

“Mr. Pitt, what has happened to George Chanler?”

“Happened to Chanler?” I stammered. I tried to make light of it, but the look on her face stopped the foolish words on my lips.

“You know he is changed,” she continued. “What has done it?”

“How do you mean he has changed,” I asked.

“Don’t, please don’t try to deceive me?” She broke out. “I am not blind. I can see he has changed, and I can see that your attitude toward him is not what it would have been if he—if he were himself. You’re an old friend of his?”

“I have known him for several years.”

“So he said. Then you know he has changed. Why, he was like a good-natured boy last Winter; you couldn’t help liking him. And now he is so different. What has happened to him?”

I looked at her, and her eyes were frankly searching me for the truth. The eyes were gray and very calm.

“There is a change in him,” I admitted. “But I am still his friend.”

Her eyes widened a little.

“Do you mean by that that you can’t be my friend? Don’t you think I have a right to know?”

“Chanler has been very lonely——”

“It’s drink, isn’t it?” she interrupted. “Don’t be afraid to tell me; you can see I’m not afraid.”

“He has been lonely,” I continued, “and therefore he has probably been drinking more than is good for him. Now that you are here he will undoubtedly become himself again.”

“Do you think so, really?”

“I do,” I said earnestly. “How can he do anything else now?”

She rose and crossed over to the starboard rail. I followed. Looking aft I saw Simmons hurrying into Chanler’s stateroom with a bottle wrapped in a napkin, and Chanler’s absence was explained.

Miss Baldwin did not see Simmons. She was looking down at the water along our side. After several minutes she raised her head.

“Poor George!” she said, “He’s never had to fight anything in his life, so he’s handicapped. But we’ll hope, at least.”

“Miss Baldwin,” I said vigorously, “it is not too late for you to leave this yacht. We can reach the City of Nome by wireless. You can return there now.”

The look which she bestowed on me had nothing in it but surprise.

“Leave the yacht now, just at the beginning of the voyage? Why do you suggest that, Mr. Pitt?”

“I thought,” I stammered, “I thought that after you had seen how things are on board you might be wishing you were safely back on the steamer.”

“But—but you said my being here would help straighten George up?”

I was silent.

“Why did you suggest that I leave, Mr. Pitt?”

“Miss Baldwin,” said I, “I do not wish to alarm you, but I do not think this yacht at present is a place for a young woman to take a pleasure trip in. It is Chanler’s place to tell you this, but I am quite sure he will not do so.”

“Go on,” she said, “you must explain fully now.”

“Well, to be blunt, the yacht is in the hands of Captain Brack and the crew.”

“Yes?”

“You saw Captain Brack, Miss Baldwin; I saw that you studied him with interest.”

“Yes!” she said eagerly, and at the sudden play of excitement in her expression I once more felt the old familiar chill creeping up my spine.

The power, the fascination, the dominant will of Captain Brack suddenly took on new possibilities. How would those terrible, compelling eyes affect a woman, a young girl? How had they affected her? For it was obvious that Miss Baldwin’s brief meeting with him had left its mark.

“He has,” said she, “such strange eyes.”

“Miss Baldwin,” I said, “when you came on board the crew practically was in a state of mutiny. Captain Brack sided with them. The crew is composed of a choice lot of brutes, ex-criminals, who may do Heaven knows what.”

Miss Baldwin stood firmly upright and looked at me, her eyes alight with excitement. Her thin nostrils widened and trembled.

“Oh, how you thrill me, Mr. Pitt!” she said. “Tell me honest truth—you’re not joking? Is it really true, about the mutiny and the crew of choice brutes?”

“Miss Baldwin,” I stammered. “Do you mean to say that you’re pleased to hear this? That you’d wish to stay on board if I assured you that we are practically in the hands of a crew of dangerous men, with no knowing what sort of adventure they may be going on?”

“Would I?” she cried promptly. “Why, it’s what I’ve been longing for all my life.”

“You—you have—what?” I stammered.

She smiled mischievously at my astonishment.

“Mr. Pitt, who was it that said, ‘most men lead lives of quiet desperation’? No matter. He should have included girls, too. Did you ever think that we, too, sometimes might get tired of the hum drum lives we’re born to and long for something wild to flavor our existence?”

“Good Lord, no!”

“Of course, you haven’t. Well, possibly I’m different from other girls. I don’t know. But I’ve always felt that if I had to live all my life without one great adventure I—I’d burst.”

“The great adventure for a girl,” said I severely, “is to love, marry, and——”

“Ah, yes! But somehow I seem to recall having heard that before.”

A sea-gull, following the Wanderer in search of galley droppings, swooped past us, struck the crest of a small wave with a splash, and soared upward and away.

“There,” she said quietly, “that’s what I’ve longed for; just once, to be absolutely free. Do you understand?”

I shook my head.

“There is nothing of the adventurer in me, Miss Baldwin.”

“Then why are you here; why don’t you leave the yacht?”

“That’s different. I came aboard as part of the expedition. I remain because——”

“Because you are not a quitter.” She laughed gaily, then grew serious. “I’m a queer bird, am I not, Mr. Pitt?”

“Well, you have succeeded in startling me. When you came on board I judged you to be the typical young girl of your class who has led so sheltered a life——”

“I have, I have! Oh, so—so sheltered! That’s why I’m wild to be something else for once.”

“So sheltered a life that you would shrink and flee when you discovered that you were the only woman on board the yacht. And that you would be terror-stricken when I told you the true state of affairs on board.”

She nodded with mock contrition.

“I know. That’s what I should have done to be proper. But I can’t help it, Mr. Pitt. I’m not afraid; I don’t want to shrink and flee; and I do look forward to something different with unholy joy. Awful, isn’t it? But it’s all so thrilling—the wicked crew, the mutiny, and—and Captain Brack.”

XVI

Chanler came up briskly before we had time to speak further. His dullness had given place to animation. It was apparent that he had wasted no time while in his stateroom.

“Let’s go aft, Betty,” he said. “There’s an awning up there, and deck-chairs, and no wind. Come on.”

I watched them as they went, he, nervous, with unsteady eyes, she, calm, buoyant, strong. He leaned toward her and talked excitedly, and I saw that she drew a little away from him.

They did not sit down. I saw Chanler urging her, and she shook her head and continued to walk to and fro, Chanler following. He was talking and gesticulating excitedly. She looked at him long and steadily once, then looked away.

As I turned I found myself face to face with Captain Brack. He had come down noiselessly from the bridge and was studying me with that old superior smile on his lips.

“Ah, you idealist, Mr. Pitt!” he said softly.

“Idealist, Captain Brack? Why do you say that?”

“It is in your eyes. It is in the position of your chin; it is all over you. You are uplifted and exalted for the moment. You feel that you really are something; you feel strong, is that not so?”

“Perhaps.”

“No, not perhaps, but positively. You feel at this moment that you are a big, strong man; in reality you are—Mr. Gardner Pitt.” He chuckled carelessly at the flush that came to my cheek. “I have been watching you for some seconds, Mr. Pitt; I have seen you swell and think you were growing. In your calm reason—for you can reason somewhat, Mr. Pitt—you know that you are not growing; but for the moment you have allowed your emotions to hypnotize you. You are a victim of your own emotions. For instance—” he waved his thick hand toward the aft where Chanler and Miss Baldwin now were promenading together—“you fancy that in Mr. Chanler’s partner you have been looking at something wonderful and fine. Is that not so?”

“That is so, captain.”

“Something above the common, raw, crawling stuff of life?”

“Decidedly so.”

“Something which it is not the sphere of reason to grasp, but which the emotions alone can appreciate?”

“Go on.”

He laughed unctuously.

“Then I have diagnosed your delusion accurately.”

“Are you sure it is a delusion, captain?”

“Yes. Self-hypnosis. What you see is not there.”

Betty turned at this moment so that her face was toward us.

“What do you see back there, Brack?” I asked.

He looked at her steadily; his head was lowered a little, and again there was in his eyes the look comparable to Garvin’s when he saw the raw gold.

“I see,” said he slowly, without taking his eyes off Betty, “just what there is there; a very fine, healthy young specimen of the female of the species.”

His words were like a dull knife on my nerves, but I controlled myself.

“Nothing more?” I asked casually.

“No. For there is no more.”

I laughed, and I was conscious of a sensation of relief. The man had his limitations then, even though one glance from his eyes had left so strong an impression on Miss Baldwin.

“I feel sorry for you then,” said I. “You are to be pitied for your lack of imagination.”

He did not take his eyes off Betty.

“No,” he said, “for that is enough to see. It is more than enough. A fine young woman. Only once or twice in my life have I seen finer. Too fine to be wasted on a silly ineffectual. Yes, too fine to be won except by a man.”

He swung around on me and said with a wink:

“I have a feeling, Mr. Pitt, that an interesting voyage lies before us. And—and a short time ago I didn’t think anything could interest me much except gold—which means power.”

“Do you feel that we are going to find gold at this alleged gold-field in the alleged hidden country to which we are going?”

“Naturally. Else we would not be found there now.”

“Have you any positive reason for believing gold is to be found there? Not that story of the alleged miner,” I hastened on. “You don’t expect any reasoning being to accept that story as a reason. Have you any real reason for thinking there is gold at this so-called Kalmut Fiord?”

His eyebrows raised a trifle and he smiled as one might at a child who displays unexpected shrewdness.

“You do not have much confidence in the miner’s story, Mr. Pitt?” he asked.

“The maundering of a delirious man,” I retorted. “Surely you would not change the purpose of this expedition on such slender information as that.”

He ceased smiling for a moment.

“I know that there is gold at Kalmut Fiord,” he said. “Does that ease you?”

“If I knew how you know there is gold there, I would be more satisfied. And even granting that you know there is gold there—Captain Brack, you will pardon me—but it scarcely seems in keeping with your character to cheerfully sail a ship-load of people to this gold-field, where they will have an equal chance with you to enrich themselves.”

“No?” he said, and his smile was back in its place. “You have sounded my character then, have you, Mr. Pitt?”

“My dear captain! I am sure you hardly expect to impress even a casual observer as a man who would freely invite a crowd to share a gold find with him.”

He laughed, nodding at me approvingly.

“That isn’t bad, Pitt. The sea air sharpens wits. But have you ever been in the North, away from police officers and courts?”

“Never.”

“Have you ever been in a spot where laws do not reach?”

“No.”

“Well, it is such a place that you are going to now, Pitt. You will find yourself in a new world, in this hidden country, a world as it was in the beginning, with the laws of nature the only ones necessary to consider. In such places gold naturally is attracted to the strongest man, no matter who digs it out of the ground. Gold, do I say? Ha! All things to the strong in this place, Pitt. Nature’s law; all things to the strong, and especially—” he looked again toward the after deck— “women.”

XVII

My expressed faith that Chanler would straighten up now that Miss Baldwin was on board was doomed to early destruction. George had sunk further than his face betrayed, further than any of us had guessed. As a matter of fact this probably was the first time in his life that he had seriously struggled with a big problem, and the struggle had exposed him in a fashion I had not thought possible.

Twice that afternoon he left Miss Baldwin for short runs into his stateroom, and each time he returned vivacious and aggressive. At luncheon he was glum and distrait. Out of regard for Miss Baldwin he had banished liquor from the table and he suffered without it.

Captain Brack was not present at luncheon. He was too occupied between the bridge and the engine-room. Riordan also was absent.

“We are running at our maximum now, yes sir,” said Wilson in reply to a question. “The captain is anxious to hold her so, and he is laying the course himself.”

“Do you know where we are going, Wilson?” I asked.

“No sir. Our course is due north. We should strike somewhere on the Kenai Peninsula, sir.”

“What kind of a country is it there?” asked Betty.

“No country at all, Miss. Entirely unsettled. A rough coast-line.”

“Cappy apparently knows where he’s going,” muttered Chanler.

“Yes sir,” said Wilson.

“And nobody else does.”

“No sir.”

“And that’s what I call a situation to keep a chap from being bored. What do you say, Wilson?”

“I’m not easily bored, sir.”

“You lucky dog!”

“Yes sir,” said Wilson, and excusing himself went out.

When Dr. Olson had done likewise Chanler looked long and lovingly at Miss Baldwin.

“Betty,” he said, as if rousing himself with an effort.

“Yes, George.”

“Betty, don’t you think you were an awful fool to come on a crazy trip like this?”

She smiled as if humoring him.

“Why do you say that, George?”

“Suppose folks should hear about it?”

“What then?”

“Betty—you—all alone on a yacht with me. What’ll folks think if they know?”

“They do know,” she said. “I told my folks and friends where I was going.”

“Yes, but you told them my sister was on board.”

“Certainly—as you told me.”

“Oh, don’t rub it in, Betty. That’s past. But what do you think people will think when they know she wasn’t on board, and that you came ’way up here alone to join me?”

She looked at him steadily. I half rose to leave, but a glance from her eyes told me to remain. It was not a pleasant scene. I stared at my napkin.

“You see, Betty,” he continued, leaning loosely across the table, “that’s what it will look like. Won’t it, Gardy?”

I did not reply.

“What will it look like, George?” she asked evenly.

“Like you were chasing me.”

She laughed, and her laughter was like a song-burst of wholesome young life in the atmosphere of Chanler’s drink-drugged maundering.

“Well, George, isn’t that what I am doing?”

“People will talk, Betty,” he persisted. “It’s a bad situation—for you. I—I’m sorry I got you to come here—no, hang it! I’m not. But I am worrying about your reputation, Betty.”

“I think I can take care of my reputation, George,” she said quietly.

“Let me take care of it, Betty!” he cried hoarsely, taking her hand.

“Please, George,” she said, smiling, as she rose.

“Betty!” He clung to her hand.

With swift, confident strength she drew her hand free, lifting him slightly from his chair in doing so.

“You’ll excuse me now, won’t you?” she said, and went to her room.

Chanler flung himself back in his chair, laughing harshly.

“Did you see that—did you see it, Gardy?” he said, as he pressed the bell. “She doesn’t care if I do own this yacht. I’m nothing to her. Oh, what a rotten trip this is going to be!”

“Chanler,” I said, “sit still for a minute and listen. You have got to pull yourself together. You have got to straighten out this mess. You have got to show Miss Baldwin that you are the man she is hoping to find in you. Buck up, man! Her hopes are pinned on you. She cares. Do you think she would have come this far if she didn’t care? She has done her share; she’s here. Now, for her sake, do your share. Pull yourself together and be the man she has been hoping all this time she would find you.”

“Hooray!” he whispered mockingly. “Go on, Gardy; you’re the boy who can say things. King’s peg,” he said to the steward who had come in.

“Wait!” I said. The man stopped. “Chanler, you’ve been overdoing it. You’re not yourself. You’ve done things that aren’t done; you’ve got to sober up and straighten them out.”

“Got to!”

“Yes; as a gentleman you’ve got to. Miss Baldwin’s happiness—perhaps her whole life’s happiness—depends on your being a gentleman from now on. For God’s sake man! Isn’t it worth sobering up to win a prize like that?”

“Oh, leave me alone, Gardy,” he growled. “Don’t you think I know what I’m doing? It doesn’t make any difference what I do now. I’ve lost her. She wouldn’t have me no matter what I did now. I know it. Knew it five minutes after she came on board. Saw it in her eyes. Felt it. My hold on her’s slipped—just like that. Gone—forever. No use trying. King’s peg,” he repeated, “and hurry.”

I sat silent, rage and disgust choking me, while the man brought in that terrible mixture of champagne and brandy in equal parts. Chanler drank it in gulps.

“Have some, Gardy? No? That’s right. Some men shouldn’t touch rum; you’re one of them. ’Cause why? ’Cause you’ve got a conscience. Rot, rot, rot! Got to straighten up, have I, Gardy? ‘Got to’ are words that weren’t made for me, my boy.”

“For God’s sake! Chanler, drop that sort of talk!” I cried, springing to my feet. “If you knew what a sickening parody you are on the gentleman you were at home, you wouldn’t put on airs.”

“Not to me, Gardy, not to me can you utter such contemptuous words,” he said harshly.

“You be ——, you and your big talk!” I exploded. “Do you think you’re entitled to any respect? Do you think I or any one else on board cares who you are at present? Do you think your money is still a power? Well, it’s not. It ceased to be this morning. Brack and the crew—Brack especially—there’s the power aboard this yacht. And you’re disgracing yourself and your class before them all.

“First you lie by wireless to get Miss Baldwin on board, and now you’re taking the easiest way, keeping drunk, because you’re not man enough to face the situation sober—not man enough to make things right for the girl who came here trustfully depending on you. Think of it, Chanler; think who you are—of your family. Have one more try at decency, at least. Chuck away that poison in your hand and let me call Dr. Olson and get you straightened up.”

He raised the large glass to his lips and drank the peg down without a falter.

“Gardy,” he said, setting the glass down, “you’re fired.”

I laughed.

“I like you, Gardy; you’re a dear old fellow,” he continued, “but you mustn’t presume on our friendship and talk to me like that. I’ve got to let you out.”

“And I suppose I’m to pack my things and go?” said I. “Oh, come, Chanler; wake up. Try to see things with sane eyes. I don’t care whether I’m fired or whether we remain friends. We’re all on the same plane for the present; you, Miss Baldwin, myself, we’re in the hands of Captain Brack and the crew.”

He shuddered nervously.

“Don’t say such things, Gardy; I forbid them in my hearing.”

“You’re afraid to hear them, you mean.”

“Afraid or not, it makes no difference. They annoy me and I won’t be annoyed. I won’t, you hear. Been annoyed enough on this trip. Here I was waiting for Betty’s coming. Felt sure she’d have me if I got her away alone, just herself and me. She comes, looks around. I look in her eyes and bang! I see she won’t have me. Plain as print. Whole trip useless. It’s a rotten world!”

“You’re giving up without a struggle, Chanler?”

“No use, my boy. I don’t like struggling, anyhow.”

“But, Miss Baldwin is, at least your guest, on board your yacht. The yacht is in the hands of Brack and the crew. Haven’t you thought that this situation might develop into one that may be unpleasant and even unsafe for Miss Baldwin?”

“I have,” he said, signaling for another peg. “And I wish I was back home in the big leather chair at the club, looking out on Fifth Avenue.” He waved his hand drunkenly toward me. “I entrust—entrust Miss Beatrice Baldwin—safety, pleasure, honor, rep’tation to you, Gardy. Ha! There’s a bright little idea. I hire you again, Gardy. New job. You—you see Betty safe and sound back to her folks.”

That hour marked the beginning of Chanler’s eclipse. At dinner-time Simmons reported him indisposed. During the next three days he left his room but seldom. He had but one desire now: to eliminate himself as a responsible factor in the storm of events about to break upon the Wanderer and its people.

XVIII

Captain Brack was sitting in Chanler’s chair when we went in to dinner that evening and Miss Baldwin’s place was beside him. Dr. Olson and myself—neither Riordan nor Wilson had appeared—sat opposite.

Brack was dressed with the care of a captain of a popular trans-Atlantic liner, and his attitude toward Miss Baldwin was solely that of a captain solicitous for his passenger’s comfort and pleasure. The yacht might have been the Mauretania, our little party the dinner crowd of the liner’s first saloon. Brack’s personality, polished and radiant for the time being, his flashing conversation, filled and illumined the room. It was difficult not to forget young Larson as one sat beneath his spell.

“An apology is necessary, Miss Baldwin, for my absence from luncheon,” he said. “It is not etiquette to fail to welcome a passenger to her first meal on board. It was necessary, however, that I stay on the bridge until I was sure that the Wanderer had reached her limit of speed and that we were holding true on our course. I have stolen thirty minutes from that duty this evening to fulfil my social obligation as captain.”

“Then we are in a hurry, Captain Brack?” she asked.

His eyes were upon her—those eyes with their compelling power—and her manner was subdued.

“The crew is in a desperate hurry, Miss Baldwin,” he said with one of his flashing smiles. “Men are always in a hurry when they hear of gold. And, really—” he bowed to her deferentially—“we have much to thank you for, Miss Baldwin, for relieving a tense situation this morning. I do not mean that there was the slightest danger of any trouble. No, no! But the situation was a trifle uncomfortable when you appeared and voted that we go hunting for gold instead of bones.” He laughed softly. “I have wondered why you did that, Miss Baldwin; is it presumptuous to ask?”

Miss Baldwin toyed with her spoon.

“I thought that this—going gold-hunting—was so much more alive.”

“Good!” he said earnestly. “That is why I voted for it, too. To be alive while we are living—that is more important than to unearth old skeletons. Isn’t that your idea, Miss Baldwin?”

“Yes,” she said with a strange smile.

“And to be alive means to live in the open, free and untrapped.”

She looked up at him, and by her expression I knew that she saw only his eyes.

“You don’t look as if you would be contented indoors, captain,” she said with a little laugh.

“Are you?” he said, and looked straight at her.

She smiled in puzzled fashion without replying.

“No, you are not,” he answered for her. “For you are very, very much alive, and so must naturally have longings for the free life, which means life outdoors. Am I not right?”

“Yes.”

“Life—we can make it a free, glorious thing, or a gray, trapped affair, just as we choose. It is all a matter of courage. There is still much room in the world. It is not crowded except in spots. If we choose to remain in one of those crowded spots, or rather, if we are afraid to leave them, we must, of necessity, become one of the gray, trapped crowd, existing through a certain span of years without ever knowing what it is to be truly alive. But in the great open spaces people live—they are alive. They are natural, they are hand-in-hand with Nature, and Nature gives them more reward for living than does what man calls civilization.

“As one who has lived under both conditions, Miss Baldwin, I assure you that it is only in the uncrowded spaces that man may get close enough to the root of Life to experience the sensation of immortality. Haven’t you felt something like that yourself?”

“Yes,” she said again, and her eyes were puzzled and full of wonder.

“You will learn,” he said, nodding his head gravely. “You are one of those who will learn quickly the message that the open has for you. You are free-born. You would not be here unless the call to freedom had come to you. Isn’t that so?”

“I—I have always longed for an experience like this. How did you know?”

“It is written upon you as plain as print; you are finding your true sphere. Tell me truthfully: do you not at this moment feel stirred as you never did before in your life?”

She looked up at him quickly; it seemed as if he had frightened her.

“How could you know that?” she faltered.

He smiled, leaning toward her, his eyes holding hers.

“That and many more things you will learn, Miss Baldwin,” he said impressively. “You are beginning a new life. The new impulses you feel are the commands of your true spirit, stricken free of the bonds of civilization. Obey them. Remember, they are your true self; there can be for you no realization of the full possibilities of life save along the way they lead you. There is hidden country in all of us, and until we explore it we don’t know what it is to live.”

He sat back in his chair, smiling, satisfied.

“And now you must excuse me; my thirty minutes are up and I have promised Riordan thirty minutes to dine.” As he bowed and rose his glance went across the table to me. “Now, Mr. Pitt, I will wager, never has felt a call to be free—to explore any hidden country.”

I did not reply.

“No, Mr. Pitt is not one of us. But, Miss Baldwin,” he concluded, bending over her as he passed out, “you are. Your true life is about to begin.”

And she followed him with her eyes as he left the room, though there was that in her expression which suggested that she did so unwillingly.

“Ah!”

The faintest exclamation of relief escaped her lips as the captain disappeared. She sank back in her chair as if suddenly released. She looked around; our eyes met. She excused herself in a dazed sort of fashion and went to her room.

Hours afterward I was pacing the deck. It was another pitch-dark night, and to one fresh from the glare of New York, the darkness was well-nigh appalling. The Wanderer’s searchlight seemed only a thin knife-gash, parting the darkness before us. On either side of its beam the blackness of night stood like a wall. There were no stars to be seen above. East, north, south and west, naught but the dead night; below, only the hiss of unseen waters through which we were rushing toward—what?

I shuffled to and fro on the deck, caring neither where nor how I was going. The scene between Brack and Miss Baldwin at the dinner-table repeated itself again and again, each time with a new, sinister significance. I know what power lay within Brack’s eyes. Had they not roused me and thrilled me and made me fighting mad, which was exactly what Brack, in idle sport wished to do? What would be the effect of his will, gleaming through his glances, on a woman, on a young, inexperienced girl like Miss Baldwin? For after all, she was nothing but an inexperienced girl. Yes, I told myself, she was so inexperienced, so ignorant, through the sheltered life she had lived, that she did not know enough to recognize a distressing situation when she met it. She was brave because she didn’t have sense enough to be cautious.

“Mr. Pitt,” called a voice softly, “is that you?”

I swung around. I was near a cabin porthole and by its light I made out Miss Baldwin coming toward me.

“I’m glad,” she said. “Don’t stop, please; let us walk.

“I came out,” she continued, as we fell into step, “because I didn’t like to be alone.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I seemed lonesome. It was nice to come out here and find you.”

I made no response, and our walk was silent for a long time.

“I wanted to speak to you about something,” she said at last, “about Captain Brack.”

“Yes?”

She hesitated.

“Is—is he as wonderful as he seems?”

“Captain Brack is a remarkable man,” I replied.

“I thought he was wonderful when he was speaking,” she said falteringly. “But when he was gone I—it seemed different.”

“How different?”

“I don’t know just. I loved to listen while he was talking. But after he’d gone I felt relieved. It frightened me a little. That’s why I came out. What do you know about him?”

I was at loss for a reply. To tell her what I knew of Brack, of my first sight of him in the Seattle saloon, of what I had learned aboard the Wanderer, would serve to alarm her in an uncomfortable manner.

“Chanler selected him as his captain,” I said.

She gave an impatient toss to her shoulders as we walked on.

“Oh, that doesn’t mean anything. What sort of a man is he?”

“Very strong.”

“I know that.”

“Very capable.”

“Yes.”

“And entirely unscrupulous.”

She nodded her head, not in the least surprised.

“I thought so,” she said.

There was a moment of silence. We heard the murmur of waters against our bows.

“He’s something like that,” she said, pointing out over the dark sea. “A blind, remorseless force; isn’t he?”

“But more subtle.”

“Oh! Is he?”

“As subtle as he is strong.”

She gave a little gasp, as if she had caught herself in an error.

“I didn’t know that. I didn’t realize—I must be going in. You’ll excuse me. Good night, Mr. Pitt. Pleasant dreams.”

Pleasant dreams! It was past one in the morning before I ceased my troubled pacing of the Wanderer’s promenade, and such sleep as weariness finally brought to me was beset by a jumble of nightmares, dominated by Brack’s eyes and smile.

XIX

After breakfast next morning I went to see Chanler. He was sitting up in bed, and he had changed greatly overnight. His face was puffed and gray-looking, and the swollen eyelids were parted only enough to disclose a slit of blood-shot eyes. Dr. Olson was with him, whisky-glass in hand, but he was watching Chanler shrewdly.

“I’ve got him filled up with bromides,” whispered the doctor to me. “If we can’t get him to sleep he’ll have the D. T.’s.”

Chanler slowly turned his head toward me and endeavored to open his eyes wide. The effort was too much for him and his face became distorted with a drunken smile.

“There he is—li’l Gardy, the foe of rum,” he murmured sleepily. “Model young man. Gardy, know wha’ I’d like see? Like see you stewed to zenith. Like see you spiff-iflicated. Oh, wha’ ’n ez’bition you’d be! Horr’ble, horr’ble!” He shook his head slowly. “Nay, nay! Don’ catch Gardy spiff-iflicated. Don’ catch Gardy putting things in’s brain to steal his mouth away, do they, Gard’? Noshirr-rr! Noshir-r! Let George do ’t, eh, Gardy? Let George—let——”

His head fell forward. With an effort he raised it, but his eyes were closed.

“Gardy—you—you——”

He collapsed slowly upon the pillow and was sound asleep.

Dr. Olson set his glass down and wiped his forehead.

“That’s good,” he said. “But he’s going to be a very sick man.”

“Of course,” I said. “But now that you have got him asleep we are going to stop his drinking and get him straightened up.”

The doctor looked at Chanler’s puffed face.

“What’s the use?” he said with a shrug of his thin shoulders. “Besides, he doesn’t want to do anything of the sort.”

“What he wants doesn’t matter,” I insisted. “He’s got to be straightened up. What can you do for him?”

The little man looked at me with a weary smile.

“Why this eagerness, Pitt? If I put Chanler on his feet——”

“Then that’s settled,” I interrupted. “You admit you can put him on his feet, therefore you’ve got to do it. Your word?”

“My word,” he said solemnly, and went to work.

Miss Baldwin was waiting for me as I came from Chanler’s stateroom.

“I saw you just as you went in,” she said. “Well?”

“He’s sleeping now,” I replied. “He’ll be all right—or, at least better—when he wakes. George will straighten up.”

She looked at me in that wonderful quiet way of hers.

“Are you so loyal to all your friends, Mr. Pitt?” she said.

“George will straighten up,” I repeated. “He is in Dr. Olson’s hands. He will make amends when he is himself again.”

She turned away, a wistful—perhaps bitter—smile faintly touching her lips.

“Miss Baldwin!” I cried apologetically. “Have I said anything to hurt you, to give you pain?”

“You?” she said, smiling brightly. “Of course you haven’t. How could you think that? I—I merely happened to think of how different George was a few months ago. No, no! Don’t grow sad out of sympathy, please, Mr. Pitt. I’m not unhappy. Do I look it? I cared for George. I know it now. Maybe I could have learned to care for him deeply if he had cared for me truly. But he didn’t, and I’m glad I found it out.”

“You mustn’t say that, Miss Baldwin. You must give him another chance when he’s himself again.”

“Loyal Mr. Pitt!” she laughed. “Well, I can scarcely help giving George another chance, can I? Here on the same yacht with him. Mr. Pitt, I’ll bet I know what you think of me?”

“And that is?”

“That I’m an awful fool to be here?”

I smiled.

“I knew it!” she cried.

“You’re wrong!” I protested. “I do not think so at this moment.”

“But you have thought so?”

“I have thought you—well, not quite as cautious——”

“Prevaricator! You’ve thought: ‘What sort of a silly madcap is this girl!’ I know it. Well, I guess you’re right. It was a foolish thing to do; it’s foolish to be glad at the prospect of adventure. Other girls wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t think of it. They’d think a girl queer who did. That proves it’s foolish, doesn’t it? It isn’t done. I can’t help it, though; I’ve needed something like this.”

“It is the day of restlessness among American women,” I said fatuously.

“Restlessness? Is it? Yes, I suppose it is. But my restlessness doesn’t take the regular, honest truth road, you know. Lots of my girl friends have felt they wanted to do something, but they’ve wanted to go suff’ing, or paint, or write, or teach folk-dances, or something like that. I didn’t, not any more than I wanted to be considered a doll in pretty clothes all my life.

“I wanted to break away. Well, I did. Here I am. And, scandalous as it may sound, I’m enjoying every minute. Now, Mr. Pitt, there’s my whole confession. I have acted foolishly, and I know it, but really, I feel as if I had broken loose from something that had held me down. I feel as if it was the beginning of a new life for me—of my real life.”

“A new life?” I said. “Why, that’s what Captain Brack said last night.”

She looked away.

“Yes, so he did,” she said slowly.

And I thought she shivered a little.

I am afraid I cursed poor George Chanler in unchristian fashion during the rest of that run up to Kalmut Fiord. For during those days Captain Brack wooed Miss Baldwin steadily. At each meal he sat at her side; his eyes were upon her, his magic words were for her alone. And even while he spoke to her I saw in his eyes that terrible, ruthless look I knew so well.

“What does the hidden country of Kalmut Fiord hold?” he speculated one evening. “Ah, Miss Baldwin, if we knew our interest would be discounted. It is a primitive spot, surely; a primal piece of earth. Let us pray that it holds Romance, without which there can be no beginning of a new life.” Once more he repeated: “Hidden country! There’s some in all of us, and until we explore it we don’t live.”

The effect of his efforts was apparent upon Miss Baldwin. She seemed to dread each meeting with him, yet she sat beneath his spell in a state of fascination. So I cursed poor Chanler. Had he been the man Miss Baldwin had hoped she would have had no attention for Brack.

Near dusk on the third day after changing our course we sighted land over our bows, a tiny gray smudge on the horizon. Our speed was cut down to a crawl at once. The captain, after studying the land through his glasses, ordered our course changed to west by nor’west, and through the thickening darkness we moved at a foot-pace, gradually drawing nearer a harboring, fir-lined coast line.

That night, while most of us slept soundly, we slipped into Kalmut Fiord. The cessation of the yacht’s motion aroused me in the morning, and half awake I dressed and stumbled out on deck to learn the cause.

In the darkness I had a jumbled impression that the Wanderer was lying in a small lake surrounded by a circle of small, craggy mountains. Then, my senses clearing, I realized that I had stepped into the midst of events of sinister portent.

XX

It was still too dark to gather an accurate impression of the yacht’s surroundings, yet light enough to make out what was going on directly before me. A number of sailors were dropping two of the port life-boats into the water. They worked eagerly and cautiously, like men in haste and with a desire for silence. A block, carelessly handled, swung with a clang against one of the davits and a subdued voice cursed the guilty man for his clumsiness.

“Don’t do that again.” Through the darkness and morning fog the whisper sounded like a threat of murder. “Now over with those sea-ladders.”

The voice was Brack’s.

“All right here Foxy,” said another low voice as the second boat was dropped with little noise into the water. “Let ’em come.”

This was a new voice to me. It was not Riordan’s nor Garvin’s, nor Wilson’s, yet it had in it a note of authority which did not belong to any of the sailors. I was further puzzled because I seemed to have heard it somewhere before.

“Bring them up, Garvin. Hurry; we’ve got to be up there before it’s light.”

Brack was speaking again in a loud whisper. Garvin’s great bulk slipped past me toward the after deck, his feet shuffling along the deck to make as little noise as possible. He was breathing swiftly and heavily as a man breathes under the stress of great excitement.

I now saw that the captain was standing at one of the sea-ladders and at the other was a man whose figure I did not recognize as belonging to any of the men on board. It was a spare, wiry figure, with a poise that belonged to no ordinary sailor. I moved a little closer. Now I saw that the man carried a rifle in the hollow of his arm. I looked at Brack; he was armed likewise.

That movement proved my undoing.

“Who the devil’s that?” demanded the wiry man hoarsely.

Brack leaned forward and looked at me steadily for several seconds.

“Don’t you sleep soundly, Pitt?” he asked.

“Not very,” I replied.

He continued to look at me steadfastly. Presently he began to grin.

“That is unfortunate for you,” he said at last.

“Surely not,” said I. “Had I been sleeping soundly this morning I would have missed the sight of all this mysterious preparation.”

He chuckled ominously.

“Had you been sleeping soundly—” he began and stopped. “All right, men. Hurry.”

A file of men came slipping up from aft. They moved with their bodies crouched far over and stepped softly. I heard their excited breathing as they drew near. And each of them bore in his hands a rifle.

“Four in this boat; four in the other,” commanded Brack. “Get down there without any noise.”

Garvin started to tumble over the side with the rest of the men; but Brack stopped him. They whispered together, and Garvin again went aft.

The men were all in the boats now and Brack and the new man stood at the ladders waiting to follow. The new man had his back toward me. He was speaking to the captain.

“Who the devil is this guy, Foxy?” he whispered. “I thought we were going to make a clean getaway.”

“Pitt,” said Brack, “step up and meet the gold-finder, the man whose story you didn’t think a good excuse for coming here.”

I stood where I was, but the man turned and took a step forward to have a better look at me, and then I knew why his voice had puzzled me. The man was Madigan, whom I had seen quarreling with Brack back in Billy Taylor’s saloon in Seattle.

Perhaps some instinct had warned me to be prepared for a shock, for I looked Madigan over without betraying the rush of thoughts with which my mind was seething. In a flash the whole of Brack’s scheming, from the time he had met Chanler in San Francisco to the present moment, was made plain. He had influenced Chanler to purchase the Wanderer and go north; he had engaged Madigan to hide away on board and play the wrecked miner at the proper moment; he had brought the Wanderer into the bay at night; and he was now starting out—for what?

I managed to smile as I glanced significantly at the rifles which both men carried.

“And are you going gold-digging now, Captain Brack?” said I. “I thought picks and shovels were the proper utensils for mining.”

“Much easier to let others use them,” said he. “Much more satisfactory to use this—” he patted his rifle—“after others have used the picks and shovels. As you soon shall see, Mr. Pitt.”

“I——”

He lifted his right hand as if for a signal. Quicker than any normal thought of mine, instinct whispered the imminence of danger.

I ducked and crouched low before Brack’s signal was completed, and a fist grazed the top of my head from behind and a hand—Garvin’s—caught hold of my left arm. Terror drove me to action.

As instinctively as any attacked animal whirls upon its assailant, I turned on Garvin, sweeping my arms around wildly. He had expected no resistance, and one of my fists thudded viciously into the middle of his throat. He gurgled in strange fashion, throwing his head far back, and I struck him again, struck with a strength which I had not dreamed that I possessed. I saw him staggering, and turned to run.

Madigan leaped nimbly to block me. I dodged back, but the captain was there, so I turned to Madigan. He was on me with a rush; we clinched, struggled, fell, and got up again. This continued for some time. Then a great weight seemed to drop on the back of my head and my knowledge of what was happening ceased suddenly.

XXI

My next moment of consciousness consisted of a sensation of helplessness. I was awake; I heard sounds vaguely; but I could not see, nor could I move.

“There.” A voice seemed to speak from a far-away darkness. “He’s coming to; you didn’t kill him after all, cap.”

I felt something strike me heavily in the side.

“Yes. He’s coming to. Prod him again. —— him! He delayed us, and every minute counts.”

Once more the heavy blow fell on my side. I opened my eyes wearily. Painfully turning my head I looked toward my side and made out a heavy boot. Some one had been kicking me. My eyes moved up the boot; Garvin was its owner. The sight of his gross face brought back memory and consciousness. There was blood on his mouth; in the lower lip was a long cut, and I was glad.

Garvin was staring at me with a mingling of curiosity and respect in his expression.

“Where the —— did you learn that punch in the Adam’s apple?” he said. “That’s a new one to me. And, say, you’re quick; quickest man I ever see; and you’re all there for a middle-weight, bo.”

“Who hit me in the back of the head?” I demanded weakly. “That was a cowardly blow.”

I heard a growl somewhere which I recognized as Brack’s.

“We were in a hurry,” he said, “and you would not give us a chance to handle you gently. You delayed us. That may be serious.”

I strove to rise and struck my chest against a board. I was conscious of a rhythmic motion, and a dull, squeaky sound, repeated without cessation. My senses cleared. I turned my head. I was lying under a seat in one of the life-boats and the boat was being rushed onward under the impulse of eagerly pulled oars.

“What’s this?” I groaned. “What sort of an outrage is this?”

I twisted myself from under the seat and sat up, looking around for the yacht. There was no sight of it. There was no sight of anything but water and steep hills, and the second life-boat closely following us. We were pulling up a narrow, winding bay. Its width was fairly uniform, probably a hundred yards. Its water was pure blue. And on both sides, and before and behind us, rose the craggy, fir-clad hills, approaching the size of mountains, shutting us out from all the rest of the world.

“Sit down, Mr. Pitt; it is more comfortable.” From the bow Brack spoke, and I turned upon him.

“What do you mean?” I began, and there I stopped.

For, though Brack spoke in laughing fashion, there was no laughter about his lips, none in his eyes. His face was set like a bronze mask, his mouth was scarcely visible, his eyes shone hard and fiery between slitted lids. Brack had ceased to pretend; the brute in him was having its way, and he didn’t care who saw it.

“You would better have slept soundly this morning, Mr. Pitt,” he said. “If your foolish fight delayed us too long—you will soon know why.”

“I want to know why right now!” I cried, in spite of the terror that his face inspired. “You’ve assaulted me; you’ve taken me off the yacht by force. You’ll pay for this when we get back home.”

“Suppose,” said he musingly, “suppose you should never get back home?”

His tone, not his words, froze me. I could not speak. I looked at the faces of the men who were rowing furiously, at Garvin. And I looked at the cold blue water through which we were speeding and knew it was no more remorseless than the men in that boat.

“Don’t you think now it would have been better for you to have slept?” said Brack.

“I think,” I retorted hotly as the power of speech came rushing back to me, “that you had better take me back to the yacht; and I know that I will see you punished for assault for this.”

A sound like laughter issued from his throat, but his expression did not change.

“Assault?” he repeated. “Ha! You forget that you are out of the land of courts now, Pity. Assault! Ha! Why, Pitt, that will be like a maiden’s kiss compared to what’s going to happen in the next half hour. Sit down; you’re in that oar’s way. Put him down, Garvin.”

Garvin obediently kicked me back of the knee-joints and I dropped with a noisy clatter to the bottom of the boat.

“—— you!” swore Brack in a loud whisper. “If you make another noise like that I’ll have you dumped overboard. You’ve made us late. Now just you lay still and nice where you are, Pitt; we’re having no noise on this excursion.”

I sat silent. I was half dazed from the blow on the head and by my situation, and for the next few minutes I observed what was taking place as one who is less than half awake. By this time we had come to the head of the bay and were entering the mouth of a small river which rambled crookedly down through a gap in the hills.

“More juice in your strokes, men,” whispered Brack. “It’s a strong current, and we haven’t much farther to go.”

His words stimulated the men. Their fierce eyes grew fiercer, and they bent to their oars with all their might. Most of them were panting from excitement and exertion.

“We’ll land here,” said Brack presently. “No noise, men.”

The boats swung in to the bank indicated and the men tumbled out, clutching their rifles eagerly.

“Come along, Pitt.”

“No,” I responded. “From what I hear you’re bound for some sort of a crime.”

“So are you. That’s why I took you along—to make you pay for sleeping so lightly. Get out.”

Two men sprang into the boat toward me, and I was forced to obey. With Brack in the lead a single file was formed and I started up a faintly marked footpath which ran along the stream. I was placed near the middle of the line; Madigan brought up the rear. I was the only man in the party who was not armed.

For the next ten minutes we hurried forward, through brush, over rocks and fallen logs, and through muddy spring-holes without a word being spoken. Brack in the lead, seemed to take no notice of the obstacles that presented themselves, and every man in the line with the exception of myself seemed imbued by the same fierce eagerness. I was helpless. The man behind me was continually treading on my heels, his heavy breath was on my neck, and I, too, was forced to hurry, driven along, moving as in a cruel nightmare.

Brack stopped suddenly and held up his hand. A sound had broken the silence ahead of us. It was repeated, a dull, slapping sound, and Brack whispered an oath.

“They’re up; chopping wood for breakfast. Follow me.”

He struck off into a wooded ravine at right angles to the trail. At a distance which I estimated to be three city blocks from the river he led the way by zigzags up a series of hills and presently we were nearing the crest of a ridge beyond which no further hills were visible.

“Get down now,” he ordered. “The lake’s in the valley over this hill. The man who shows himself above the brush or makes a noise’ll get hurt.”

He began to wriggle himself forward through the stunted trees until at last he was able to peer over the crest of the ridge, and the rest followed his example.

A small, blackish lake lay in the marshy valley below. On the shore opposite to us were two log cabins, several huge piles of dirt, and a crude derrick. Daylight was streaming into the valley, dispersing the night fogs, and we made out two men moving about the buildings. Brack swore much but softly.

“Slade and Harris!” He paused to curse again. “—— ’em! We’re too late. —— you, Pitt, you’ll pay for this.”

“What the ——!” snarled Madigan as the captain hesitated. “What’s all this foxy work for, Foxy? They’re two and we’re ten. Why don’t we go down an’ clean ’em up?”

“Easy—easy, Tad,” said Brack softly. “No noise. Slade and Harris are too good with the rifle to try any straight rushing. Besides, there’s a back trail over there, and they might get away. They’ve got the gold cached some place and we may need ’em alive to learn where it is. A little hanging up by the thumbs will make ’em tell. Gad! The fools! They’ve got three dumps; that means three shafts. The thing’s richer than I thought, and they’ve kept it all right down there because they swore to stay there till they had a hundred thousand apiece.”

“Gawd!” whispered Garvin. “Let’s take a chance, cap.”

“Easy, Garvin, easy!” chuckled Brack. “They’re a couple of suckers, but they can shoot.

“Well,” growled Madigan, “let’s have it—when do we go get ’em?”

Brack studied the scene before him for several minutes before replying.

“We’ve got to wait until they’re in the shafts,” was his decision. “This is too big a risk, giving ’em a chance. If we jump ’em now from this side they’ll put up a stiff fight and at the same time have a chance of getting away over their back trail. And if they get into the woods, they won’t leave the gold where we can find it easily. We’ve got to spoil that back trail for ’em.”

“Yep;” said Garvin, “leave ’em no getaway.”

“Madigan,” said Brack, “You take your men and circle around on this side of the ridge and go north until you strike their trail running out of the valley.”

“That’ll take a couple of hours.”

“A little longer, probably. When you’re set, fire three shots and we’ll start to rush ’em from this side. The rest’ll be easy. Boys, by ten o’clock we’ll all be rich.”

We fell back from the top of the ridge, and in a ravine well out of sight Madigan led his four men into the forest. Brack waited until they were out of sight and then hurried us back to the boats. Pulling Madigan’s boat behind us we were swiftly rowed down the river into the bay. Here the empty boat was tied up in a well-hidden nook, and we went on toward the yacht.

I now had an opportunity to note the distance which we had traveled. The fiord curved raggedly from the river’s mouth toward the sea. In spite of the foothills which shut us in I saw that our course at first took us away from the river and the lake. Then, where the bay began to widen, we began to curve backward until when, at last the Wanderer, riding serene and white on her cradle of blue water, appeared before us, I knew that our course had been such that the distance overland to the miner’s lake could not be much more than half of what it was by water. I judged the distance down the bay from the river-mouth to the Wanderer to be about three miles.

As we made out the yacht in the distance, the Captain looked at his watch.

“Back in nice time for breakfast,” he said. “Well, Pitt, how does it feel to belong to a gang of robbers? Please don’t say you don’t belong. You do, you know; we’ve elected you. Yes; you’re one of us now, and we’re going to keep close watch on you until this little job is over.”

“What is your object?” I asked. “Why did you drag me up there with you?”

“Because I suspect that you like to talk, Pitt,” said he, as he suddenly changed the course of the boat. “You were unfortunate enough to see us leaving ship. Had I permitted you to stay on board you would have talked. You might have talked in alarming fashion, and I do not wish Miss Baldwin to be alarmed—until our work here is done, at least.”

“Then why did you bring me back?” I cried. “For you certainly can not expect me to keep silent after what I have seen and heard.”

“You can talk all you want to now, Pitt,” he laughed. Then I saw that the boat was pointing toward the shore. “Talk your head off, Pitt. Because no matter how loud you talk your voice won’t be among those heard aboard.”

The boat shot into a tiny indentation of the fiord, from which the Wanderer could not be seen, and grounded on the gravelly beach.

“Will you get out sensibly, Pitt, or will you have to be knocked down and dragged out?” said Brack carelessly.

I stepped out.

“Barry, you stay here with him.”

A vicious-looking seaman of medium height followed me onto the beach, his rifle under his arm.

“We’ll be back in an hour or so,” continued Brack as the boat backed away. “Must look after our passenger, you know. And be nice, Pitt, and you won’t get hurt.”

“Yes, and make it —— nice, too!” growled the man Barry, scowling at me. “’Cause I don’t half like this job an’ I sort o’ figger the cap’ wouldn’t be sore if he come back and found I’d had to put you out of business.”

XXII

I stood with my head up until the boat had whisked Brack out of sight, then slumped down in despair upon a convenient boulder. I was horrified and frightened. My thoughts had cleared by now and the full significance of what I had seen, heard, and undergone came to me. Brutal robbery, probably murder; such was the sum and substance of Brack’s plans. The expedition and the Wanderer turned in the tools of a piracy which would have been unbelievable with any other man than the captain! And Miss Baldwin back there on the yacht, ignorant of the morning’s happenings, unsuspecting of Brack’s true character, and I helpless to warn her or be of any assistance.

Brack would keep up the pretense. He would be the smooth-talking captain this morning as if nothing untoward had happened, or was going to happen. He would maintain this pose until he had accomplished the robbery, until it pleased him to drop it. And after this morning I knew that he would go to any lengths to fulfil his will.

“Cold?” sneered Barry as I shivered. “Well, don’t worry, sissy, Cap’ll make it warm enough for you when he gets ready to ’tend to you.”

I turned to plead with him, and he laughed delightedly at the fear and wretchedness in my face. For I was afraid. This was no place for me. It was all too strange, too harsh. I was literally sick at my stomach; and yet I knew all the time that I was going to try to warn those unsuspecting miners whom Captain Brack planned to catch in their mine like rats in a pit. Heaven knows I did not wish to do it! In my heart I protested against the Fate that had placed such a task to my lot. I was unfit for it. Somebody else, more used to such things, should have had the job.

I would have pleaded with Barry, have sought to bribe him, but the expression on his vicious countenance made me hold my tongue. What could I do? This sort of thing was new to me; how did one go about it?

I thought of the two miners delving away in their shafts, of them suddenly looking up to find Brack grinning down at them. The unfairness of the thing was revolting. Did men do such things to their fellows in this day and age?

I glanced at Barry and his rifle and knew that they did. Craft and brutality, those were the laws governing this situation. And craft and brutality soon began to enter my thoughts as readily as they might enter those of Brack, Garvin, or the lout who was guarding me.

At my feet lay several stones the size of a man’s fist. Presently I feigned sleepiness, nodded, and slipped from the boulder to a seat on the sand.

“Sleepy, eh?” Barry sneered. “You’re a fine piece o’ cheese.”

“I’m sick,” I muttered. “My head aches.”

“Oh, you poor thing!” He prodded me carelessly with the butt of his rifle. “For two cents I’d give you a clout that’d take the ache out of that head for good.”

The minutes went by in silence. Half an hour later, perhaps, I saw Barry’s vigilance begin to relax.

My right hand dropped languidly at my side and found a round stone, slightly larger than a baseball. Barry did not see.

More time passed. At last Barry, catching himself nodding, straightened up and again prodded me with the butt.

“Don’t do that again,” I whined. “Please don’t.”

“‘Please don’t!’” mocked Barry.

In his estimation I was such a weakling that he had no need to be cautious. The rifle-butt again touched my side. I grasped it suddenly with my left hand, the fingers fastening themselves around the trigger-guard, and sprang up, the stone in my right hand. Barry jerked at the rifle, drawing me close, and I felled him to the ground with a blow from the stone on the temple.

I had the rifle now, and as he strove to rise I struck him on the head with the heavy barrel and he lay still. I stood over him, ready to strike again, but he did not move and with the rifle in my hand I ran through the green-leaved brush which fringed the fiord and started to climb the rocky hills that walled it in.

What I had to do I knew must be done in a hurry, before Brack or Madigan were in a position to keep a watch on the lake, and I ran on, regardless of the fissures and gaps with which the hill was pitted. In my haste I paid little attention to my path, and near the top I plunged suddenly through a tangle of brush and fell into what proved to be the mouth of a cave-like opening in the rocky portion of the hill.

The cave was so well hidden by the spring foliage that I had literally to walk into it before suspecting its existence. I hid the rifle there, clambered out and went on. If my senses of direction and distance were right the lake should be straight north and about a mile and a half away.

Though I ran and walked as rapidly as possible, it was half an hour before I struck the ridge which shut out the lake from sight of the bay. Then I knew that in spite of my ignorance of the woods, I had gone straight to my goal. I went down the farther side at once, keeping myself hidden in the brush as much as possible in case Madigan’s crew should be on the lookout, and finding the trail along the river I went straight up toward the miners’ camp.

A man was waiting for me as I stepped from the alder-brush into the clearing about the mine. My clumsy traveling had warned of my approach and he lay behind a pile of dirt before a shaft, a large blue pistol pointing straight down the trail where I emerged.

“Don’t shoot!” I cried running toward him, with my hands in the air. “I’m a friend. I’ve come to warn you that a man named Brack with a crew of cutthroats is on his way to raid your camp.”

The mention of Brack’s name had a pitiful effect upon the man. He leaped back, his eyes shifty with fright, and made as if to run back to the cabins. He caught himself, however, and swung his pistol steadily on the trail behind me.

He was an old man with a patriarchal beard and a gentle face. When he saw that no one was following me he said—

“Come with me, stranger; we’ll get Bill.”

He retreated, walking backward, covering me and the trail with his weapon, while I followed. Arriving at the first shaft, still keeping his eyes on me, he called—

“Oh, Bill!”

A tall, laughing youth, with a soft, curly beard, came clambering out of the mine in response to his summons. At the sight of me his hand flashed to the pistol on his hip.

“Tell it to Bill, stranger,” said the patriarch. “Bill, the Laughing Devil’s back and this gentleman says he’s layin’ to come an’ clean us pronto.”

“Brack?” gasped the youth, with a frightened glance down the trail. “Foxy Brack?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s here to rob you. He’s sent one of his lieutenants around the ridge to cut off your back trail. He has ten of the worst men in Christendom with him.”

“Oh, my God!” groaned the young man. Steadying himself he said, “Who are you, stranger?”

I told about the Wanderer and its party, and about the morning’s happenings as swiftly as possible.

“Why did you run the risk of coming here and telling us this?” asked the youth when I concluded. “And how do we know you’re telling the truth?”

“Bill!” said the old man reprovingly. “Can’t you see? Stranger, we take this right neighborly of you. My name’s Slade, and this is my partner, young Bill Harris. Pitt, you said your name was? Well, Mr. Pitt, you’re a man. This Brack, now, he’s a devil. Bill and me saved his life when he come ashore up at Omkutsk, and he spoke us fine and friendly, and acted like a man, and we took him in with us on this gold find.

“Then one day he tried to put us both out of business and we caught him in the act just in time. It’s hard to kill a man when you got him helpless, stranger, though we should ’a’ done it then. We give him a boat with grub, and when the wind was blowing offshore we sent him out to sea. The devil must ’a’ took care of its own, since he’s still living; and now he’s come back to clean us out. We been sort of ’fraid of it all the time.”

“How many d’ you say with him?” queried young Harris. “And all bad men, too, eh? God! There’s only two of us——”

“Bill,” said Slade patiently, “we can’t stay an’ fight him. You know what he is.”

“They’re circling round us now?” Harris was looking around wildly. “We’re cut off.”

“How many went around to cut our trail, neighbor?”

“Five.”

“We may be able to handle five of ’em, Bill,” said Slade. “We wouldn’t have no chance with ten. We mustn’t let ’em head us off. Brack ’ud use fire to make us tell where the gold is cached. We’ll start right away and travel light.”

Harris ran into the large cabin. I started to go back the way I had come.

“Wha-a-at? You ain’t going back to Brack’s boat, are you? Neighbor, there’ll be only hell where that devil is.”

“And for that reason I must go back there.”

“Why?”

“There is a girl—a young lady—on the yacht.”

Old Slade shook his head.

“That dirty devil! But we can’t stay and fight ten men and Brack. Well, Mr. Pitt, I reckon we owe you our lives and everything we got, but I dunno how we’re goin’ to square it with you.”

My eyes fell on the automatic pistol in his hand.

“You’re —— whistlin’!” cried Slade suddenly as he thrust the weapon into my hands. I put it inside my shirt. “That don’t square us. Best I can do, though. Now, Mr. Pitt—” he gripped my hand—“God bless yoh!”

XXIII

I hurried back down the river-trail until I reached the ridge. Here I quitted the way I had come and climbed away over the hills toward the sea. My plan was to step aboard the Wanderer while Brack was absent, and without being seen by any of his men. Hence, I gave the cove where I had struck down Barry a wide berth. In fact, I did not follow the windings of the fiord at all but struck straight across the rough country toward where I judged the sea to be.

I got lost twice. Once I found myself turning toward the fiord and once I had circled back toward the lake. It was well into the afternoon when I found the rough seacoast and following it southward came to the mouth of the fiord and, from a hilltop looked down upon the Wanderer at anchor.

I saw now why my first impression of the morning had been that the yacht was surrounded by mountains. This was nearly so. The hills, one of which I was lying on, walled the fiord in on both sides, while across its mouth, shutting it in from the sea and leaving only a narrow channel on either side, lay a narrow, crescent-shaped island consisting of a fir-covered hill of equal height to those of the mainland.

The Hidden Country! It was the inevitable name for the region.

Small wonder that Kalmut Fiord was not on the maps. It lay behind its crescent-shaped island securely hidden from all the world. Outside, the dun, gray North Pacific heaved and murmured, a part of the busy world. Somewhere on its restless water ships were sailing, men were active in the doings of our day and age. But in the hidden country behind the island there was no such suggestion.

The fiord lay hill-ringed and calm, a part of the world, and yet not of it. Its green Spring foliage, delicate, masking gray hills and black cliffs, its quiet blue water, its virgin beaches, its very air, all were heavy with the primitive’s eternal calm.

As I looked about I saw that the heights immediately about the fiord were in reality but foot-hills of a great valley. And the valley was ringed in by a mountain range. West, north, east—everywhere save toward the open sea southward—a curving wall of towering mountains shut it in. There was snow on most of the peaks, and others were wrapped in wisps of clouds. One great narrow gash, seeming to cleave the range down to sea level, was visible in the west. Save for this, the Kalmut Valley seemed a spot walled in by frowning stone.

The colossal scheme of the scene left me awed. The sense of the primitive which dominated it all held me spellbound. We had left the world with which I was familiar. This was the sensation that crept over me. We were in a new world—no, an old one, so old that modernity had nothing in common with it. Skin-clad, white-skinned vikings, might have stepped out on those moss-clad rocks and have fitted perfectly into the picture. But not the Wanderer, not its personnel—save Brack. Yes, Brack and that valley belonged together.

I shuddered and turned toward the yacht.

Brack’s boat was gone. That was good. But I looked in vain for some sign of life aboard. Apparently the Wanderer was deserted. I waited in hope that some one might appear on deck and in response to my hail send over a boat, but after half an hour I gave this up. I was rested now from the unaccustomed strain of hill-climbing, and I was determined to reach the yacht.

The Wanderer’s anchorage was probably two hundred yards from the shore on which I was lying and I had never been but a poor swimmer. But from an out-jutting point of the island it was but half that distance and to the island I turned my attention.

The channel separating the island and the mainland was about fifty yards wide. I swam it, after having divested myself of shoes and coat, ran along the island to the point nearest the yacht and plunged in again. The water of the fiord was like ice, and I had not swum far before my teeth were chattering. I was tempted to shout and call for help, but the caution which that day had instilled in me prevented this and I kept on in silence.

No one saw me as I came climbing up the Wanderer’s starboard sea-ladder. My flesh, my bones, my marrow, were aching with the torture of cold. I staggered stiffly across the deck and rounded the main cabin. There I came upon Freddy Pierce in a deckchair disconsolately rolling a cigaret.

We did not speak for some time.

At my appearance the paper fluttered from Pierce’s limp hand, the tobacco dribbled unnoticed from the bag onto the deck and by this I knew that the sight of me must have appalled him. He stared at me, his lips opening and closing, and I stared back, uttering no word, as men do in moments when words are too slow a means of expression. I was freezing; I was near to collapsing; but at the sight of Pierce’s appalled countenance my body seemed forgotten.

“Brains!” exploded Freddy at last in agony. “What the ——! Ain’t she with you?”

“No,” I said, “she is not with me.”

Pierce rose from the deck chair, his boyish, freckled face white and sickly for the moment.

“Mean to say—” he licked his dry lips—“mean to say you ain’t seen her?”

“I haven’t seen her.”

“He said—Cap’ Brack said—you’d stayed up there with the men, and that you suggested Miss Baldwin’d like to come up and take a look.”

“‘Brack said?’” My mind refused to comprehend fully the significance of Pierce’s bare words.

“Eyah. He said that the second time he was down—for lunch. Said you were up there. And Miss Baldwin got in the boat with ’em and went up there, thinking to meet you. Brains—Mr. Pitt!” he cried, springing forward and grasping my arms, “what’s come off? What’s Brack been pulling? Didn’t you send that word to Miss Baldwin at all?”

“No.”

I turned to go to my stateroom. I was like a man in a dream.

“Brains!” he whispered in agony, “didn’t you hear what I said? She went away with Brack in a boat, and he lied about your being where they was going.”

I released myself from his grasp.

“Yes, I heard. I must get a dry change.” I went straight to my room, Pierce following on my heels.

“Freddy,” I said, as quietly as I could, “you had better get up to your wireless and send word to any ship within call to relay word to the nearest authorities that we need help.”

He merely stared at me without moving.

“Go on,” I said. “Send that message at once.”

“Aw, Brains,” he said gently. “Where’s your thinker; you know better’n that.”

“Do as I tell you. Don’t wait to hear the story; start your wireless at once.”

“You’re up in the air forty miles,” was his reply. “If you wasn’t you’d know that Brack’d never leave me here on the yacht without putting the wireless out of business.”

“What!”

“Yep. When they all turned up missing this morning, you with ’em, and there hadn’t been anything said about it, I began to feel kind of cold below the ankles and I sneaked up to slip some juice into the air and try to put the revenue-cutter, Bear, hep to something doing here. She ought to be down this way just now. Well, nothing doing. The whole works are gone; Brack’s put the wireless outfit on the bum.”

Somehow I managed to be calm.

“Where’s Wilson?”

Pierce’s face clouded.

“A dirty shame! Wilson’s laid up. Garvin’s gun went off accidentally when they were coming on board and the bullet went through Wilson’s leg below the knee.”

“Riordan?”

“He’s left in charge; yep. Chanler’s keeping him in his room to talk to. The nigger’s here, too. He had a row with Garvin last night and they left him behind to do scullion work. Simmons is sleeping.”

“Chanler?”

“He’s coming around. Cold sober, but shaky.”

“Dr. Olson?”

“Went back with Brack on the second trip. Brack had him take his case and a lot of stuff, too.”

“You mean that the captain came after Dr. Olson?”

“Yep. And Miss Baldwin. He made two trips, you know. First he came back early in the morning for breakfast, and said they’d found the mine, and you were staying up there to look around. He said we’d all go up after awhile. Then they went away. At noon they came back again. Then was when Doc’ Olson and Miss Baldwin went with him. I tried to horn myself in but he details me to split the watches with Riordan and tells Riordan to see I stay on board. She—Miss Baldwin—asked if I couldn’t go along, and he said no. Then she got into the boat, like she didn’t know whether she wanted to or not, and they pulled away. And, Brains, I’m afraid—I got a hunch he’s got her going south.”

“Got who? Going where?” I asked, not comprehending his slang.

“Got Miss Baldwin—going south. You know: falling for him.” Then as my expression continued to betray my lack of comprehension, “Brack can fool any woman, and he’s got her charmed.”

The pistol which the old miner had given me came to sight at that moment as I undressed, and Pierce gasped.

“You—packing a gat’!” he exclaimed. “What’s happened? Where have you been if you haven’t been up there with the crew?”

I continued my dressing without replying. When completed I again placed the pistol out of sight within my shirt.

“We’ll go and see Wilson,” I said. “Then I’ll only have to tell my story once.”

XXIV

We found the wounded man lying in his bunk calmly dividing his time between a book and his bandaged leg which was stretched out before him. There was no look of pain or mental stress upon his bronzed face. It was all in the day’s work; he would not permit a little thing like a bullet through his leg to disturb his poise.

“I’m all right, sir,” he said. “Be up soon.”

“Wilson,” said I, “how much accident was there about that shot?”

“I don’t know, sir. Garvin was behind me when it happened. I don’t mind saying that I’ll settle personally with him for it when I’m on my feet again.”

“Garvin is merely the captain’s tool.”

“He’ll be a dull tool, sir, when I’ve paid him for his clumsiness.”

I told him all that I had heard, and what had happened to me that morning. When I came to my affair with Barry and my escape to warn the miners his eyes widened.

“The captain planned well, didn’t he, sir?” he said quietly. “The only thing—” he smiled a little—“the only thing he hadn’t charted right was you, Mr. Pitt. He was far on his reckonings of you, sir, and so was I. He never expected that from you. You threw him off his course nicely, sir. You may have spoiled the whole cruise for him, though that’s hardly probable. He always has a trick left.”

“And what do you think his plans are beyond this, Wilson?” I asked. “He certainly can’t intend to return with us to civilization after what he’s done today.”

“I’ve been thinking of that, sir,” he replied. “And I always get back to remembering that the Wanderer is outfitted for two years. I’ve a notion that the captain’s original plan was to rob these miners and then slip off to the edges of nowhere with the yacht.”

“And what of us?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Can’t tell, sir. As it is, you’ve put him off his course. If he doesn’t make out on his robbery he’ll have trouble with the men. He promised them a lot of easy gold. They’re a hard crew and he’ll have trouble handling them unless they catch those miners and make them give up the secret of where they’ve hidden the gold. If they catch ’em, the captain will get the secret out of them, you can bet on that. Then they’ll come piling back here to get away as soon as possible to where they can blow their loot.”

“And then we’ll have to look out for ourselves, you mean?”

Wilson nodded.

“Well,” said he slowly, “things like this ain’t so bad for men, sir, but there’s the girl.”

The conversation ceased abruptly. We sat silent, each troubled by the same thought.

“Did he say when he would return?” I asked at last.

“No,” said Pierce.

“How much grub did they take?” asked Wilson.

Pierce gulped.

“Not much. I heard him say there was enough up there for months.”

“And not a hint of when they were coming back?”

“No.”

We were silent again. Presently Wilson cleared his throat:

“Those fellows up there, the miners must have got away. The captain wouldn’t take her up there if they were there.”

“And he took the doc’ with him, too,” reminded Pierce. “Somebody must have got hurt.”

“Were they hard men, these two miners?” asked Wilson of me. “They were, eh? Well, the way it looks to me, they hurt some of the crew and got away, and the crew is still after them. They’ll be afraid to let ’em get away if they’ve had a fight. The miners would get word to the outside and they’d come back with help.”

“But Brack can’t be taking part in the chase if there is one,” I interrupted.

Wilson shook his head.

“He came back here. He wouldn’t be doing that if he was in the chase.”

“And he took Miss Baldwin with him,” supplemented Pierce.

“He probably sent the men on the chase as soon as he found that the miners had got away,” continued Wilson. “Then he’s alone——”

He caught himself; but we know what he intended to say.

“Chanler is better, you say?” I said, rising.

“Sure,” said Pierce. “He’s nervous and shaky, but he’s a human being again.”

“What are you going to do, sir?” asked Wilson as I stepped to the door. “Going up there? Well, there’s a canoe in the port storage-room forward, sir?”

“Good! Pierce, will you get the canoe out and put it in the water? I’ll go and have a little talk with Chanler.”

“You bet! Say, Brains, wha’d’ you do with the rifle you copped off Barry?”

I told him where I had hidden the weapon and went out. Chanler should have his chance. He must be a man now if ever. Riordan was with Chanler in the latter’s stateroom when I entered. Chanler had come out of his madness. He was nervous and looked ill, but his eyes were sane again. He was lying in a lounge-chair with Riordan at his side.

“Good gad, Gardy! I am glad to see you!” cried George as I entered. “Here, sit down and talk to me; talk to me, you hear? Say something. Riordan, you’re relieved. Take a rest, like Simmons. Gardy, say something. I’ve got to have somebody talk to me or I’ll—I’ll start hitting it up again.”

Riordan was regarding me suspiciously.

“How did you come aboard?” he demanded.

“Never mind how he came aboard,” interrupted George petulantly. “What d’you s’pose I care how he came aboard. He’s here now. Sit down, Gardy, and talk. You can go, Riordan; I’ll have you in when Gardy’s winded.”

Riordan went, scowling at me, and I seated myself in the chair he had vacated.

“Chanler, there is no time for me to talk to you for your entertainment,” I began abruptly. “You’re sober now, you’re yourself, and you can’t shirk responsibility on the pretense of being incapacitated. Brack got Miss Baldwin to accompany him up to the mine with the lie that I was up there and had suggested that she come up. He is up there with her—alone. And the devil only knows what his plans are.”

Chanler merely shuddered nervously.

“Darn you, Gardy! Here I was just coming out of a sinking spell and you come along and spoil everything. Why do you bring me news like that? It—it disturbs me, really.”

“No,” I said, “you can’t talk in that strain and have it accepted any longer, Chanler. You are a man again, not an alcoholic imbecile, and you’ve got to play the part.”

I told him the true purpose of Brack’s visit to Kalmut Fiord and of the day’s events.

“And now, by a lie he has Miss Baldwin go with him. Chanler, we can’t leave her up there with him, alone.”

Chanler writhed and groaned.

“Oh, Gardy! You’re terrible. What do you propose to do?”

“You are Miss Baldwin’s host. You and I will take a canoe which Pierce is getting ready and go up to the mine.”

“You’re mad,” he muttered. “What shape am I in to go anywhere?”

“The doctor is up there. It’s a short paddle.”

“But I’m not fit, Gardy; I tell you it will set me back.”

“You’ve got the choice before you, Chanler. Do you want to drop back into what you’ve been for the past week, or do you want to be a man?”

“I feel so rotten, Gardy.”

“You’ve got a chance now with Miss Baldwin. You’re almost your old self. Come, man; this is your chance to win back your standing with her.”

“I haven’t got a chance,” he said despairingly. “That’s all off. I know it.”

“And you’re quitting—leaving Brack to have his own way?”

“Brack? Brack! What do you mean?”

“While you’ve been lying in your room Brack has been doing his best to fascinate Miss Baldwin. You should know something of the man’s power. Well?”

“Brack?” Chanler was struggling to his feet. “Brack, eh? So he’s after Betty, and you—you say he’s made an impression?”

“You know the man,” I replied bitterly.

He straightened, struggling to tighten the set of his jaw.

“Brack, eh?” he repeated. “Brack and little Betty. Oh, no. We can’t have that. He doesn’t belong. Get your —— canoe ready. I suppose we’ll have to go up to this place, but I warn you, Gardy, I warn you I’m going to be awf’ly bored.”

XXV

Riordan was inclined to be brusk to me when he saw the canoe going into the water. He was captain for the time being; he had given no orders for using any of the yacht’s boats. Then came Chanler, grumbling and shuffling, and Riordan’s expression suddenly showed great elation which he tried hard to conceal.

“Pleasant trip,” he said sarcastically. “Captain Brack’ll be glad to see you.”

Neither of us said a word as we settled ourselves into the canoe. George was angry with me for causing him to go, and I was eager only to reach the mine and Miss Baldwin and the captain. I hoped—no, I felt confident—that Chanler’s appearance in his present condition would solve the most delicate and dangerous phase of the problem confronting us, which was a safe return of Miss Baldwin to civilization.

She had cared for George Chanler once, not deeply, she had admitted but enough to bring wistful moments at the thought of the change which had come over him. Now she would see him as she had seen him in those days when he had made upon her a favorable impression.

She would at once see the difference between Chanler and Brack. George was of her own kind; Brack was not. She would see this now; the spell which the captain had been weaving would be broken; and she would turn to her own kind. I felt that Brack’s sole purpose in getting Betty up to the mine was to weave his spell more firmly; he would scarcely frighten her by display of brutality for awhile at least.

We paddled on in silence. The perspiration began to creep out on Chanler’s forehead, but, though he swore at me beneath his breath, his paddle rose and fell steadily.

Evening came upon us with appalling suddenness. The snow-covered western mountains shut out the sun’s rays, and at once the narrow bay grew dark. With the sun gone a chill crept through the valley. The scene became one of depressing gloom and Chanler broke out into querulous protest.

“Paddle,” I said, when his words died out petulantly. “We’re almost to the river.”

We swung from the bay into the river and there the current took liberties with the light canoe. Chanler’s experience in canoeing was much greater than mine, and now for the first time he roused himself and asserted his knowledge.

“Shorter strokes,” he snapped. “Shorter and faster. Now! Drive her!”

In the struggle against the current he forgot his nervousness, and when we landed at the spot where Brack’s boat had beached that morning he sprang out with a vim which he had not displayed since we left Seattle. We went straight up to the mine.

From a distance we saw candle-lights shining from the open door of one of the cabins and we hurried thither. We did not enter. In the single room of the cabin Miss Baldwin and Captain Brack were seated at a table upon which was placed a substantial meal. The captain was eating heartily. Miss Baldwin was looking across the table at him with an expression in which surprise and anger seemed equally mingled; and George and I stopped as one just outside the open door without being seen or heard.

Miss Baldwin was speaking.

“I wish to return to the yacht, Captain Brack,” we heard her say. “Must I repeat that many times more?”

“No, no!” He did not look up, but we saw that he smiled. “It isn’t necessary. I have good ears.”

“Then why don’t you answer me?”

“Perhaps because it amused me to hear you speak. Your voice is a delight to the ear.”

By the flickering candlelight we saw that Miss Baldwin’s mouth and chin became very firm.

“I am quite certain you have been lying to me, Captain Brack,” she said quietly. “I don’t believe that Mr. Pitt suggested that I come up here. If he had he would have stayed here and not have gone on with the men into the hills, as you say he has done.”

Brack lifted his head.

“You hold a brief for Mr. Pitt, Miss Baldwin?” he laughed, looking at her closely. “Well, well; so there’s a certain interest in that pretty little head for Pitt, eh? Well well! Pitt, the writer—the ultra-civilized person! And I thought it was only Chanler I had to fear. But never mind.”

His playfulness vanished.

“You are in the North now, Miss Baldwin, and you will fall beneath the North’s just rule. Back there, in your civilized country, you have lived under a different standard. Back there the most handsome male, the best mannered, most prosperous, best dressed, might win you. Even a Mr. Pitt would have a chance. Back there women are attracted to a man because his head is carried a certain way, because he orders a dinner excellently, helps one into a cab in a pleasing manner. That’s not just, Miss Baldwin, not just. The nice man may not be the worthy man. But here—this is the North. The strong man wins here—only the strong man can win. Gold, women, everything. Life is primitive here, therefore just. And you are here now, and here you are going to stay. And here women fall to the strongest man. And that’s me, my dear, that’s me! Look at me.”

He rose and leaned over the table toward her. The candles flickered and nearly went out. Betty sat upright in her chair. Still leaning forward, his eyes holding hers, the captain with his right hand moved the table to one side. There was nothing between them now, and Chanler started forward, but I caught him by the arm.

“Wait!” I whispered. For in the candle-gleam I had seen a new look on Betty’s face. “Only wait!”

Brack was bending over her.

“Stand up!” he commanded, and she stood up in all the litheness of her slim young womanhood.

“Come to me.”

She did not move.

“Come. I am your Man. You are—you are——”

His speech suddenly collapsed. Betty was smiling. The smile broadened. There was a moment of struggle and then she threw back her head and the cabin rang with peal after peal of lark-like laughter.

“Oh, Captain Brack!” she stammered, struggling to control herself. “That’s too—too stagy! Too, too melodramatic!”

Again and again her merriment broke out, welling in gusts from compressed lips, like merry music that would not be suppressed.

“Forgive me, captain; it’s not polite of me, but—but, oh! If you could only see yourself as I see you now!”

Brack stood and glared, dumfounded, impotent. His arms slowly fell to his sides; he drew back. On his face there was the amazement and anger of a schoolmaster outfaced by a pupil.

“Huh-huh! What’s this?” he snorted. “It’s very funny, no doubt, but—explain—explain!”

“That’s just what you may do, cappy,” said Chanler, stepping through the doorway. “Hello, Betty. Everything all right, and all that?”

One thing stood out in that room as we entered, and that was the swift play of expression on Betty’s face as she beheld Chanler. First, it was surprise, then incredulity, then glad relief. And I read in her eyes that she was glad that George once more was fit, so she could care for him again.

“Why, George!” she cried. “You—you’re sober!”

Brack’s sharp laughter filled the room. He had recovered his poise; he was the captain again.

“Yes. A great surprise; so unusual for Mr. Chanler,” he said; but his eyes were studying me.

“Cappy, I’m through with you,” said Chanler. “You’re a dear, interesting fellow, but this—this is too much, you know. You’re fired.”

The captain laughed again, but not for an instant did his eyes leave me. He was trying to bore into my mind, trying to learn what he wished to know without resorting to questioning words.

“So,” he said softly. “I begin to understand. It was not Madigan who bungled it after all. Some one else warned Slade and Harris. I underestimated you, Pitt. Why, it has acted almost like a man.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I did warn Slade and Harris. I’m glad that I helped throw your devilish plans awry.”

“And talks almost like a man,” he continued with a touch of his old smile. “But as for interfering with my devilish plans, Pitt, you must not rejoice too soon. You have merely delayed the fulfilment of my plans, and you have made things very uncomfortable for yourself and your friends. When one acts like a man one must pay for it.”

“That’ll do, cappy,” said Chanler. He had taken Betty’s hand and was patting it assuringly while she looked up at him in wonderment. “I’ve told you that you’re fired. You’re not with us any more.”

“Not with you?” Brack appeared to notice George for the first time. “No? I am not with you any more, but you see—you still are with me.”

“Not at all, cappy. We leave you now. Sorry, cappy; enjoyed your society immensely, but, really, you know, this sort of thing can’t be done.”

To my great surprise the captain stood where he was, smiling tolerantly, while George and Betty moved toward the door.

“Miss Baldwin,” he said suddenly.

Betty stopped in the doorway.

“Yes?”

“It was a very funny joke—whatever it was?”

“It was rude of me to laugh, I know,” said Betty. “But I really couldn’t help it.”

“‘Really couldn’t help it,’” repeated Brack mockingly. “A matter of temperament. Typical of the American young woman—to giggle at big moments. I shall cure you of giggling. You may go now.”

“‘May go!’” stormed George. “That’s insolent, cappy. What do you mean?”

“I give you permission to go.”

“Well, hang you for your impudence!”

“Careful, Chanler. I might change my mind.”

“Let me assure you, captain, that that would make no difference,” I interposed. The pistol inside my shirt was pressing my ribs and I smiled with the confidence it gave me. “We will go when we wish, no matter what your mind on the subject may be.”

For the second time in a few minutes his eyes bored into mine, seeking to read my thoughts.

“So you have a hidden ace somewhere, somehow, eh, Pitt?” he laughed. “I see that plainly; but I can’t quite see what it is. You’re growing, Pitt. One of your ancestors must have been a man. Ah! Barry’s rifle—what did you do with it?”

“Wrong, captain, absolutely wrong!” I replied. “Barry’s rifle isn’t a factor in the present situation.”

He studied me for fully a minute in silence and gave up, baffled.

“I have said you may go,” he said curtly. “Go away. All things in their order; gold first, then woman.” He seated himself at the table and resumed his eating. “Go as quickly, as swiftly as you please. But,” he called as we went out, “I beg of you—as my guests, you understand—do not, please do not, go too far!”

Behind us as we hurried into the night we heard him laughing, his laughter some what smothered by mouthfuls of food and drink.

XXVI

“Hang him! What does he mean?” broke out Chanler querulously, as soon as we were out of hearing. “What does he mean, Gardy? What’s he got up his sleeve? He means something. Probably got some of the crew waiting to waylay us, steal our canoe, or something like that. Hang it!”

“I don’t think so, George,” said Betty. “There haven’t been any of the men about since we got here. They went straight on into the woods, and Dr. Olson and the captain went with them. The captain came back alone, something over an hour ago. He said the rest were hunting gold up in the hills and wouldn’t be back for some time.”

“Well, hang it! He’s got something,” began George again, but I managed to catch him by the arm and draw him back out of Betty’s hearing.

“Forget yourself for the present,” I whispered. “Think of Miss Baldwin a little.”

“I think he’s bluffing,” I said aloud. “As Miss Baldwin says, there can’t be any of the men around here. He was talking to frighten us. We’ll go straight down to the canoe.”

“Surely, surely!” said George, with an assumed laugh. “I see now he was bluffing. It’s all right, Betty. Jolly, little evening party, I call it.”

I dropped behind, letting them go on ahead, and I heard the rumble of George’s voice without hearing what he was saying. But from its tone I knew what it was: he was apologizing, explaining, promising.

“I’m sorry I said what I did when I first saw you, George,” Betty was saying as we neared the place where our canoe was tied.

“What was that? ’Bout my being sober? Ha! I deserved that, Betty; don’t let that trouble you. It’s all over now. Every thing’s turning out fine now, and—there’s our canoe. Nothing to that bluff of cappy’s, Gardy,” he called back to me.

“Of course not,” I said. “Now we’ll just paddle home and——”

“And live happy ever afterward,” he laughed.

Betty seated herself in the middle of the little craft without a word, and we remained silent while we shot down the river, into the bay, and turned our bow toward the yacht.

“Tell us all about it, Betty,” said George, at last. “By Jove! You made cappy look foolish.”

Betty waited several minutes before replying:

“Well, when Captain Brack came back the first time, in the morning, he said that you, Mr. Pitt, had decided to go with them when they left the yacht at daylight, and that you had remained up at the mine with the men. Then he went away again and returned about noon. He said that you were still up there, and that you’d suggested it would be a pleasant thing for me to come up when they returned. I don’t suppose I should have gone, really, but there wasn’t anything about that to keep me from going, was there?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “On the contrary it was quite natural that you should go.”

“I know it. But at the same time I had a feeling—a tiny, tiny feeling—that everything wasn’t quite right. There wasn’t any reason why I should, unless possibly it was the way he looked at me. I can’t explain what it was, but I had that feeling. I wanted to ask somebody, but—but——”

“Rub it into me, Betty,” laughed George. “I deserve it: I wasn’t fit to be asked anything.”

“I didn’t know then, George,” she said gently. “You’ll forgive me?”

“All my fault; make it up, though,” he said. “Go on.”

“Then I saw Dr. Olson getting into the boat, but still I didn’t feel quite right about going. Then the captain—” she hesitated a moment—“Captain Brack said: ‘Get in; you know you are coming with us. Don’t delay.’ And before I knew it I was in the boat and we were rowing away.

“There was a man waiting for us when we got up at the mine—that big, rough man.”

“Garvin.”

“And he spoke something to Captain Brack, and the captain and the doctor and the man hurried away into the hills on the other side of the lake. The captain said that you were out there with the men, Mr. Pitt, and that he’d tell you that I was there and you’d be back soon. Well, that’s about all. I had a lovely time roaming around that lake by myself for hours. And every minute I was getting more and more convinced that the captain had lied. When he came back alone I knew that he had.”

“Because he was alone?”

“No-o-o! Not only that. It was the way he looked at me. On the yacht I’d often wondered if he really was nice, or if he was just pretending. Now he’d quit pretending, and he—he wasn’t nice at all. You can’t guess what he did?”

I held my breath; I felt sure that George did likewise.

“He—he made me—cook that—dinner! He did. He said that he wanted to see me in the rôle of a real woman. I thought I’d better do it, to keep the peace. He sat and watched me and talked. He said that that was as things should be; said I’d be a real woman in time. I wasn’t frightened, but it was—oh, thrilling, you know. Funny, too. I laughed a little at myself, because I’d always fancied I’d like to live the adventurous life, and here I had, and it wasn’t nice at all.”

“How come you weren’t frightened?” interrupted George.

“I don’t know; I wasn’t, though. Well, maybe I was once, when I asked him when we were going back to the yacht and he said for me to put the yacht out of my thoughts. Then I had a wild idea of making a sprint for the boat and getting away, but I remembered they’d pulled it up in the brush. Then I thought of running down the bay and swimming out to the yacht, but I knew I couldn’t outrun him and outswim him. It was dark then, too, and I knew some of you would soon be up looking for me.”

“You knew? How? You didn’t know that Gardy,” began George, but I cut him short.

“Of course,” I said. “It was certain that somebody would be up soon after dark since you didn’t return. Then what?”

“Then we sat down to eat. With tears and woe in my tones I must admit it, I wouldn’t like to subsist on my own cooking. But Captain Brack has a better appetite. He fairly reveled in the fruits of my labors. Then he become personal, and then—then you came in and everything was lovely.”

We paddled in silence for awhile.

“And so you were rather disappointed in cappy, Betty?” said George slowly.

“Yes. He wasn’t nice at all, he was common, when he stopped acting.”

“Wonderful chap, though,” mused George. “Must say I enjoyed his company. Couldn’t put up with him any more, however. Well, we won’t have to. We’ll leave him here—we’ll sail tonight. Wilson can be captain. We’ll have to go some place and get a new crew, I suppose. Then we’ll go on to Petroff Sound. I—I’m really much better, Betty,” he added softly.

“Of course you are, George. You don’t know how glad I am to see you yourself again.”

“Really, Betty?”

“Of course.”

“It’s going to be all right now, Betty. I’ll make it all up to you.”

“Of course you will, George,” she said, and I splashed my paddle in the water so I might not hear.

I was an outsider, an incident. My mission had been to help straighten out a tangle for which George’s condition had been responsible. I had succeeded. Good and well. Now Betty would have George’s attention. She would see him as she had seen him when first she had learned to care for him; she would care for him again. She would forget Brack. She would forget this adventure. In her proper sphere back home it would become an incident; it would be something to laugh over—with George.

So I reasoned as we paddled down Kalmut Fiord, our eyes confidently searching the darkness ahead for the first flash of the Wanderer’s welcoming lights. So little did I know about women, and especially about Miss Beatrice Baldwin.

Presently George stopped paddling.

“Gardy,” he said in a strange tone.

“Yes?”

“Doesn’t it seem to you we’re pretty near there?”

I looked around. So absorbed had I been in my thoughts that I had not paid any attention to the distance we had traveled. Now I saw by the hills about us that we were nearing the foot of the bay.

“It’s funny we don’t see any lights,” said George. “Let’s sprint a little, Gardy.”

We paddled at top speed for several minutes, but we fell back to our former stroke. No lights were in sight.

A sinister silence fell upon us. Our paddles rose and fell methodically, but in spite of the exercise I felt cold and faint.

“Here we are,” said George anxiously. “Here’s the point just above where the yacht’s anchored. Soon’s we get around this point we’ll see her lights, sure.”

Our strokes increased in speed and power. Once around the promontory which loomed ahead in the darkness and the lights of the Wanderer would gleam out to us a hearty welcome.

“Got to get there soon; got to!” muttered George. “I’m all in. Need some of the dope the doctor left for me. Need it badly.”

We rounded the promontory. The mouth of the bay, down to the island which shut it in from the sea, was before us. And it was all dark, as dark as the bay behind us, with not a pin-prick of light disturbing the primitive night.

George stopped paddling.

“What—what?” he gasped. “Oh, oh, my God!”

I did not speak. I continued to paddle like an automaton. In five minutes we were floating over the spot where the Wanderer had lain. The yacht was gone.

XXVII

We had little time to speculate on the problem of the Wanderer’s disappearance. After the first moment of stunned silence Chanler broke down, promptly and completely.

“Hang it, hang it!” he cried, striking the bow of the canoe with his paddle. “This is too much. Your fault, too, Gardy. Now find the yacht.”

“Steady, George!” I warned, as the light craft rocked dangerously. “You’re in a canoe, remember. Keep still.”

“Keep still, keep still! How d’you expect me to keep still? Isn’t this enough to make a man nervous. Hang it! I can’t keep still, I tell you. This is too much.”

“It nearly was,” I agreed. “A little more that time and we’d have been in the water.”

“Then do something! Say something!” he commanded. “Where’s the yacht? What are we going to do?”

“First of all, if you’ll please sit still for a minute or two, we’re going to get to land without tipping over. Will you sit still that long?”

“Go ahead! You’ve got me into this mess; now get me out.”

“Only sit still,” I pleaded and carefully guided the canoe towards the nearest land. This was the little out-jutting point of the island from which I had swum to the Wanderer that afternoon, and I did not breathe fully until I had beached the canoe solidly and the danger of capsizing from George’s jerky movements was over. He stepped out hurriedly.

“My God! This is awful, awful!” he said hoarsely, looking around in the dark. “This is terrible! A fine mess you’ve got me into, Gardy.”

“Why, George, it can’t be so bad,” said Betty cheerily, stepping out beside him. “The yacht’s been moved that’s all. We’ll only have to find her new anchorage. It will be all right.”

“All right? All right! Hang it, Betty; I’m in no shape to stand this sort of thing. It’s Gardy’s fault. He got me into it. Now what are you going to do, Gardy? Eh?”

“Look around for the yacht’s new anchorage, as Miss Baldwin says,” I replied. “She can’t be far off.”

“Can’t be far off! Can you see her? Is she anywhere around? Don’t you suppose we’d see the lights if she was near?”

“Not if they had no outside lights and the curtains in the cabin were down,” said Betty soothingly.

“Rot, rot, rot! Didn’t they know I was coming back? Weren’t they expecting me? Wouldn’t they have the lights out so we could see’em? Rot! They’ve gone. The yacht’s gone. What are we going to do?”

“If you will just sit here quietly with Miss Baldwin,” I said, “I’ll take a look around. The yacht must be near, of course, and we can’t help finding it.”

The first part of this statement I felt to be true: the yacht must be near, for no stretch of imagination could picture Riordan putting to sea. On the other hand I recalled the countless crooked indentations of the fiord and knew there were a score of places where the Wanderer, with lights out, might be hidden. We might even have passed it without being aware of its nearness.

I pulled the canoe safely from the water and made my way in the darkness around the island to the open sea. But the sea was only a noisy waste with no light upon it. I went around the island, returning to my starting point, and no glimpse of the yacht or her lights did I have.

Betty now was sitting beside George, who had slumped down against a boulder, and was patting his hand and talking to him assuringly.

“I told you so,” he whined when I made my report. “Nothing doing. She’s gone. Now what in the world are we going to do? Eh?”

“The yacht must be somewhere in the bay. You mustn’t worry so, George; it will all come out all right.” Betty was speaking to him as one might to a frightened child. “Mr. Pitt has only started on his hunt, haven’t you, Mr. Pitt?”

“Of course,” I said, “I’ll take the canoe and run up some of these inlets. She’ll probably be there.”

I paddled away from the island with an appearance of confidence that I did not feel. By this time I had begun to appreciate the ironic humor with which Brack had warned us not to go too far. This was his work, and as I recalled the sly certainty of his smile, such hope as I had of finding the yacht dwindled to a minimum. Nevertheless I searched the inlets on both sides of the bay for the matter of half a mile before I returned to the island with my admission of failure.

Chanler by this time had passed into the furious stage of nervousness. He was pacing swiftly up and down the beach, clenching and unclenching his hands and breathing heavily.

“I don’t care—I don’t care where you did look and where you didn’t look!” he burst out as I stepped from the canoe. “You didn’t find the yacht, and you’ve got me into this, and I can’t stand it much longer; that’s all.”

He swung away and I followed and caught his arm savagely.

“If you would think of Miss Baldwin a little you might forget your nerves,” I whispered.

I found myself repeating Wilson’s words—

“These things aren’t so bad for men, but there’s the girl.”

“I know, I know, Gardy,” he replied hoarsely. “I—I can’t help it. Don’t throw me down, Gardy; don’t ball me out. I’m shaky. I can’t help anything else. You’ve got to get me to that yacht where my dope is, or—or you’ve got to get me back to Doc’ Olson.”

“What!”

“You have. I can’t stand it much longer.” His voice was raised, regardless of Betty. “I won’t, you hear? I won’t stand it any longer.”

He turned and rushed back to Betty, holding out his hands.

“You know how I feel, don’t you Betty? You understand, don’t you?”

“Yes, George,” she said, taking his hands in hers, “I understand. But can’t you sit down and quiet yourself a little?”

“No, no, no! I can’t. Gardy, you’ve got to get me to the doctor at once. You understand, don’t you, Betty?”

“Yes, George. You shall go to the doctor at once.”

“What!” I cried. “Go back there now, when we’re so well rid of Brack?”

“What else is there to do?” she said. “Can we do anything but help him? Please don’t think of me. There isn’t the least bit of need of that.”

“I will do as you say,” I said. “Is it your wish we go back there?”

“We must. You can see there’s nothing else to do.

“You’ll stay here——”

“Certainly not!” cried George. “Takes two to paddle; I’m in no shape am I, Betty?”

I could have struck him for that, but Betty said soothingly—

“No, George, you’re not.”

She was right. Chanler was in no shape to paddle any more, so Betty took his place in the bow, and, with George crouched in the middle, the journey up the fiord began. Save for an occasional groan or exclamation from George and a soothing response from Betty, we spoke but little.

I was lost in admiration of the manner in which Betty tackled the task before us. She sat up, slim and straight, bending but little to her paddle, but by our progress I knew the force which her young arms placed behind each stroke. There was no hesitation, no faltering, though I knew that she, too, dreaded returning to Brack in this fashion. She seemed to have forgotten herself in the need to help George; and the Spring-like youth of her reached back to me, putting new life into my tiring arms, new confidence in my troubled thoughts. I had for the moment almost fallen into despair, accepting Brack’s will with us as invincible. Without Betty I would have felt that we were beaten. But there was the indomitable confidence of youth in the poise of her little head, there was inspiration in the swing of her young-woman body, and as we paddled on into the darkness my heart cried out:

“Bravo, Betty! Bravo, brave girl! We’ll beat him yet.”

XXVIII

The problem of the Wanderer’s whereabouts was one which offered no clue for its solution. One thing I felt certain: the yacht had not gone to sea. Whatever Riordan’s wishes in that matter might be—and I knew such a move would have pleased him as revenge upon Betty and me—Pierce and Wilson would never have permitted it.

True, Wilson was crippled, but if I had gaged the man’s character rightly it would have required more than a wounded leg to prevent his intervention in so colossal a piece of treachery. As for Pierce, with his terrible neckties and soul of gold, he would have died rather than allow Miss Baldwin to be treated in such fashion. More, he would be too clever to die; he would at least have escaped to join us.

The yacht must be somewhere in the fiord. Riordan would not have moved her without Brack’s orders. These orders probably had been given at noon, and Riordan had waited until George and I were out of sight before obeying them. With the yacht hidden we would be at Brack’s mercy in that wilderness, the only shelter and food being at the mine. The pistol in my shirt grated against my ribs as I dug viciously at the water.

Had Captain Brack been present when we reached the mine I am quite certain that we would have clashed.

The light was still burning in the cabin as we reached the mine-clearing, and with the pistol in my hand I walked straight up to the cabin door, leaving Betty to guide George, who now was staggering and groaning constantly. Brack was not there. In his place Dr. Olson was sitting, refreshing himself from the remnants of a meal and a bottle of whisky.

The sight of me brought a sudden end to his meal, for he promptly threw up his hands, crying:

“Don’t shoot, Pitt! Great Scott! What’s the matter?”

“Where’s Brack?” I demanded.

“Put that gun away!” he stammered. “Man, you’ve got murder in your face.”

I lowered the weapon and the doctor dropped his hands with a sigh of relief.

“Whew! I’m glad you aren’t after me. You certainly can look fierce, Pitt. What’s up?”

“Brack?” I repeated, but before he could reply Chanler lurched wildly past me into the room. His eyes fell on the doctor’s bottle and he rushed for it like a madman. The professional instinct rose in Olson at the sight of him and he whisked the bottle out of reach. In the end Olson resorted to a hypodermic injection, and presently George was dozing on a bunk in the corner.

“Whew! Close call,” said the doctor looking down at his patient. “You got him here just about in time.”

“Where is Brack?” I demanded. “And where’s the yacht?”

“The yacht?” repeated Olson staring stupidly. “Our yacht? Isn’t it——”

“No,” I interrupted, “it isn’t where it ought to be. It’s gone. Do you know where it is?”

He shook his head.

“How should I know? I just got back here with my patients about fifteen minutes ago. The captain went up with the men then——”

“Patients?” said Betty. “Are some of the men ill, doctor?”

Olson grew confused.

“Well, well, yes. That is, they had a little—a little accident up in the hills. Two of them got hurt.”

“Oh! Badly? Can I do anything?”

“Oh, no. No, no,” he replied quickly. “No, you couldn’t do anything for them, Miss Baldwin. It wouldn’t do any good for you to see them. I’ve got them all fixed up in the other cabin. They’re all right, I assure you.”

“And the captain?” I reminded him.

“Why, when I got down here with those two men the captain was sitting here eating and drinking. He went up into the hills afterwards.”

“And he didn’t say anything about the yacht?”

“Not a thing.”

I informed him of the evening’s happenings, and of the Wanderer’s disappearance. At that he gasped, and a look of comprehension came slowly into his eyes.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, so that’s it, eh?”

“What’s it?” I demanded.

He glanced at Betty, dropped his eyes to the floor, and looked at me significantly.

“Nothing at all,” he said. “Aren’t you starving, Pitt? You look it. As a physician I suggest you get some nourishment into your system at once, before you begin to suffer.”

The unexpected quickness of wit on his part took me slightly aback, but I responded promptly.

“I’m fairly famished,” I agreed, grasping at the remnants of food on the table. “You’re right, doctor; I must eat at once.”

It worked excellently. Betty, instantly solicitous, flew about to prepare a meal for me, and under the pretense of gathering fire-wood Dr. Olson beckoned me outside.

“Those men—my patients—were shot,” he said swiftly. “And two others, Madigan and a seaman, were killed.”

A day before such news would have shocked me inexpressibly. Now it seemed only a normal result of the circumstances which Brack had woven about us all.

“And Slade and Harris? Did they get away?” I asked eagerly.

“I don’t know anything about anybody by those names,” he replied. “All I know is what Brack told me: that our men were attacked by a couple of outlaws while hunting in the hills, with the results that I’ve told you. These outlaws shot our men.”

“And did those other fellows—the outlaws—get away?”

“For the present, yes. But Brack’s men are guarding the only pass by which they can get out of this valley, so they can’t get away. The captain says he’ll get them if he has to hunt all Summer. He’s managed to get roaring drunk.”

“And he said something about Miss Baldwin, too, didn’t he? What was it?”

“Well, he was drunk, you know. It makes him look and act and talk like a devil.”

“Go on.”

“He said, ‘I expect we’ll have company here tonight, doctor.’ Said you and Chanler had come and taken Miss Baldwin back to the yacht. ‘But I’ve a feeling they’ll come back here,’ he says. ‘She can’t resist me. Yes,’ he said, ‘they’ll be back, and this time they’ll stay.’ Then he took out a big knife and cut himself in the hand. ‘The blood of kings, doctor,’ he said. ‘I’m king of Kalmut Valley, and I’ll make cripples of Pitt and Chanler, and have them for my jesters, and—’ Well, he was drunk, you know.”

“Say it,” I commanded. “What else did he say?”

“‘And I’ll tie ’em up,’ he said, ‘and let ’em watch me make Miss Baldwin my queen.’ I told him he’d better let me tie up his hand, and he hit me across the face with it and went off into the hills. That’s all.”

“No,” I said, “there’s more to this.”

I told him why Brack was after Slade and Harris. He was skeptical at first; men didn’t dare do such things nowadays; Brack’s wild talk had been only the raving of too much whisky. In the end, however, he was convinced.

“Then this scientific expedition was only the captain’s way of getting an outfit for robbery on a big, piratical scale! By George! The man’s big, isn’t he? A regular pirate’s raid in this year of our Lord! And yet it’s all simple and easy up here when you think of it, isn’t it?”

“Devilishly so. But it became more serious than mere robbery when Miss Baldwin came on board. Now, are you going to help us, doctor, or——”

“Of course. I’m civilized, I hope. But what can we do, Pitt? The captain’s got the men, and he’s too strong——”

“Dinner, gentlemen!” came Betty’s fresh young voice. “Honesty impels me to warn you, Mr. Pitt, that I’m a horrible example as a cook, but such as ’tis, ’tis ready.”

I was in no frame of mind to be a judge of Betty’s cooking. I ate ravenously, because I was hungry, but my thoughts were not upon the food. Dr. Olson’s picture of Brack in his cups was of a piece with the impression I had gathered of him early that morning. He had thrown off the mask and his true nature, raw, rank, savagery, was in full sway.

“When do you expect the captain back, doctor?” I asked casually.

“I don’t know. He probably will be back tonight, though. He warned me not to drink up all the whisky as he’d want some when he got back.”

I turned to Betty.

“Captain Brack is intoxicated, Miss Baldwin,” I said. “The doctor and I do not think it would be pleasant for you to be here when he returns.”

“No,” said the doctor, “you mustn’t be here then, Miss Baldwin.”

Betty’s wide-open eyes grew wider, but there was no alarm in the quiet gray depths of them.

“I understand,” she said, nodding thoughtfully. “I will do whatever you suggest, Mr. Pitt.”

There lay the trouble. I had nothing to suggest, nor had the doctor. Flight suggested itself first of all, but in that wilderness, with only a light Peterboro canoe and a rough sea as means of escape, the success of such a move seemed improbable. To bring our fate to a crisis by remaining there openly, defying Brack and appealing to the men for help, would have been suicidal. Had we been on the yacht strengthened by Pierce and Wilson, such action might have had a basis of reason.

Really thoughts of Pierce and Wilson kept me from losing hope at that moment. Though by now I had more confidence in myself than I had thought possible, I did not feel that I was capable of finding a solution to the problem confronting us. But there were Pierce, the shrewd, and Wilson, the brave, still to reckon with. What were they thinking at that moment of our failure to return to the yacht? What would Pierce’s sharp mind be doing but seeking a way to assist us, or, at least Miss Baldwin, to safety?

And then I looked at Betty, quietly serious, but not alarmed, and my spirits rose at the sight of her. It was no strength of mine that raised my courage then; it was the strength I drew from the courage of Betty. Once more, as in the canoe, I felt a desire to cry out:

“Bravo, Betty! Bravo, brave girl! We’ll beat him yet.”

It was well that I did not cry out. For in that instant, from out on the back trail, came a maddened bellow, scarcely human in tone, yet recognizable as coming from no one else than Captain Brack.

XXIX

I glanced instinctively toward the back of the cabin, at the large, sack-covered window cut in the logs.

“Out that way, Betty!” I whispered, tearing down the sacking.

It was the first time I had called her by that name. She obeyed promptly.

“George?” she whispered, as she stood ready to climb through the window.

“No,” said Dr. Olson. “He’s helpless—I’ll stay here. Hurry!”

I was stuffing my pockets with food, with a snuffed candle, scarcely conscious of what I was doing. Also, in the same instinctive manner, without any conscious thought, yet somehow realizing that it was a vital action, I snatched a blanket from Chanler’s bunk and threw it over my shoulder.

“We’re going to the cave where I hid the rifle. Tell that to Pierce, doctor; he’ll understand.”

“Yes. Hurry, for God’s sake!” he whispered. “Good luck.”

Betty went through the window with a lithe vault and a noiseless drop outside. I followed, dropped beside her, and, catching her hand, led as silently as possible away from the cabin until I felt sure we were out of hearing. Then we swung carefully back through the brush to the river trail at a point well below the mine clearing.

“Now for the canoe!” I whispered. “Come on!”

I ran as I had not run since a boy, and as I glanced back over my shoulder I saw Betty following closely.

We found the canoe where we had left it. Betty was in the bow before I had it untied. I pushed off, and, regardless of the rocks, we paddled furiously down-stream for the open water of the bay.

Not until we had entered the fiord and put an out-jutting cliff between ourselves and the river-mouth did we relax. Then Betty laid her paddle across the bows, bowed her head, and a tremor shook her slim body.

“Don’t—don’t, Miss Baldwin!” I pleaded. “On my word and honor I feel absolutely confident that we are safe now.”

To my surprise she replied—

“I feel safe, too.”

“You’re tired, then, and cold. Put the blanket about you, and rest. I’ll paddle the rest of the way.”

She shook her head, and resumed her paddling.

“It wasn’t that. It wasn’t that, please. I’ve camped out often. But George—poor George!”

Her words came as a shock to me. So George still occupied first place in her mind. I had been right: she had seen George as he had been when first she had learned to care for him; and she had realized that she still cared. Her first thought in the moment of our hurried flight from the cabin had been of him. Even though she had seen him go to pieces piteously she still cared. She thought of him before all others. Well, that was as it should be, as I had hoped it would be when I brought George up to the cabin, sane and sober, and in his right mind. It was right.

But Fate persisted with its tantalizing pranks, for here was I, an outsider, still necessary in the task of bringing George and Betty to the haven of safety and happiness. The doctor would look after George; I felt sure that Chanler’s condition would keep him free from any cruelty by Brack. I would do my best to look after Betty.

She would be very happy, too. She had the faculty of happiness. That faculty was saving her from the torture of fear now; it would be a guarantee of future happiness for her and George. Verily, when a man forecasts a woman’s ways he is as a child!

My reason for going to the cavern on the hillside was twofold. The place offered a fair shelter for Betty where she could lie hidden safely. I also wished to recover the rifle which I had taken from Barry.

I was certain that sooner or later Pierce would make an attempt to join us if it was possible, and with the rifle and my pistol we would at least be two armed men. If Pierce came, even though Brack was in possession of the yacht, we could strike out through the wilderness, keeping near the coast, in hope of finding a settlement.

In spite of the darkness we easily found the inlet where Barry’s negligent watching had given me an opportunity to escape. At first I thoughtlessly steered the canoe straight at the sandy beach, but an instant before our bow would have run up on the sands the same instinct which had prompted me to snatch food and blanket from the cabin, warned me to back water. Brack would have his men out by daylight searching the bay for signs of our whereabouts. If we landed on the soft sand of the beach the canoe and our tracks—especially the rubber heels of Betty’s outing shoes—would easily be seen.

On one side of the inlet a ledge of rock jutted into the water and toward this I now turned the canoe, explaining to Betty the reason for so doing.

“How did you ever think of that?” she exclaimed. “You haven’t done these things before, have you?”

“Not since I was a boy,” I replied.

“Did you play Injun then?”

“Of course. All boys do.”

“I’m glad.”

“So am I; it’s helpful just now.”

“Yes; but I didn’t mean that.”

“What then?”

“Because if you played Injun you must have been a regular boy, and regular boys have such a lot of jolly fun, Mr. Pitt?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t you ever feel like playing Injun now? No? Too old and dignified? Never play Injun any more?”

I laughed negatively as I swung the bow toward the rock.

“Shucks! It’s too bad,” she said. “You play it so well it’s a shame you don’t like to do it.”

We ran alongside the ledge and found that its flat top was just out of reach above our heads. A canoe offers no safe foundation to leap from and for the moment I was nonplused.

Betty, her hand resting on the flat surface of the rocks, found a crevice. On closer examination it proved to be only a slight crack, not large enough to provide a foothold, but Betty was thrusting at the opening with the blade of her paddle.

“Ah! There we are!” she chuckled, as the thin paddle entered the crack. “There’s a step for us.”

“How did you ever think of that?” I exclaimed.

“I used to play Injun, too,” she replied.

With the paddle as a step I was able to reach the top of the ledge and draw myself up. Betty then passed me the paddles and the painter of the canoe. Lying flat down on the ledge I stretched my arms downward until our hands met. Her strong warm fingers gripped my wrists and I promptly imitated her grasp.

“Now!” I said, and as she leaped I pulled upward with all my might.

Her hair brushed my eyes as she came up over the edge, and when our fingers released each other’s wrists, I was vaguely conscious that something strange had happened, though I did not know what. We drew the canoe up together. It had been my intention merely to hide it in the brush out of sight of the bay, but now another idea presented itself.

I gave Betty the paddles and with the canoe on my back started up the hill for my cave.

“No, sir,” objected Betty. “That isn’t fair. If we’re going to play Injun I want my share of the game.”

I protested; the distance was short, the weight slight; but in the end the march was resumed with each of us sharing equally the weight of the canoe.

A seventy-pound canoe is no burden for two people in the open. But our way lay in the darkness up a rocky ridge, through brush and timber, and we tripped and fell, ran into trees, got caught in the brush, and suffered other minor mishaps until I stopped and insisted that Betty allow me to carry the canoe alone.

“No, sir,” she repeated firmly. “I’m not stumbling any more than you are. Be fair and let me play, too.”

We compromised by putting down the canoe, and, leaving Betty to wait beside it, I went on to locate my cave. I found it, as I had that morning, by stumbling into it.

I struck a match and glanced at the spot where I had hid the rifle. Then I stood staring dumbly until the match burned down to my fingers. For the second time that night I experienced the same shock; the rifle was gone; someone had been in the cave.

When I returned to Betty my self-control had been regained. Whatever the significance of the rifle’s disappearance might be Betty must have shelter for the night, and the cave was the only place available for that purpose. We carried the canoe thither and I lighted my piece of candle and stepped down.

The cave really was a wedge-shaped opening in the side of the hill, its mouth probably twenty feet across, and about the same in depth. Betty cried out as the candle-light revealed the place.

“Why it’s almost jolly! It’s a perfect place to play Injun.”

We slid the canoe down and placed it as near the back of the cave as it would go.

“That,” said I, “is going to be your bed,” and clambering out I began to gather armfuls of fragrant small branches and brush.

The canoe was soon half filled, and, spreading the blanket over the boughs, I said—

“Whenever you are ready to retire, there is your chamber.”

“How jolly!” she cried.

Then she stopped. A new expression, which I misread, came into her eyes.

“I have my lodgings up the hill a ways,” I said hurriedly. “I’ll bid you good night.”

“Mr. Pitt!” she said, and for the first time her under lip trembled suspiciously.

“It’s a considerable distance away,” I assured her. “I’ll be quite out of sight. Really, you needn’t——”

Her lip ceased trembling. A tiny twinkle came into her eyes, a trace of a smile showed in the corners of her mouth.

“Good gracious!” she cried. “I believe that you—you think I’m worrying—about being alone with you!”

I looked at her stupidly.

“Well, weren’t you?”

Her smile vanished.

“Oh, what a perfectly selfish pig you must think me, Mr. Pitt!”

“Good heavens, no! Anything but that. But—but we’re alone—no chaperon—wasn’t that the natural thing to think?”

“The conventional thing, you mean! And—and we’re playing Injun together!”

“But—but you looked!” I stammered protestingly. “What were you thinking about?”

And she replied—

“I was wishing we had two canoes.”

Presently she said—

“How are you going to sleep, Mr. Pitt?”

“On a bed of boughs.”

“Where?”

“Oh, there’s plenty of room all around.”

“And no shelter? Suppose it rains? Why do you wish to leave this cave?”

“My dear Miss Baldwin!” I protested.

“Shocked?” she said mournfully. “I can’t help it. It seems so ridiculous to think of such things out here. We—we’re Injuns. See, there’s a nice corner right near the opening, yet with a roof over it. We can fill that with boughs. I—I’d get frightened, really, if you left me here all alone.”

“Putting it that way, of course—”

“That’s right. Now I’m going to help make your bed.”

Fifteen minutes later, perhaps, I lay down upon a pile of branches near the mouth of the cavern and blew out the candle.

“Good night,” came Betty’s voice from the canoe.

“Good night.”

Silence reigned. We were tired; soon we grew drowsy. Just before she fell asleep Betty murmured—

“Mr. Pitt!”

“Yes.”

“I still insist ’tisn’t fair—we haven’t got—two canoes.”

XXX

The cave became still. Snuggled down in her bed in the canoe Betty had fallen asleep as readily as if in her bed in the owner’s suite aboard the Wanderer. Sleep pressed on my eyelids, too; my body, tired from the unwonted exertions of the day, demanded insistently the boon of recreating slumber.

I fought off my drowsiness, however, and lay curled up on my bed of boughs, facing the cave’s mouth, and tried to think. Yet though I realized that I was awake it all seemed like a dream, such a dream as youth dreams when the call of Romance and Adventure still is real.

I was Gardner Pitt, writing man; my accustomed environment, the carefully barbered, denaturalized life of my set in New York. No, that must be a mistake. That New York existence seemed too far away to be a part of my present life. That was the dream; this the reality. I was Gardner Pitt, but I was not a writer; I was simply a hundred and sixty pounds of man, and I was sleeping on a pile of brush at the mouth of a cavern, in which slept a woman guarded by my presence. And it all seemed so natural, so vital and true a field for a man’s activities, that for the time nothing else had significance. True, this was not my woman that I was guarding, but another’s. But no thought of this entered my mind at the time. I did not think at all beyond the problem of escaping from Brack.

I placed my pistol in my right hand, determined to lie awake through the night.

I must have fallen asleep immediately after this, because when I was awakened by the rays of the morning sun slanting into the cave, the pistol lay with my relaxed hand upon it. I started up with a sensation of guilt.

With my pistol in my hand I peered out of the cave, more than half expecting to find Brack calmly awaiting me with his tantalizing smile in its place. But no human presence disturbed the primitive peace of that hillside that morning. A covey of feeding grouse lifted their heads and looked at me without fear. Birds were singing, the sun was bright and warm, and down on the blue water of the bay a pair of tiny ducks played.

I turned to look at Betty and was greeted by the sight of a very tousled, half-awake little head, peering over the side of the canoe.

“‘Mornin’,” murmured the little head sleepily.

“‘Mornin’,” I replied.

“Oo-oo-ah!” The little head yawned tremendously. “Wha’ time is ’t?”

It was 7:02 by my watch as I consulted it.

“Oo-o-wah!” Little head looked at me appealingly. “Do we got to get up so early when we play Injun?”

“Only the hunting Injun’s got to get up so early. Other Injuns sleep as long as they please.”

“Hunting? What for?”

“Oh, for a nice, big white yacht, for one thing. I’ll be gone only a short while. In the meantime you sleep.”

“O-um-mum,” murmured the little head and sank comfortably out of sight in the canoe.

Parting the brush that hid the cave, I stepped out and went down the hillside a short distance. Looking back I was pleased to find that the cave was so well hidden that unless one knew its location it might be passed close by without its existence being suspected. Save for the possibility that man who had taken the rifle was one of Brack’s gang the cave offered a fairly safe hiding place.

My first move was to assure myself that the yacht was not anchored near by. I went cautiously up the bay for half a mile, scrutinizing each inlet in vain for a sight of the Wanderer’s white sides. I then swung up into the hills, marching a circle around the cave, impelled by the instinctive desire to ascertain the possible presence of any enemy.

At a distance of a city block from the cave I found a tiny spring sending its rivulet down the hillside to the bay, and as I lay down to drink I saw huddled beneath a tiny fir a flock of grouse watching me from a distance of ten or twelve feet.

Instinct promptly whispered: “Food” and I recalled the scant supply I had taken from the cabin, and reached for my pistol. The pistol, however, would roar like a cannon in that morning stillness and my supply of ammunition was limited to the ten cartridges in the magazine.

Lying motionless I looked around until my eyes fell upon a club. It was out of reach, but the foolish birds, confident that they were hidden, sat still while I secured the club and hurled it with all my might into their midst. I leaped forward instantly, and in the roar and flurry of the covey’s rising pounced upon two fluttering birds which my club had stunned.

Betty was up and wide awake when I returned to the cave. She had made her hair into one thick braid which hung down her back, and her face was rosy from sound sleep. She shuddered first at the sight of the birds.

“Oh, the poor, pretty things!” she murmured, stroking their feathers. “I wish you hadn’t hurt them.”

“I didn’t hurt them,” I replied. “They never knew what struck them. I didn’t like to do it, but we must find our own food, or surrender to Brack.”

She looked at the birds wistfully and said nothing as I led her to the spring. I left her splashing the ice-cold water upon her face and proceeded to dress the birds. When I returned to the cave she was waiting with her sleeves rolled up and a set look in her eyes.

“I can cook them,” she said firmly. “That’s my share of the game. You cut them in two and put a stick through the pieces and hold them before a hot fire that doesn’t smoke.”

“Any fire that we have must not smoke,” I said. “The smoke would show above the trees and be seen.”

“Then we must have perfectly dry wood,” she said quickly. “A small fire and dry; that doesn’t smoke.”

We set about gathering the wood together. Between two stones at the cave’s opening we built our fire, watching it jealously, to see that only the minimum of smoke arose from it in the clear air. Betty put her conscience to rest as she regarded the dressed grouse, composed mainly of succulent breast.

“They must be intended for food,” she said, “or they wouldn’t be made as they are.”

I agreed with her emphatically, and with a skewered half bird in each hand we sat down before the fire and proceeded with our cookery.

Freshly killed spruce grouse, roasted before an uncertain fire, and without salt, do not make ideal breakfast food, a fact which we discovered soon after the birds were done.

“I believe,” said Betty, when she had nibbled at half a bird, “I have had enough.”

“I have other viands in my pocket.”

“To be saved for future reference,” she laughed.

“We’ll wrap the rest of this wild poultry up in nice clean leaves and save it for another meal.”

“We will. It will be tasty when cold.”

At the spring where we went to wash down the meal with drafts of water, Betty’s eyes began to twinkle and the corners of her lips twitched suspiciously.

“Well, we’ve perfectly beautiful drinking water, at least,” she said, and smothered her laughter behind both hands.

“Now then,” she said briskly, when we were back in the cave, “are we going to occupy this apartment for some time, or do we continue our travels of last night?”

I told her that it seemed best for us to stay in hiding.

“All right. Then let’s try to brighten the place up a little. We don’t have to sit here and look at these black stone walls just because we’re playing Injun. Come and help me; I love to select furnishings for a room.”

From the hillside near the cave we gathered more branches and brush. Pine, spruce, birch and willow, budding into the full growth of Summer, came by the armfuls into the cavern.

“You never would have thought that this place needed decorating, would you?” said Betty, as she set to work. “Certainly not. This rough roof offers a shelter; these harsh walls hide us from our enemies. So you, being a mere man, think it’s all right. Ha! I’d hate to be a mere man.”

She was flying about the cave, fastening branches in the clefts of the rock, stepping back to view the results, altering her arrangements, apparently so lost in her work as to have forgotten our true situation.

“Now hand me that birch branch—the white contrasts beautifully with the green pine; now another piece of pine, now some more birch. There. That’s what you call repetition of color, isn’t it? You don’t know? Gracious. How can men be so ignorant of the really important things of life!”

On the rock forming the roof of the cave we found a patch of moss, velvet soft to the touch, and a gentle brown and gold in color. With a stick I loosened great pieces from the rock and bore it carefully within where Betty directed the carpeting of the cave. When a large piece reached its destination intact Betty beamed; when the moss broke between my outstretched hands she pouted.

“I think so long as Nature goes to the trouble of creating a carpet for us it might as well do a good job and make it strong enough to stand transportation.”

But when the cave was carpeted with its soft, yielding cushion of moss she clapped her hands in delight.

“Look at it!” she cried, embracing the cave with a gesture. “Why, it’s cozy; people could almost live here.”

Our coming and going had trodden down much of the brush which had so thoroughly hidden the cave, and with some of the branches left over from Betty’s decorations I proceeded to weave a screen over the opening. When I had completed it I crawled out and inspected my work from a distance. The cave now was hidden more thoroughly than ever. Brack must look long and carefully to find us.

When I slipped back into our shelter I surprised Betty sitting on the canoe with her head bowed upon her hands in an attitude of dejection. She looked up, smiling bravely, but her cheerfulness was only surface-deep.

I looked away without a word, as did she, but in that moment we had confessed to one another that our display of high spirits had merely been acting, each wishing to help bolster up the courage of the other. We sat so for some time. Betty finally broke the silence.

“Well,” she said quietly, “there’s no use pretending any more, is there?”

As I had no reply she continued—

“We might as well admit out loud that neither of us feels—well, exactly jolly about it.”

“That’s true,” I replied inanely.

We were silent again.

“What—what are we going to do about it, Mr. Pitt?”

“There is nothing much to do; we are safe for the time being. So long as we keep out of Brack’s sight we are safe. For the present we could do just that—and hope.”

Betty heard me without a word. Once more she bowed her face upon her hands, and her girlish shoulders trembled. I was at her side in an instant.

“Don’t, Betty, please don’t!” I pleaded. “You mustn’t give way. It’s rough, and it’s hard, specially hard for a girl like you, but don’t give way for—for my sake. It’s been your fine courage and cheerfulness that’s kept me from showing that I’m really a coward. Yes, it is; you’ve kept me from being a coward. Don’t—please don’t be afraid. We’ll get out of this all right somehow, sure.”

She looked at me, her eyes moist, but with her old thoughtful look in them.

“Do you really believe we will, in your heart, Mr. Pitt?”

“Most emphatically I do.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then you only hope——?”

“No; I believe.”

“Oh!” she cried suddenly. “I hope—I pray—that you’re right; because it’s all my fault, all my fault, and I’d never forgive myself if I’d brought harm to you—or George.”

Once more the sound of George’s name on her tongue shocked me. Could she never get the man out of her head?

I picked aimlessly at a birch bough over my head, and each little budding leaf that I plucked away seemed like the tiny dreams which unconsciously had been in my mind all morning, and which now were driven away. The dreams that come to a man willy-nilly, without reason, without basis of hope. It probably was the stress of yesterday, the natural romance of a cave in the wilderness that were responsible. Well, I had that, anyhow; hours with Betty, in the sunlit, primitive woods. The memory of that would remain. Why, I was rich, richer than I had ever been in my life.

“Will you allow me to say something serious, Betty?”

Her look was startled, apprehensive, but her eyes gave consent.

“These hours have been the biggest of my life.”

I stopped. Betty was looking at the ground. And suddenly all the winds of the world seemed to be drawing me toward her, urging me to throw myself beside her, and a stream of words was upon my tongue.

I reached up, plucked a twig of pine from its cleft, and when I had stripped its needles one by one my self-control had returned.

“So you see I’m a winner,” I laughed. “You mustn’t worry one little worry about me. Whatever happens I’m ahead of the game.”

It was a long time before she spoke, and then she did so without looking up.

“Is—that—true?”

“Can’t you see it is?”

She nodded without looking to see.

“And—is that—all?”

“Isn’t that plenty? The biggest hours of my life—to have and remember?”

She poked her white toe into the moss, but still her eyes were on the ground.

“I feel awf’ly guilty,” she said faintly. “It’s all my fault. The whole thing is my fault. Poor George! If it hadn’t been for me he never would have met Brack, and then all this would not have happened.”

“George probably is all right by this time. He is under Dr. Olson’s care, and the doctor is one of us.”

“I’ve made him suffer terribly, haven’t I?”

“No. If he hadn’t—” I checked myself. “You haven’t made him suffer. And he’ll be a wiser man when you see him again, and you’ll both forget and be happy together.”

Betty lifted her eyes and studied me closely. Her expression was puzzling; she seemed incredulous. A quizzical smile touched her lips; she suppressed it and looked away.

“And George,” she said, as if her thoughts had wandered away from him, “I must make up for it all to him—if I can.”

“If you can! Of course you can. You will!”

Again she lifted her head and looked me squarely in the eyes. And this time when she looked away I knew that I was a fool, though I did not know just why.

XXXI

It was now near ten o’clock and we soon would know whether our hiding-place was a safe one. I knew that it was safer than would have been a flight through the woods, where Brack and his men might be prowling, yet I was so apprehensive that the sight of Brack’s big head thrust through the brush, his old sneering smile on his lips, would not have surprised me in the least. But no one came.

The forenoon passed without sight or sound of human being. At noon we were more hungry than we had been at breakfast. The spruce grouse had improved remarkably in flavor. In fact we agreed as we devoured what remained of them that seldom had we tasted better food.

“And nourishing; I’m sure they’re very nourishing,” said Betty. “They improve on acquaintance, as one’s appetite grows less finicky.”

My hopes began to rise as the hours passed with no sign of the appearance of Brack or any of his men. Apparently it was no man of the captain’s who had found the cave and removed the rifle. Then he had no way of knowing where we were hidden; we were safe at least for the present. When I explained this to Betty she said quietly—

“I’ve felt safe all the time, Mr. Pitt.”

“And quite right, too,” I replied. “The situation hasn’t been what any one but a pessimist would call dangerous.”

“Mr. Pitt!”

“What?”

She looked at me gravely for several seconds.

“I’m not a child, Mr. Pitt; it isn’t necessary to lie to me.”

“What! Lie to you?”

“Please. I understand how you feel about it. I’m a weak, carefully reared and sheltered girl who must be treated as a child, sheltered from everything unpleasant, and lied to about—about the fact that she is in danger, because she has happened to attract a brute; and that your life is in danger because you’re hiding her.”

“But, really——”

“Well, you needn’t keep up the pretense, Mr. Pitt. I’ve known all the time. I’ve known better than you have; the woman can know better, you know, even if she is a girl. I’ve known ever since Captain Brack came toward me last night up there in the cabin. His eyes were like—like he’d dropped a curtain and let me see a lot of uncaged wild beasts baring their teeth to me. I knew then—more than you could; and I know that he won’t give up—ever.”

“As I recall it,” I said when I could speak with a calmness equal to her own, “you laughed at him at just the moment that you saw all this?”

“Of course. We couldn’t let him see we were scared, could we?”

“And in the canoe, you sang——”

“That was partly for George’s sake. And then I did feel safe; and have felt so ever since.”

“And all your high spirits—playing Injun—fixing up the cave, and so on, have all been acting?”

“No. Certainly not. I tell you I do feel safe.”

“Why?”

Again she smiled inscrutably.

“You wouldn’t believe me now if I told you. Some day maybe you will. Then I’ll tell you—if you ask. But you must not ask now.”

For the present I, too, felt safe. But only for the present. Brack would not give up. That implacable will would have its way and the hunt for us probably was on at that moment. Brack, realizing our helplessness in the wilderness, would know that our field of flight would be restricted to the vicinity of the fiord, and with his men would search the hills relentlessly. I blessed the fate that had sent my feet stumbling into our well-hidden cavern.

As I weighed the chances of our discovery—which chance consisted practically of some literally blundering into the cave—I considered our plight in a more favorable aspect. The doctor would deliver my message to Pierce, and Freddy would pass on to the others the secret of our place of concealment. Dr. Olson, Freddy, Wilson and George, by this time probably knew where we were.

There was a world of consolation in this thought. They would communicate with us; Freddy would see to that. Yes, we would hear from our friends before much longer.

But as the hours passed with no sign of such good fortune I began to doubt. What were our friends doing? What were they thinking of? Didn’t they realize that every minute which we passed in this uncertainty was a minute of torture?

Betty’s patience seemed to grow as mine diminished. She had begun to weave a mat out of the branches which we had carried in, and apparently she was more interested in this than in what our friends were doing. The mat was finished as darkness began to creep up the hillside, and Betty spread thereupon the food I had snatched from the cabin table. There was a piece of sausage, three slices of bread, and a can of sardines.

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “we had better save some for the morrow.”

“I refuse to save,” she retorted, chin in air. “Poor we may be, sir; but never shall it be said that we stinted ourselves in the matter of rich and nourishing sustenance. Pray, sir, draw up before it gets too dark to distinguish the varied viands.”

“This is prodigal conduct,” I protested, as she divided the food equally and passed my share to me. “What of tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow you will get more birds, and if you do not, you will get something else. And if you don’t get that—Sir! I refuse to worry about anything so sordid as food. Now if it were a matter pertaining to higher things—Oh! Aren’t these sardines delicious!”

And when the scanty meal was finished she leaned back with a mock air of repletion and said—

“Now, let come what may; I have dined.”

“Do you feel so brave?” I asked.

“Yes sir. As brave as beseems one who has dined sumptuously.”

“Joking aside, do you feel brave enough to spend an hour or two in this dark cave—alone?”

“Is it necessary?” she asked after making sure that I was not joking. “What are you going to do?”

“We must try to learn what’s been going on today. As soon as it is thoroughly dark I propose to sneak back to the cabins. If I have good luck I may be able to get a word with Dr. Olson, or George. Then we’ll know if it’s necessary or advisable for us to remain hidden underground.”

“I’m sure it is,” she said swiftly and with conviction.

“Why are you sure?”

“I don’t know; I feel it.”

“It may be well enough,” said I, “but I don’t feel it’s right of us to lie here without making a move. If our friends can’t help us we ought to know, so we may plan to help ourselves.”

“If you have decided upon it, I suppose you will go.”

“Not unless you give your consent.”

“My consent?”

“Yes. You don’t think I’d go away and leave you here alone in the cave if you tell me you’d be afraid?”

“I shall be afraid,” she said soberly. I looked at her a little disappointed. “I shall be afraid every minute until your return that something may happen to you. And then,” she added lightly, “who would get birds for my breakfast in the morning? Of course you have my consent to go. I’ll lie here in my canoe and try to think noble thoughts. But do be careful.”

I waited until nine before leaving the cave. It was then pitch-dark in the woods. I had, however, laid out my course in my mind’s eye, and set out for the crest of the ridge without hesitation.

My progress at first was nothing to be proud of. I stumbled and fell over unseen rocks and logs, walked smack into sturdy trees, and was tangled in the brush constantly. At the top of the ridge the woods and brush grew thinner. It was practically bare ground here and I traveled the crest swiftly until the odorous dampness of the night air warned me that I was approaching the lake, and I paused sharply.

I was now, I judged, near the spot where I had descended from the ridge to warn Slade and Harris. If I was right, I would soon be able to see the lights from the cabins in the clearing below; and so fearful was I of Brack’s devilish shrewdness that I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled noiselessly forward to peer over the ridge.

Apparently my caution was unnecessary. So far as I could see there were no lights in the cabins. In fact, there might have been no cabins there, so absolutely was everything below me sunk in the black night.

Minute after minute passed with my eyes straining in vain for a glimpse of light and my ears listening vainly for some sound of human nearness, but the darkness was no less complete than the silence. Perhaps I had gone wrong. Perhaps that open space below, from whence rose dampness and odor, was not the lake at all, but the bay. More careful appraisal of my surroundings, however, convinced me that my course had been true. That was the lake down there; the cabins were on the farther side; and it being on toward ten o’clock, the candles were out and the doctor, George, and the others, were asleep.

This was the reasoning with which I relieved myself, as I let myself down the ridge toward the clearing. My caution, however, had not deserted me, and my progress was as noiseless as could be.

It was fully half an hour after leaving the top of the ridge before I lay in the brush behind the clearing. The cabin in which Betty and I had left George was before me and probably fifty yards away, but no sound or light hinted that it was inhabited.

The cold shiver which always came to me when I was afraid once more ran up my spine as I contemplated the open space between myself and the cabin. I wished greatly to retreat, so I promptly drove myself forward, pistol in hand, literally dragging myself up to the rear of the squat cabin whose very darkness and silence seemed eloquent with sinister possibilities.

Beneath the open window through which Betty and I had fled I lay with my head against the logs, listening for the sounds of breathing within. No such sound came. No sound of any kind came.

I lifted my head until an ear was over the sill of the window. It was so still that a man’s breathing, or the ticking of a watch, could not have escaped my strained hearing. I thrust my head inside the room. Now by its complete silence I knew that the room was empty, and I drew myself up slowly and clambered in.

After a while I struck a match. The room was bare. The bunks, blankets, chairs, dishes, the table, the stove, all had been removed. The floor and walls were bare.

I went to the other cabin, where the wounded men had lain. Then I sat down on the nearest threshold, weak and numbed. The cabins were empty. Brack had removed our friends beyond our ken. We were deserted. But more sinister than that; the cabins had been stripped of their last morsel of food, of everything that might have been of assistance to us in maintaining existence in the wilderness.

XXXII

I sat there in the cabin doorway for a long time, the props upon which I had builded hope and confidence suddenly knocked away. George was gone; Dr. Olson was gone. And there was no trace of them left behind, no trace of where they had gone, or why, or how. They had disappeared from our ken. We were out of touch with them. And upon them had been built our hopes.

Far off on some hilltop a wolf barked suddenly. I pictured Brack with his sneering eyes laughing at me. It was all his work, of course. If it had not been—if the abandonment of the cabins had been accidental—Dr. Olson, knowing that I would return there sometime, would have managed to leave a note or sign to tell the why and where of the going.

But the captain, also knowing that we would come back to the cabins, had taken proper precautions. There was no note, no sign. There was no hope, no chance to escape him. That was the lesson he had prepared for us with these empty cabins.

The wolf barked again, and I thought of Betty alone in the cave and sprang up. And there was something selfish in the speed with which I traveled back over the ridge, for the nearness of her was a stay to my waning confidence and courage.

Nearing the cave I moved more cautiously, not wishing to blunder through the mask of brush we had made to hide the opening. Fumbling in the darkness I found the overhanging rock, and then the opening which I had left as a door in the brush. I paused a moment before crawling inside, and as I did so Betty’s voice came faintly from the canoe:

“Is that you, Gardy? And are you all right?”

“I am,” I replied, as I entered. “And you?”

“Fine and dandy. But—oh, you were away an awful long time.”

“Yes. It was farther than I thought.”

“And did you see George? And what did you find out?”

“A lot of things,” I mumbled with assumed sleepiness. “Everything’s all right. No need to worry. But I’m so tired, so sleepy I can’t talk now. Forgive me, but I’ll have to wait until morning before telling about it.”

“You poor boy!” I heard her sit up.

“Oh, I’m all right,” I protested as I lay down on my nest of boughs. I was sitting up an instant later. “Here; what’s this? You’ve put the blanket on my bed.”

“Only half of it. I ripped it in two while you were gone. It wasn’t fair——”

“You’re going to take it back.”

“No, sir. I’m as warm as a cat back here. I’ll never forgive you if you make me take it back after my feeling so noble for giving it to you. So there.”

“Now really——”

“No, sir! You lie right down and cover yourself up and get the sleep you need so much. You wouldn’t deprive me of feeling like a heroine, would you? Of course not. Good night.”

“Good night.”

She chuckled softly as she lay down.

“I called you ‘Gardy,’ Mr. Pitt; did you notice that? Shocking, isn’t it? After a few days’ acquaintance. I wonder—I wonder if cave-people ever had more than one name.”

And after awhile her soft, steady breathing as she slept made me glad I had withheld the bad news for the morrow.

I awoke the next morning at the first gray light of dawn and slipped out while Betty still slept. I was now as eager to find some sign of human nearness as the morning before I had been eager to assure myself of the isolation of our hiding-place. A sight of the yacht, of any one, of Brack even, would have been a relief from the growing sensation that we had been left completely alone.

I went down to the bay and followed its indentations for more than a mile, making no effort at concealment, in another fruitless search for the yacht. I went over the ridge to the cabins and stood in the clearing before them and shouted recklessly. And when the hills had mockingly echoed back my futile shouts, I knew the calmness of resignation to the worst. We were alone, and we must exist, and escape, if escape we could, solely by our own efforts.

I gathered a pocketful of stones and half a dozen clubs and went back to our spring to hunt for grouse. My good fortune of the day before was not to be repeated. Birds in plenty there were. They flushed from beneath my feet, flew past my head, and sat in rows on branches and looked down upon me. I found, however, that it is one thing to hurl a club into a covey huddled under a bush, and quite another to knock a bird out of a tree, and in desperation I finally used the pistol to bring down the single bird which I thought was to comprise our breakfast that morning.

In the primitive morning stillness the noise of the shot was like a crack of lightning, splitting the silence and echoing through the hills. But by this time I was convinced that we were alone there in Kalmut Valley, and that no one was near enough to hear the report.

As I reentered the cave Betty sprang up, asking:

“Well? Who and what did you see at the cabins last night?”

While I sought for a way to break the news without any unnecessary alarm to her she continued:

“It’s bad news, of course. I felt that last night. You’d never have been selfish enough to go to sleep without telling me if the news had been good. What is it, Mr. Pitt?”

“I am sorry to say that I didn’t see any one at the cabins,” I replied. “There was no one there. There was nothing there. The cabins were stripped bare. Everything in them was gone—food, everything.”

“Then thank goodness for the bird,” she said quietly. “Where do you think George and everybody, and everything has gone?”

“Oh, Brack’s taken them and all the stuff away some place. But where I can’t imagine. I really don’t believe the yacht’s in the fiord at all, so it doesn’t seem they could be on board. Brack may have headquarters somewhere on shore.”

“But what could be his object in taking everything away from the cabins?”

“To leave us without food or anything to help us.”

“Hm,” said Betty, her chin in her hands. “I was thinking of something else.”

“What?”

“Brack knew you’d go back and have a look at the cabins. He thinks we’re in the open wilderness without a shelter over our heads. Well, when you find that the cabins have been stripped, deserted, apparently abandoned for good, wouldn’t it be natural for us to rush to them for shelter?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, couldn’t he be watching, and when we were in—” her hand pounced onto a sprig of birch and crushed it—“just like that?”

“A trap!” I cried. “I never thought of that. Of course. And with no food, even if we were safe at first, we’d have to give in in the end.”

“Which we’ll never, never do, of course,” she said firmly. She looked around at the fir and birch boughs hung in the cave. “I don’t think I care to move just at the present. While this apartment is not as roomy or light as it might be, I am quite fascinated with its interior decorations, as well as its safety. No; Mr. Brack must find other tenants for his cabins. I think we shall remain right here.”

I laughed in sheer relief at the serio-comic air with which she said this.

“Betty,” I said, “aren’t you even a little bit afraid?”

“Oh, yes, Gardy,” she said, instantly serious. “Aren’t you? I’m lots afraid. But we mustn’t let that bother us, must we?”

“Emphatically, no! We mustn’t let anything bother us. You mustn’t let anything worry you. We’ll get along, somehow; I don’t know how, but I know we will——”

“Of course we will!”

“And when it comes to Captain Brack——”

“Are we downhearted?” demanded Betty, and together we answered: “No!”

It was immediately after this that we once more saw the captain. I was preparing to go out and clean the bird, and as I parted the branches a boat from the yacht, rowed by four men, with Brack at the rudder, came rushing down the fiord and steered for the beach directly below where we were hidden.

Betty saw me start and sprang to my side. Neither of us said a word while we watched the boat come to land. As the men sprang out and hurried into the brush we drew back to the rear of the cave, sat down on the canoe, and looked at each other.

“It’s my fault,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have fired that shot. They heard it. Don’t give up, though. They haven’t found us yet.”

“I wonder if they are coming here?” she whispered back.

I went back to the opening and peered cautiously through the branches. The men, even Captain Brack, were crouched down in the shelter of a huge boulder, and Brack was giving them directions.

Immediately they scattered, and began to work up the hill. They did not come directly toward the cave but went slightly to the north, in the direction where I had fired my pistol.

The caution with which they moved puzzled me. They crouched and ran from tree to tree, keeping in cover as much as possible, peering around carefully, their rifles always ready. Brack brought up the rear. The other men appeared almost frightened and it seemed that only his presence drove them forward.

“They’re searching the hill, but they’re not coming in this direction,” I whispered as I drew back to Betty. “Apparently they don’t know the exact location of this cave.”

“Do you think they will find it?”

“How can I tell? It’s wonderfully hidden.”

“If they do find it, what will you do?”

I did not reply. I did not know what I would do. But one thing I did know: Brack would not lead us away as his prisoners.

“Gardy,” she whispered, “if they are going to find us tell me, because there’s something I’ve got to tell you if—if—anything happens.”

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” I whispered assuringly. “Be easy on that. Nothing will happen to you.”

“Even if they do find us?”

“Even if they do find us. Hush now. We’d better not even whisper.”

We sat waiting in silence, our eyes upon the brush-mask across the cavern’s mouth. We were cornered. There was nothing to do but sit and wait for what fate might allot us. Each second I expected to see a face peering through the brush, and to hear the shout that would announce our discovery. But the seconds, infinitely long and throbbing, passed and became minutes, and still we had no sign of Brack and his men.

It was at least half an hour after the men had started up the hill that a spruce grouse, flushed from the ground, flashed across the opening, so close that its wings touched the brush. By the rising flight of the bird I knew that it had been flushed but a few yards away, and, I judged, by some one who was coming toward the cave. They would be here soon now.

XXXIII

“Lie down in the canoe,” I whispered to Betty. “They must have missed us; I’m going to take a little look.”

When she had obeyed, and could not see what I did, I slipped the safety catch off my pistol and crept forward to the mouth of the cave.

I was right; some one was walking near the cave. After a few seconds I could make out the heavy footsteps of two men. They were walking carelessly, brush crackling beneath their feet, and they were coming down-hill. Suddenly from some distance off came the sound of a sharp whistle twice repeated. The footsteps stopped.

“There,” said a voice. “Wha’d’ I tell you? The cap’s given up, too, and it’s a case of get back to the boat for us.”

“I tell you,” responded a second voice, “I don’t believe it was the guys we’re after at all. They’re old-timers and wise guys. It don’t seem nach’rel they’d go shooting this close to the water, where they knew we’d be sure to hear it. That was a revolver, too.”

“Who the —— else would it be, then?” demanded the first man. “There ain’t nobody else to do any revolver shooting round here, is they? Sure it was the guys we’re after. Nobody else. They’re hard up fer grub, and had to shoot something wherever they could get it—nobody else ’round here.”

“There’s that —— Pitt, an’ the skirt the cap’s gone crazy about, ain’t there? They’re loose somewhere in the valley, too, ain’t they?”

“Sure. They got no revolver, though. He ain’t a shootin’ man, either. Naw; it was those miner guys who fired that shot, all right; an’ they’re old-timers an’ beat it like —— right away an’ kept traveling, so we didn’t find them or their trail. They might be layin’ round here some place at that.”

“Well, come on. Let’s get down.”

Their footsteps sounded again on the ground. I placed my eyes to an interstice in the brush and peered out. Perhaps fifty feet north of the cave two of Brack’s men were slouching down-hill toward the boat, their rifles hanging carelessly over their shoulders like men who are returning from an unsuccessful hunt.

Farther down the hill and a good distance to the north were two other men, and as I watched Brack broke out of the brush along the bay and ran swiftly down the beach to where his boat lay tied. Here he dropped promptly out of sight behind the boulder where he and his men had sought shelter when they landed, and there, safely hidden, he awaited the return of his men.

His tactics puzzled me at first. Why did he run so swiftly across the open space of the beach? Why hide himself behind the boulder? It was not like Brack to run or hide. Then, considering the speech I had just heard, I understood. It was Slade and Harris that Brack and his men had come hunting, summoned by my pistol-shot, and the captain, knowing their deadly skill with the rifle, was not wishful to expose himself any more than was necessary.

“Betty,” I said swiftly, as the men came out upon the beach and tumbled into the boat, “they’re going away. It wasn’t us they were after. They’ve no idea we’re here. They’re rowing away now, and I’m going to try and see if I can’t follow them and find where they’re staying.”

They were shoving the boat out now, and as soon as they had turned its bow toward the head of the fiord, I leaped from the cave and ran as swiftly as I could northward, keeping out of sight of the water. When I knew that I was well ahead of the boat I curved toward the fiord, and the moment the water came in view I lay flat down in the brush and waited. If the boat did not appear I would at least know that Brack’s rendezvous was somewhere between the cave and the point where I was lying.

I had but a minute or two to wait, however, when the boat came rushing along and continued farther north. Once more I waited until it was out of sight, then again curving my path out of sight of the water, I once more ran desperately to get in the lead.

My rush this time led me to where I found further progress barred by the river at the head of the fiord. At the junction of the two waters I hid myself and waited. When the boat came in view I drew back, for I was perilously near the river and I judged that having come this far Brack was bound up the river toward the cabins. I was mistaken. The boat turned eastward, before reaching the river-mouth. It went straight toward an opening on the other side of the fiord which I had not previously noticed. This opening was to some degree hidden by an out-jutting bluff. Without slacking speed the boat swung around the bluff and disappeared into a part of the fiord whose existence I had not suspected.

Then I stood up and cursed aloud. And at that a voice cried out from a clump of willows near by:

“Oh ——! Is that really you, Brains? Oh, ——! Mebbe I ain’t glad to see you!”

Pierce’s expression as he came stumbling out of the willows was a study. The last two days had wrinkled and drawn his honest face into a mask of despair, and now, suddenly convulsed with relief and joy, his eyes honestly shed tears while his lips grinned happily.

“Put ’er there, Brains! Mitt me, mitt me!” he stammered, grasping my hand. “Gee! I didn’t know you with all that fuzz on your face. Well, you’re all right, and—and there ain’t anything happened to Her, has they?”

“No, Freddy,” I managed to say at last. “Miss Baldwin is all right. She’s back in the cave that I told you about.”

“Wow!” He fairly wilted with relief. “Say, if anything had happened to her I’d hike straight back to the yacht and blow a hole through Brack’s head the second I saw him.”

“The yacht?” I cried. “Do you mean to say the yacht is near at hand?”

“Right up at the end of the bay there,” was his casual reply. “Riordan ran ’er up right after you’d left that afternoon with the boss. Say, how long ago is that, Brains?”

“Two days ago, isn’t it?”

“Yah! You ain’t sure yourself, are you? It’s been long for you, too, eh? Seems about a month to me. An’ you been living in the cave! Say! Look at this.” He patted the sweater which he was wearing and which was swollen far out in front.

“Grub,” he said. “Come on; let’s beat it before anybody comes nosing around.”

“Pierce!” I said, “do you mean to say that you’ve got food—real, civilized food there?”

“Sure. I was on my way to the cave to feed you. Wait a second while I get my rifle.”

He dove back into the willows and reappeared bearing the rifle which I had taken from Barry.

“Come on. Lead the way. Tell you all about it later. Got to beat it now. I put a bump on Garvin’s bean to get away and they may be after me any minute. Go ahead, fast’s you can; I’ll keep up.”

I waited to ask no more questions but plunged into the forest at a run with Pierce following at my heels. There was no need for caution now and we went straight to the cave, to find Betty ruefully picking the bird I had shot. At the sight of Pierce she stopped and stared, while I took the bird from her hand.

“No need for this now,” I laughed. “Here’s Freddy, and he’s brought us some real civilized food.”

“Best I could do,” said Pierce, and opening his belt there clattered to the floor of the cave a quantity of the Wanderer’s choicest viands that made me gasp. “Wilson’s sweater,” explained Pierce, looking at the pile. “Big enough for two of me. Held quite a lot, didn’t it?”

“Food!” Betty clasped her hands and gazed in amazement at the collection.

There was potted turkey, paté-de-foie-gras, asparagus tips, veal-loaf, all in glass. There were packages of tea biscuit. There was a bundle which contained sandwiches.

“Food! Oh, you blessed, perambulating pantry! You—you angel!” she cried, and hugged Pierce in a way that left him red and stammering.

“Gee! Beg pardon—I mean, you’re all right, ain’t you, Miss Baldwin? Gee—I mean, that’s fine!”

“Freddy,” said I with genuine feeling, “as you say, ‘mitt me,’ once more. ‘Put ’er there.’ You’re a prince. You’re more than a prince; you’re a clever man.”

“Aw, c’m on now, Brains; don’t go kidding me,” he protested.

“Kidding you!” cried Betty, biting into a generous sandwich. “If you knew how we felt toward you at this moment—if you knew how like an angel you appear to us! Oh, but real food does taste good!”

“I ought to have got here before this,” said Pierce, as Betty and I devoted ourselves to nourishment, “but first Riordan had me locked in the engine-room, and then Brack had me there, and this was the first chance for a getaway I had.”

“Begin at the beginning,” I commanded, opening the asparagus. “We don’t know a thing except that when we came back the other night the yacht was gone.”

“And roll yourself a cigaret, do,” supplemented Betty.

“Aw—aw, I guess I can get along without smoking,” said Pierce lamely.

“Roll a cigaret,” repeated Betty. “Then tell us—about everything. And how is George—Mr. Chanler?”

XXXIV

“The boss is all right,” was Pierce’s prompt response, as he began to manufacture his cigaret. “Yes, sir, he’s all right, but he ain’t letting Brack know it. He’s a reg’lar guy, the boss is, after all.”

“Of course,” I said. “But begin at the beginning.”

“All right.”

He blew a puff of smoke toward the opening of the cave, fanned it away from Betty, and began:

“The first thing that happened after you and the boss went up the bay, Mr. Pitt, was for little Freddy to slip into the water and go after his rifle, here. I did a dive when Riordan was taking a lunch, got up here, got the gun and got back on board before he knew I’d been gone. I hid the gun in the oil locker, back of the tanks where nobody could see it. I got through just in time, too, ’cause pretty soon Riordan comes on deck and orders me down to start the auxiliary engine, while he and the nigger gets up the anchor.

“I start her all right, but I says to myself if Riordan turns her nose out to sea I’ll get my gun and start a little mutiny all by my lonesome. Well, he don’t do nothing of the sort; just starts right up the bay, running on the auxiliary. I think that’s all right, because of course I knew it was the cap’s orders, and we was going up the same way you went. Then after awhile we anchored, and then I knew it wasn’t all right, because I tried the engine-room door and Riordan had me locked in tight.

“The cap let me out himself in the morning, because Doc’ Olson had told him he wanted me to help him with the boss and the two guys that was shot.”

“Shot!” cried Betty. “Who was shot?”

“The two seamen that Dr. Olson said were hurt,” I said hurriedly. “Never mind now. Go on, Freddy.”

“The doc’ just got me out to get a chance to slip me the news about you and where you’d gone; but there wasn’t any chance for a getaway ’cause Brack was there, and Garvin was on guard all the time with his gun. Doc sent me running first to the boss and then to Wilson and the two other guys with dope and drinks, and so on, and pretty soon the boss got his noodle working and starts framing things.”

“Chanler began to think out a plan,” I translated to Betty.

“Eh-yah,” continued Freddy unabashed. “It was the boss that framed it all up. He’s a reg’lar guy. ‘Tell Wilson to pretend to be worse,’ says he. ‘I’ll do the same.’ Wilson was fit to get up, but the boss says, no; he and Wilson were to be like they was helpless. Then the boss says to Brack he’d give him any sum he’d name if he’d sail out of there and take him home.”

“What?” said Betty. “George wanted to leave us?”

“Naw! You don’t understand. Naw, I should say not he didn’t want to leave anybody. I told you he was a reg’lar guy. And there with the brains, too. He was just playing up to Brack. But cappy says he couldn’t think of leaving without—well, you know; he’s a pretty wicked guy.”

“I understand,” said Betty quietly. “Well?”

“So the boss pretended to have a fit, and did a lot of fancy stalling. You see now, don’t you: the boss is putting cappy off his guard and laying for a chance to jump the bunch and get control of the yacht.”

“But, great heavens!” I expostulated. “They’ve no arms, and they’re outnumbered.”

“Well, they ain’t outnumbered so bad,” said Pierce. “There’s the boss, and Wilson, and Doc Olson, and Simmons, and the big nigger. Oh, yes; we got the nigger with us. I know he wanted to get Garvin, and felt him out. He’s only waiting to be turned loose.”

“It’s impossible,” said I. “Brack and his men are armed to the teeth.”

“That’s the trouble. If we’d had a gun apiece there’d been something doing this morning while the cap was away. But the cap’s cleaned the boat of guns and got ’em in his possession, ’cept one Doc’ Olson copped off one of the men who was shot. So Wilson told me what to do, and I sneaked an iron bar into his room and two into the boss’s, one for him and one for Simmons, and the nigger’s got a knife down one pants leg and a club down the other. When the chance comes they’re going to try to put cappy out of business while the nigger gets Garvin. The rest of ’em don’t amount to much. The trouble is the chance don’t come.

“The boss was worried about you last night. He said we’d have to try to get some grub to you since we didn’t have a chance to get the yacht. The last thing he says to me last night was, ‘Remember, we’ve got to get some grub to ’em tomorrow no matter what happens to us.’

“Well, when the cap went away this morning after he heard that shot, he set Barry to watching the boss and Simmons, and Doc’ all in the boss’s room. Garvin was set to doing a watch aft, and Riordan was set to pacing the deck to watch everything in general. The two guys who was hurt had guns, too. I knew Barry’d get the boss if we tried to start anything, so I just put on Wilson’s sweater and stuffed it full of food, and got my gun and waited for a chance to get away without being seen. But there was Garvin aft, near the shore I wanted to make, and Riordan doing the rounds. But I remembered what the boss’d said about getting you grub, and when Riordan was forward I took a chance.

“Garvin turned around just as I was getting ready to clout him and he got the butt right in the temple. Then I did a dive, and if I’d had ten feet farther to swim it would have been a ‘good-by Freddy,’ because the grub and rifle was pretty heavy, and Riordan took one shot at me just as I made the brush. Then I hiked it and swam the river, and I was hiding when you stood up and swore at cappy.”

“Did you swear?” demanded Betty, turning to me. “Did you really swear at him? Oh, I’m so glad; I was afraid you never did it.”

“And don’t you worry,” concluded Freddy, “the boss is all there and wide awake, and there ain’t going to be any fall-down: when the chance comes he’ll put the trick over and we’ll be out of the woods. He’s just living for that now.”

And Betty and I said as one—

“Good old George!”

“There’s only one thing worrying me,” resumed Freddy, peering out apprehensively. “The cap’ll be wise that I made a getaway to join you, and he’ll see my tracks where I crossed the river and come this way looking for the bunch of us.”

“That’s nothing to worry about,” I assured him. “Two of his men were within fifty feet of the cave a short time ago and didn’t see it.”

“What I’m worrying about,” said Betty, “is that you left George.”

“Hah? The boss? Why, how could I get the grub to you without leaving him? And he says we got to do that no matter what happened to us.”

“We could have got along without the food,” Betty continued, “and by leaving the yacht you weakened George’s plan. If he attempts to overcome Brack now he—why, he may be in danger of his life.”

“Sure thing. That’s understood. The boss knows that, but that ain’t what’s worrying him, not at all. If he can fix things right with you, that’s all he cares about. He told me so.”

“Chanler is himself again,” I said. “You remember I said he would be.”

Betty sat with her chin in her hands, thinking. Her eyes were turned in my direction, but she was seeing beyond me without noticing my presence. Suddenly she spoke the words that brought upon us the great crisis.

“I won’t have George risking his life on my account. I can’t bear that. I won’t have it.”

XXXV

For a moment after she spoke I experienced a sensation as if the sound, comfortable earth had dropped away from beneath me, a sensation of a great fall into a void. Then followed the impression that after all, Betty was a stranger; that I did not know her at all.

“I won’t have George risking his life for me,” she repeated quietly. “I—I’ll go back on board before that.”

I went from cold to warm. Freddy tried to speak and I silenced him with a look. When I spoke, my voice was hoarse and heavy.

“Miss Baldwin, you will not go aboard until Brack is beaten, and the yacht is in our possession. I am responsible to Chanler for your safety.”

There followed a trying period of silence.

“Why—why, Mr. Pitt!” Betty finally tried to laugh, but the grimness of my expression must have convinced her that laughter was out of place. “That was the first rude speech you have made. Do you realize how rude it was?”

I did not speak. Her solicitude for George had awakened in me an anger, adamite and smoldering, which grew with each minute. George must not risk his precious life! Freddy had risked his. I had risked mine. But George must be protected at all costs! And why? Why, because he meant so much to her that the lives of others, and her own safety, were insignificant in comparison? I made an attempt to smile.

“Mr. Pitt! Gardy!” she cried, shrinking. “Don’t look at me that way. What are you going to do?”

“I beg your pardon; I didn’t realize that I was looking at you in an offensive manner.”

“What—are you—going—to—do?”

I looked at the ground. It did not take me long to make my plans. I said—

“I’m going to pray that it’s a very dark night.”

From that moment the hearty camaraderie which had existed between us was gone. We seemed to have been moved far apart. Betty once more was Miss Baldwin; I was not Gardy, but Mr. Pitt. She literally drew away from me and from a distance cast puzzled glances in my direction.

Then we became formally polite to one another. When we spoke it was as if we had been but recently introduced, and we spoke only when it was necessary. And Freddy wrinkled his freckled forehead and glanced from Betty to me, frankly puzzled.

It was a long day for us all in the cave. When darkness finally began to fall we greeted it with relief. Freddy, peering out at the darkening sky, said:

“Well, your prayers have been answered all right: it’s going to be dark enough to suit anybody. Now put me next, Brains; what’s your stunt?”

“Brack doesn’t know that I’ve got this pistol,” I said.

“What of it?”

“As he thinks I’m unarmed—helpless—he won’t be on his guard—when I go aboard tonight.”

“Oh!” It was Betty who exclaimed, but she smothered the exclamation with her hand.

“What you going to do when you get on board?” asked Pierce.

“You’ll stay here with Miss Baldwin,” I continued, paying no attention to his query. “If everything goes as I hope, George will come down and bring you to the yacht.”

It was dark now and I prepared to leave.

“Hold on,” said Pierce. “What’s the use of your going swimming in that cold water? You’d have to swim the river, and then out to the yacht, and by the time you go on board you’d be so cold and stiff you wouldn’t be any good. Tell you what let’s do; let’s paddle up in the canoe, you ’n’ me. It’s so dark they’d never see us. Then you can get on board, warm and supple, and fit to do something.”

There was much sense in his argument, and after discussing it for awhile I agreed to it. Brack, of course, must not suspect Pierce’s presence.

“As soon as I go over the side you’re to paddle off and be ready to return to Miss Baldwin.”

“Sure. Anything you say, Brains.”

“Thank you,” said Betty stiffly, “but there will be no need for you to come back here for me. Mr. Pitt, just as surely as you go away without me I’ll leave this cave and go to the yacht alone. I mean it. I will not be left here. You can take me in the canoe, too. I will be as safe as Mr. Pierce.”

“You will stay right here,” said I.

“Will I!” she slipped past me, bounded through the brush, and stood outside the cave, ready to run. “I can find the yacht. You can’t catch me. Now, Mr. Pitt, what shall it be?”

Pierce promptly relieved the situation.

“We can land her at some point up there. That’ll be all right, won’t it?”

“Ask her,” I said.

“Yes; that will be all right,” she replied promptly.

With this understanding we carried the canoe down to the water, and with Betty in the middle, started up the fiord. As Pierce said, my prayers for a dark night seemed to have been answered.

So complete was the darkness that twice we grounded, having run into land which we were not able to see. The sound of the river current warned us when we had reached the head of the bay, and carefully following the shore we glided through the opening where I had seen Brack’s boat disappear.

“There—there she is, right ahead of us,” whispered Pierce, and in the inchoate darkness we made out a series of tiny lights, the gleam from the Wanderer’s cabin windows.

“She’s laying bows out with her stern near the shore on our port,” whispered Pierce as we backed water and lay still. “Her starboard’s toward us. There’s one ladder down at the stern and one at the bow, port side. Better take the bow one; the cap’s more’n likely to be aft. And there’s a good place to land Miss Baldwin, right here.”

We lay without moving or speaking for many long, distressful seconds.

“Mr. Pitt,” whispered Betty finally, “do you insist on going through with your mad plan?”

“Yes.”

We were silent again.

“All right,” said Betty.

Pierce silently moved the canoe to the shore on our port side, the shore toward which the Wanderer’s stern was turned, and without a word Betty stepped out.

“Pierce will come back here as soon as he sees me go over the side,” I whispered.

She made no reply. Then we paddled silently away, steering for the Wanderer’s bow.

I was conscious now of nothing but a spirit of elation. There was not a pang, not a fear in my thoughts. The old fright-chill along the spine, which hitherto always had come to me when approaching danger, was gone. I was like a boy turned loose for a holiday. All the considerations which cause men to fear danger I had put away. All the responsibilities which hold men to a cautious rôle in life had gone from me. My responsibility toward Betty would be discharged when I had removed for her the danger of Brack. And Betty cared so much for George Chanler that she wouldn’t have him risk his life for her, and consequently there was no reason why anything in the world mattered much to me.

“Faster!” I whispered, digging viciously at the water. “Hurry up; I want it over with.”

“Easy, Brains, easy.”

Pierce silently backed water. We were four or five lengths from the Wanderer’s starboard side, and though we were invisible in the darkness the lights and white paint of the yacht revealed her outlines and superstructure.

“There’s a boat in the water at the stern,” whispered Freddy. “Mebbe it’d be a good thing to cut her loose in case we have to make a getaway.”

“Cut nothing loose,” I whispered contentedly. “Move up to the bow ladder and let’s have it over with quickly.”

He took a stroke forward then backed again.

“Hey! There he is; walking aft. See him? By the last light aft.”

“Yes,” I breathed, as I made out Captain Brack’s figure where Pierce had indicated. “Now hurry and put me aboard, and I may surprise him.”

The canoe moved forward again. Pierce paddled in a semi-circle, heading away from the Wanderer’s side and curving back toward the bows. The yacht was all dark forward, save from a single gleam from a port-hole in George’s stateroom. Leaning well forward in the canoe I held my hands thrust out before me, and presently my finger-tips rested against the Wanderer’s sharp bow.

“Here’s the ladder—right here,” whispered Pierce. I moved the canoe backwards with my hands, and presently held the rope rungs of the ladder in my grasp. I reached up high above my head and gripped a rope rung firmly.

“Now hurry back to Miss Baldwin,” I whispered, and swung myself up.

Pierce did not answer at once.

“Do you hear?” I demanded.

“Oh, sure.”

I was well up the ladder then, but his tone prompted me to turn and look down. Pierce, with his rifle under one arm, was tying the canoe to the ladder. When, looking up, he saw that I had stopped and observed him he started guiltily, then leaped resolutely onto the ladder below me.

“Get off! Go back to the girl!” I commanded.

“I won’t,” said he. And we were hanging so, against the yacht’s sides, when Betty’s voice called softly from the shore beyond the stern:

“Oh, Captain Brack! Quick, please. I’m tired and afraid. Hurry, hurry! Take me aboard at once!”

XXXVI

A moment of silence followed, silence as complete as the darkness of the night. On the ladder Pierce and I hung as if frozen to the rungs. The tone of Betty’s call seemed to permeate the air; its pleading, compelling notes lingered like a perfume. Oh, the power of woman! The might of so slight a part of her as the nuances of her speech! For the call of Betty was a command. Nay, it was a force, a law, as indubitable as the law of gravity. It was surcharged with the thrill and power of Nature’s will. It was Woman. And Brack would go. He must go, in response to it. And Betty knew it.

Brack’s laugh, short and excited, sounded aft.

“Ah! Yes, yes; one minute.” His voice was exultant. “I’m coming.”

He must have leaped at the last words, for instantly there was a clatter as he dropped into the boat. Then the creak of an oar as he swung the boat clear.

“Where are you, Miss Baldwin?” he laughed.

And then, when it was too late, I recovered from the shock that had congealed me. I cried out, an involuntary, agonized cry, and as if in response a man come running swiftly to the ladder and peered over the rail.

“Who’s dere; who is it? Speak, or I’ll shoot!”

Head and voice I recognized as one of the most vicious of Brack’s men, and it was too late to attempt to retreat.

“It’s Mr. Pitt,” said I, and climbed upward.

“Hold on; stop right dere.”

I had thrown one leg over the guard rail. The man was a yard away, a revolver pointed at my chest.

“’S all right, Joe.” From below the quick-witted Freddy sent up a reassuring growl. “’S all right; let ’im go.”

“Hah?” The seaman, startled, bent forward to look, and I leaped, sinking both hands into his throat and bearing him to the rail.

In the same second Pierce seemed to be on the rail. His rifle rose over his head and came down on my man’s arm, knocking the revolver from his hand.

“The gun—the gun! Get his gat’!” whispered Freddy.

I had it even as he spoke, and with a weapon in each hand I ran aft, madly, unthinkingly, wishful only to follow whither Captain Brack had gone. Riordan was the first man I met, and as he retreated at the sight of me and tugged at his hip pocket, I struck at him, saw him fall, and went on with scarcely a pause.

I heard Freddy pounding at George’s stateroom, but I ran past. Garvin leaped at me from aft the main cabin. I fired twice at his right arm and heard his weapon clatter on the deck.

On the after-deck Barry caught me about the hips and threw me down, the violence of the fall throwing my weapons from my hands. I was beneath him and the man was trying to stab me as I hugged him tight to my breast. I felt the knife enter my thigh. Barry was the stronger, and I cried out a curse of despair.

“Hang tough for a jiffy, sir,” came Wilson’s calm voice from a companionway. He, too, was fighting. I heard the sound of two bodies falling. “Hang tough!”

I put all my strength into a paroxysm of pressure, but Barry managed to cut me once more ere Wilson, hobbling on one leg, came to my relief.

I found myself on my knees feeling ill.

“That’s three down,” said Wilson.

He was at the rail, pulling the stern sea-ladder up on deck. Vaguely I realized then that Wilson, too, had heard Brack leave the ship. Afterward I learned that he had attacked his guards at the sound of my first shot, which he had thought to come from Dr. Olson’s revolver as a signal for the revolt. In that way only had it been possible for him to reach me in time to save my life.

The negro and Garvin were fighting near us, with a stamping and roaring as of two great animals locked in battle. Like the hissing of an over-driven pump came the negro’s:

“Got you now; got you now, bad man.”

Garvin in turn panted.

“You —— nigger! You —— nigger!”

They whirled from the darkness into the shaft of light from a port-hole. The negro struck with some weapon; the thick glass crashed in splinters. They whirled on, into the dark again.

“Swing him around, Sam, and I’ll club him for you,” said Wilson quietly, hobbling after them.

“Don’ touch ’im!” pleaded the negro. “’Foh Gawd! Don’ nobody touch ’im. He’s mah meat.”

Forward, at George’s stateroom, there was a tumult; then cries and shots. The door was locked, and as I came running up, Pierce and Dr. Olson were fighting Riordan, and the man who had detected me on the ladder. In the stateroom George and Simmons were battling to keep their guards from joining the fight on deck.

I leaped upon Riordan from behind and Wilson, with his iron bar, began to beat down the door. Barry had recovered consciousness and with one of my pistols came hurrying forward, dancing around seeking for a chance to shoot one of us.

Pierce was knocked down, and as Barry sprang toward him, Wilson turned, and hurled himself clumsily at the fellow’s legs. Barry fell, leaped up, and still holding the revolver, went over the side. The other seaman did likewise at the sight of Wilson, and Riordan, felled by the butt of Dr. Olson’s revolver, soon followed his example.

“—— ’im! He copped my rifle, too!” spluttered Pierce, Riordan having snatched the weapon from the deck as he went over the side.

In the cabin cracked a shot and there came a shriek which we knew to be Simmons’s. Three of us threw our weight with Wilson’s, and the door went in.

George was on his feet, throttling one of the guards over a chair. Simmons lay like a bundle of old clothes in a corner. Near by the other guard, on all fours, strove to rise and fell flat. Wilson’s right fist smote George’s victim senseless and Chanler stood up, gory and calm.

“They’ve hurt Simmons bad,” he said. “Poor old Simmons. My fault. But I’ll pay that devil, Brack, out if I never do anything else as long as I live.”

The negro had cornered Garvin in the dining-saloon. These two had ceased to resemble human beings. They were all but naked, and their nakedness was red, with spots of white or black showing through. Garvin was crouching on one side of the table with a knife, and at the sight of the negro’s empty hands we sprang to help.

“Don’t spoil it, white folks, don’t spoil it!” growled the negro, moving toward his victim. “I done got ’im; he’s mah meat—mah meat!”

He knocked the knife from Garvin’s hand somehow. Then they wrecked the room with their hurtling falling bodies. The roar of battle rose to a crescendo and began to diminish. Garvin was losing.

“Guahd dat do’h!” cried the negro, but it was too late.

Garvin had turned to flee. In a bound he was in the doorway, one more and he was at the rail, and the negro cried in real agony as the bruiser vaulted over into the water.

“You got ’im plenty, Sam,” said Freddy.

Wilson was hobbling here and there on deck.

“We’ve cleared ship, sir,” he reported. “Now we’ve got to hold her.”

Then I remembered why I had started aft. I was in a fog. Presently I found myself trying to climb the after rail while a cluster of arms held me back.

“Betty! Brack!” I was muttering. “Over there. Let me go.”

“No, no, Gardy, old man. Steady down, Brains; you can’t walk the water. Easy, sir, easy.”

George, Freddy and Wilson; they were all holding me, pleading with me. They drew me forward toward the staterooms.

Suddenly I tore myself free. The light from the open door of George’s room reached up to and illuminated the port bow rail. I had seen a head appear where the ladder reached the deck. It was a small, wet head. Then showed a wet, white face and much wet hair, and finally over the rail came a very wet young woman, pausing bewildered in the glare of light and calling:

“Mr. Pitt! Gardy! Where are you?”

The fog cleared. I was sane again. In the shaft of light Betty Baldwin stood balanced ready to run forward at my response. Her right hand was at her bosom, her head on one side in an attitude of anxious listening, but the darkness hid us from her sight!

There was not one of us but was hideous to behold. Wilson, who had done the most fighting in spite of his wounded leg, was the least damaged and he required water, bandages, and fresh clothes, before being presentable. I closed George’s door, leaving the deck in total darkness.

“Everything is all right,” I said as quietly as I could. “Now come straight ahead.”

I met her in the darkness, caught her wet sleeve and guided her swiftly to the door of her stateroom.

“Go in and shut the door. Quick!”

She obeyed without questioning.

“Where’s Captain Brack?” I asked through the keyhole.

“Over there—ashore, I suppose. I slipped into the water and swam out here you know, as soon as I heard him go crashing into the brush where he thought I was.”

“You—what? You called—you swam?”

“That was why I called to him, of course,” she said. “To get him ashore and slip past him and come aboard. Was it too treacherous to be decent?”

“You—you fooled Captain Brack?” At first the thing seemed impossible. “You fooled Brack!” I laughed wildly because the joke was on the captain.

“Gardy—Mr. Pitt, are you all right? Is——”

“George is all right!” I cried. “Rest easy; he’s all right. But stay where you are.”

I ran aft to break the news. There was no need for this, however. Brack’s boat was even then scraping at our stern.

“Throw down that ladder!” he was bellowing. “Riordan! You —— swab! The ladder!”

Chanler leaned on the rail and called down into the darkness:

“You lose, cappy, Riordan’s overboard, and Wilson is captain. Come aboard, cappy. I promise you that I’ll see you hanged if it takes every cent I’ve got.”

“Ah save you dat trouble, boss,” laughed Black Sam, and fired instantly.

We heard Brack fall on his oars. The boat drifted away out of sight. Then we heard him move again. Presently the sound of a faint laugh came out of the darkness.

“Poor shooting! Pitt, you there?” he called easily.

“Yes,” I said, stepping forward.

“My only mistake was in underestimating you, Pitt. One tiny mistake in an otherwise perfect plan. You haven’t won yet, but—my compliments, Pitt.”

I saw the flash as he fired, a roaring, brain-splitting streak of red, which hurled me like a blast into the pit of oblivion.

XXXVII

Of what took place on board during the rest of that night I had only the vaguest of knowledge. Once I had an indistinct impression of consciousness, such as one may have through the film of opiates. Dr. Olson was explaining to some one that it was a pretty close call, considering that it wasn’t going to amount to anything. Brack’s bullet had struck me under the angle of the left jaw, had ranged upward through the muscles of the neck and gone out squarely above the occiput.

“Those cuts in his leg will give him more trouble,” the doctor was saying.

My next impression was of hearing the same sharp report as had ushered me into unconsciousness. I smiled. My senses had cleared now and I was sure that what I fancied I heard was simply the echo of Brack’s shot in my disordered mind.

I sank gratefully back toward the slumber that invited me, and then— Crack! Crack-crack! Crack-crack-crack! Up on the after deck a perfect splatter of shots which seemed echoed from a distance, drove the sleepiness from my head.

I opened my eyes and sat up. I was in bed in my own stateroom, and the gray light of dawn was coming through the port-hole. From a distance far off came two more reports, and on the steel plates of the Wanderer’s after cabin resounded two heavy, dull blows.

I was out of bed and on my feet ere the two shots from our stern spat out their reply. I understood the significance of those sounds now. Brack and his gang were attacking at the first light of dawn, and they had not caught our men napping.

My legs bent weakly under me as I stood up, the thigh which Barry had cut seemed numb and helpless, and my head whirled till I nearly fell. With my hands hugging the wall for support I made my way to the door. I wished to step out on deck, and so, naturally, in my tumbled mental condition it was the door leading into the cabin saloon that I found.

I opened the door but slightly and stopped. Betty was sitting before the door. Her back was toward me, there was a book in her lap and her hair was hanging down her back in the disordered condition of a woman who has kept ceaseless vigil, regardless of appearances, through the night.

Softly as I closed the door she heard and was up in a flash.

“Gardy! Mr. Pitt! Are you up?” she called, her hand on the knob. I had slipped the catch as I closed the door so she could not come in. “Do you want anything? I’ll get it for you. You mustn’t move, you know. Are you—are you feeling stronger—Mr. Pitt?”

“I am all right,” I said.

“Oh! Are you really? Are you able to get up?”

“Certainly.” I was flinging a dressing gown about me. “What is happening aft?”

Another volley of shots from the shore was answered from the yacht.

“Brack and his men shot Mr. Wilson, and now they’re trying to shoot the rest of us.”

“Badly? Is Wilson hurt badly?”

“I don’t know. I—I’ve been sitting here. You—you have been so terribly quiet for such a long time, Mr. Pitt.”

“And who’s back there? Who’s doing the shooting on our side?”

“All of them. Pierce, and the negro, and Dr. Olson, and George.”

I opened the door and stepped out.

“Oh! Oh, you mustn’t,—Mr. Pitt! Really you mustn’t. Go back—what are you going to do?”

I laughed.

“George mustn’t be allowed to risk his life, you know.”

She recoiled with a sudden wilting, as a child before an unexpected blow.

“Oh!” she moaned. “Oh! How can you?”

My weakness forced me to clutch the wall for support.

“I can’t,” I said, “unless you get me some whisky.”

She was still shrinking, her hands to her breast, and her face white.

“Oh! I didn’t know—I couldn’t believe—there was anything like—like this in you.”

“Hidden country,” I laughed, stumbling along the wall. “There’s hidden country in all of us.”

My hand was on the door of George’s stateroom. I pushed it open. Simmons was lying in George’s bed, a horrified expression upon his wooden-like countenance as he viewed his surroundings.

“Not my fault, sir,” he apologized as I betrayed surprise at seeing him there. “I was put here, sir; I couldn’t help it.”

“Glory be, Simmons! You’re looking sound.”

“Oh, I’m doing nicely, thank you, sir. A bit shot off the bottom of my liver, sir, the doctor says. I’ll do, says he, thank you.”

A revolver was lying on a table and I picked it up. It was loaded.

“Whisky, Simmons! Where is it? I’ve got to have some, quick.”

He grimaced guiltily.

“I—I had a tiny bottle in my coat, sir. It’s lying over there. If the bottle isn’t smashed—ah! The master’s silver flask, so it was. I—I had a bit of cold, sir, and there was no other bottle——”

I drank the stuff like water. My veins, which had felt empty and slack, seemed to fill with warm blood.

I drank again. My legs stiffened and grew firm. My head was in a whirl, but I had strength enough to move easily now, and I went out of the room with a rush. Betty tried to stop me as I went through the saloon, but I lurched on.

The sound of firing came to me as if from far away. In the whirl of my head it seemed first in one direction then in another. I steadied myself for an instant as I came out on deck. The yacht seemed to be heaving and falling, and presently it felt as if it were whirling in a maelstrom.

Where was the aft? Where was the firing? I held my head to steady it. The firing broke out afresh. There it was! It was in front of me. No, it was behind me. A non-drinker shouldn’t take so much whisky. Ah! There it was. I lurched forward, intending to go aft. It was not strange that I should cross the fore-deck on my way aft. Nothing was strange in my present condition. Not even the fact that Brack and Garvin were climbing over the rail at the bow, as I came forward.

I was very steady.

“Hello, Brack.”

At the sound of my voice and the sight of the revolver in my hand Garvin gave a spring backward and splashed into the water. Brack smiled and vaulted on to the deck. There was a wound on one side of his head where the negro’s bullet had marked him, but he bore himself as confidently and masterful as ever. He had two revolvers in his belt, but as I made ready to shoot him when his hands moved toward them he desisted and smiled again.

“So I didn’t quite get you, eh, Pitt? Well, it was pretty dark, though you did step out into the light like an accommodating lamb to the butcher. Well, what are you going to do?”

“Put up your hands.”

He looked at me, smiled, and calmly folded his arms across his chest.

“Putting up one’s hands is undignified. I do not do so. What are you going to do about it?”

I was nonplussed. Here I was, the victor. I was armed, he was helpless; and yet he had taken the upper hand. What did one do under such circumstances?

“This revolver is loaded, Brack,” I warned, but I knew that my speech was futile.

“I know it is: I can see the lead in the cylinder. That doesn’t make any difference. To be of any danger to me said loaded revolver must be in the hands of a man who is capable of shooting another man. You can’t do that, Pitt; you know you can’t. You’re too civilized. Try it. Just try it. Pick out a certain spot on me—my forehead, for instance—point the gun at that spot and pull the trigger. Try it. You’ll find that it’s a very hard thing to do—impossible for you, in fact.”

He laughed low.

“No, Pitt, you can’t shoot me.” With imperceptible movements he began to approach me. “Do you hear me, Pitt: You can’t shoot me—you can’t shoot me.”

Suddenly he stopped. His countenance seemed to break into flame. I heard a light step behind me and understood.

“Go back, Betty!” I said, keeping my eyes on Brack. “Go back!”

I was retreating slowly. For the moment Brack was invincible, he was great! His colossal will was mastering us. With it he was driving me back, helpless in spite of my weapon, and he was holding Betty fascinated to the spot.

“Go back!” My shoulder had touched hers. I turned to look at her.

“Gardy!” she gasped, pointing.

I turned. Brack’s mighty spring had carried him on to us, and I sprang between him and Betty. He paid scarcely any attention to me, merely struck with his right arm and smashed me to the deck. Then he had Betty in his arms, kissing her, sweeping her to his breast like a struggling child, and retreating toward the rail, the girl held as a shield before him.

I sprang up and ran toward them. My weapon had been knocked from my hands, and as Brack crouched to spring over the rail with his burden I threw myself on him. He shifted Betty to his left arm and with his right drove me back with a single blow.

“Never fear, Pitt,” he laughed, tugging at his revolver, “I don’t intend leaving before I’ve settled you.”

I rushed again as his weapon came free. I struck him between the eyes and tore Betty from his grasp. My blow staggered and blinded him for the instant. He was at the rail brushing his hand across his eyes when two rifle reports sounded far across the bay and Brack fell flat on the deck without a struggle.

“But you’ve got to admit he was game—game as a mad ol’ silver-tip,” said the patriarchal Slade when a boat had brought him and Harris aboard from the point from which they had shot Brack. “A devil he was, with a twisted laugh, but too game to live if he was licked. Me ’n’ Bill we was hiding up in the hills and come down to take a peek when the shooting begun. We see him and the other fellow crawling up the anchor-chains, and Brack was driving the other fellow with a gun.

“We couldn’t believe it was him at first; didn’t seem any man’d try anything so desp’rit; but when we see you scuffling with him, Mr. Pitt, we knew it was him, and savvied how he’d had his gang to start shooting from the other shore to draw everybody aft so we could take one desp’rit whirl at you. Me ’n’ Bill we put the sights on him then, but we was afraid of hitting your young lady. So I prayed a little for a clear shot, and the Lord answered my prayer pretty pronto. Amen.”

XXXVIII

Then the Wanderer for days became a hospital ship, for with the end of Brack, his crew, including Garvin and Riordan, fled promptly out of the Hidden Country into the vast Alaskan wilderness that lay beyond the gap in the mountains, and with the sudden release from danger came the inevitable collapse of the wounded members of our company.

Wilson now had a bullet-wound through each leg and another through his great chest, and for the time being was helpless. Pierce told me afterward how Wilson, suddenly shot down on the after-deck, had borrowed a chew from Black Sam and, lying flat on his back, had reloaded the rifles in the fight that followed.

Pierce, now that the excitement of danger was gone, discovered that Riordan’s boot had broken one of his ribs in the battle at Chanler’s state-room; Black Sam had lost so much blood that he collapsed and was content to sit basking in the sun like a sick bear; and Dr. Olson was a nervous and physical wreck. Only Chanler had escaped disablement. He was scarred and bruised, but he was up and around while the rest of us lay helpless.

Dr. Olson ordered me back to bed and filled me up with opiates. My affair with Brack had not been good for my wounds, and absolute quiet was necessary to repair the damage which had been done to them. Slade and Harris remained on board, making themselves useful with the skill and adaptability of pioneers. And George, in his right mind, and Betty were together.

My days and nights for a space then were a series of semi-lucid moments alternated with nightmares. In the former I was at times conscious that Betty was sitting at my side. Occasionally I caught her studying me anxiously. When I returned her scrutiny she looked away. Next it would be Slade or Harris who was with me, then George. Always there seemed to be some one.

The nightmares were rather trying. Two things ran through them consistently: the sound of Betty’s voice as she had cried out passionately for Captain Brack, and the spectacle of Brack dragging her to the rail. Then I would wake up raving and presently some one would be holding me down, urging me to be quiet.

On one of these occasions, after midnight, it was George who held me in bed and soothed me.

“It’s all right, Gardy old man; it’s all right, I tell you,” he was saying. “She’s all right; safe and sound asleep in her room.”

“Brack—Brack’s got her!” I moaned.

“No, no, no! Can’t you hear me? She’s all right. Gardy! Old man. You know me, don’t you?”

I returned to sanity. Chanler was grimly trying to smile.

“What have I been saying?” I gasped.

“Oh, nothing.” He tried to pass it off carelessly. “Nothing—nothing at all.”

“Tell me.”

“Oh, just about Brack and Betty; you thought he’d got her.”

He looked away.

“What else?”

“Oh, shut up, Gardy! You were out of your head. D’you s’pose I paid any attention to what you were saying? Now drop that. How are you feeling?”

“Embarrassed,” I replied.

“Don’t!” he protested. “Don’t you do it. It—it wasn’t anything like that. It—it was all right. I knew it anyway.”

“Knew what?”

He looked at me for a long time. Then he appeared to change the subject.

“Everything’s all right, old man. We’ve come to an understanding, Betty and I. It’s all settled as it should be. I’ve had a lot of time for long talks with Betty.” He laughed. “She’s opened her heart to me, at last, and told me everything. We—we’ve been exploring hidden country, Betty and I. Good phrase of Brack’s, that.”

I raised myself and held out my hand.

“Congratulations, George. I knew it would come out all right.”

His brows came down in puzzled, skeptical fashion as he took my hand. There was in his expression a tinge of suspicion, and he smiled as one smiles when humoring a sick man.

“There’s hidden country in you, all right, old boy,” he said. “You ought to play poker.”

More sleep and more nightmares, the latter now complicated by the presence of George. Brack no longer was dragging Betty to the rail; she was standing by George’s side; and Brack and I were playing poker. Then at last came the sane untroubled sleep of normal condition, and I awoke one morning ravenously hungry and glad that the sun was bright outside.

“You can join the convalescent squad now,” said Dr. Olson, and under the awning on the fore-deck I joined Pierce and Simmons, stretched at ease in luxurious deck-chairs.

“Though it isn’t my fault, sir,” protested Simmons, “the master is not doing right by himself in putting me here.”

I sank down into my chair and looked over water and hills with the wondering eyes of a man who has come back to the world after a long absence. And I found it good.

The Wanderer lay in the same spot where Pierce and I had found her on that dark night, Wilson still being too weak to navigate her and there being nobody else capable of the task. The water about us was blue and still, and the birch and pine of the shores were mirrored in it to the smallest shade and detail. Back from the bay rose the age-old hills, step after step of them, growing higher and higher, until they became the great mountain-range which shut the valley in from the rest of the world. And the sun was so bright that I closed my eyes, and the primal peace soaked me to the bone.

Betty came and went, and George; and they made a splendid pair as they rounded the decks on their promenade. They went canoeing together, and Old Slade swore, and we agreed with him, that “there couldn’t be no purtier sight than that on God’s green earth.”

Then George would join us under the awning, and Slade and Harris and he would talk over the development of their property. For George was going in partnership with them. The free pay dirt of their mine was about played out and machinery and labor to tear the hills to pieces were necessary for the further working of the find.

“And what about the bones up at Petroff Sound?” I asked.

“No use—not necessary now,” George replied. “Besides, this is easier, and nearer to Fifth Avenue, and these last days have been so strenuous that I’m about filled up.”

I thought over what he said.

Not necessary to go to Petroff Sound now. No, of course not. Betty had decided that gold-mining was more fun. And why go on to Petroff Sound when they had already come to an understanding.

George did not display quite the elation he should have done under the circumstances, I thought; but he was so blasé that even the winning of Betty wouldn’t keep him animated for long.

Betty finally came and sat with us. She talked to Pierce, to Simmons, and to me; and at me she looked with puzzlement in her quiet gray eyes and bit her under lip and looked away.

“Do you feel so completely a stranger to me?” she whispered, drawing her chair near to mine.

“Like a stranger?” I said. “Why do you ask that?”

“Because you look at me as if—as if we were just speaking acquaintances.”

“I didn’t know,” I apologized. “I’ll do better. You,” I continued, looking at her, “don’t look as happy as I expected you would.”

“One doesn’t,” she whispered, rising to go, “when one’s in a hidden country and nobody will help one out.”

“Help you out?” I whispered, but she was gone.

I wearied my brains in vain puzzling over her meaning; but that evening Dr. Olson whistled and wondered whence had come the new strength which animated my pulse, my eyes, my whole being.

“And that makes two of you,” said he, “because Wilson’s sitting up shaving himself and says he’ll take the yacht out to sea tomorrow.”

XXXIX

And so came the last day in Kalmut Fiord; and I greeted its dawning from the Wanderer’s decks, where I had paced at intervals during the night, and I was not tired. In amazement I watched the sun roll back the fog-banks from the hills, for I was seeing with new eyes, and the sense of a new beginning, of a freshening of life, was upon me.

That same incomprehensible force which was clearing the valley of its nightly cloak of gray was stirring me, troubling me, lifting me. Vaguely—for my thoughts were elsewhere—I sensed the quickening of my being and knew that never had I been so thoroughly alive.

That night had been a period of alternate joy and torture to me. I flung myself on my bed, but the stateroom seemed insufferably small and confining.

I sprang up and went out, pacing the decks. I passed Betty’s state-room and the thrill that leapt within me sent me staggering on, drunken with new feelings. I passed Chanler’s room, and the thrill died and I was bitter. I sought the fore-deck and in my mind reenacted the meeting with Brack. There he had stood, there Betty, here myself. There her shoulder had touched mine and here I had met Brack as he hurled himself upon her. There Brack had kissed her, while I lay on the deck; there near the rail he had held her, and there I had taken her from him and for a brief moment had held her in my arms.

I pictured the night when she had called to him, and the memory of her tone was like a storm, shaking me to my knees. I looked in on Chanler and found him awake and reading. There was in his eyes the strength of a man who has won through a crisis and found peace. And well there might be! I told him that I wished to get back to Seattle, so I might quit him, as soon as possible, and went out before he could reply.

Old Slade, standing the dog-watch, approached me wonderingly and asked if I couldn’t sleep.

“Sleep!” I sneered. “Why should a man want to do anything so simple as sleep when he can walk out here beneath the stars and torture himself with thoughts.”

He stroked his long beard. “Pain cometh to all men——”

“So I’ve heard,” I replied curtly, and walked away.

And so I greeted the dawning of our last day in the Hidden Country unslept; and yet I was as fresh as Wilson when he came hobbling up to judge the weather.

“A beautiful day, Mr. Pitt,” said he, after studying the sky. “The good weather will hold, and short-handed as we are that’s what we must be praying for.”

“We sail today, then?”

“This afternoon, sir.”

“Good!” I said. “It will be a relief to get out of here.”

I breakfasted alone. From the cabin-door I saw Betty Baldwin come from her stateroom, stand blinking in the morning sun and filling her lungs with the tingling air. And she was beautiful to my eyes as she had never been before, and I entered my stateroom and locked the door.

Hours afterward I heard Black Sam dropping the paddles into a canoe alongside; heard him telling Betty that the craft was ready. Presently Chanler knocked on my door.

“Oh, Gardy! Come out here.”

I flung open the door.

“Betty wants to have one last paddle down the bay,” he said casually.

“Well,” I replied, “why doesn’t she go?”

“Can’t go alone comfortably in that long canoe, you know. It won’t handle except with some one in the bow.”

“Are you busy?” I tried to be sarcastic and failed.

“It’s your turn to go,” he said. “She—she said so, old man. Go along, now. Good luck.”

I took my place in the bow without a word, without our eyes meeting. I was in no shape to paddle and sat with the paddle across my knees.

Betty began to paddle. Presently she stopped. We sat silent while the canoe drifted.

“I’d like to see our—to see that cave again, if you don’t mind,” she said timidly. “Do you?”

“Why should I?” I said.

Not a word more did we speak as we went through the gap into the bay proper nor while she paddled down to our landing-place. She steered the canoe past the rock where we had gone ashore to avoid leaving tracks behind us, and landed on the sandy beach. I got out stiffly and sat down upon a boulder.

“We’re not going to play Injun this morning, then?” she said with a wan attempt at gaiety.

“No,” said I. “Why should we? There’s no necessity now.”

“Don’t—don’t you ever play Injun except when it’s necessary?” she said reproachfully.

I did not reply.

“Didn’t you like to play Injun that time?”

“It served its purpose,” I said.

She cast at me a swift and troubled glance, bowed her head, and stepped out. Without looking back she started up the hill, and presently I rose, without any conscious effort on my part, and began to follow.

Once she stopped and looked behind her; I only felt it; I dared not look to see. For the tumult which woke within me at the sight of her as she moved through that primitive scene frightened me. It seemed to lift me above, or cast me below, considerations of right or wrong. My conventional self whispered that I was treading on dangerous ground; that I must not go up the hill. But I went, even as Brack had gone, in answer to Betty’s call, but with my eyes held fearfully on the ground.

“Look!” she cried at the cave’s mouth. “The foliage has grown so in a few days that you scarcely could tell we’d ever had an entrance there.”

I tore the brush aside to make a way for her and stood aside with eyes averted.

“Aren’t you going in—Mr. Pitt?” she asked softly.

“No,” I said. “Why should I?”

She sighed and crumpled up a little and entered the cave alone. For awhile there came no sound from within, but I dared not look to see what she was doing. Then she began to move around.

“Oh, the poor little branches!” She was half-whispering to herself. “All withered up and dead, all gone from their pretty little trees. Poor, poor little leaves. And they looked so bright and hopeful once, and now they’re gray and dead. And the moss is drying. The soft, pretty moss! All turned hard and dry. What a pity! What a little, little pity!”

She was silent for awhile. I peered in and saw her on her knees, her hands tenderly stroking the withered moss with which we had carpeted the cave.

“Good-by, little cave,” she whispered. “By-by.”

She did not come out at once. There was a moment during which I turned my back on the cave, not daring to look in, and the only motion and sound in the world was that of the young Summer breeze stirring through the age-old scene.

“Mr. Pitt—, Gardy.” She was only whispering, yet her voice was strong enough to reach forth and sway me where I stood. I did not reply. The fight was going against me. Flight would have saved me, yet I would not fly. But if I trusted myself to speak, I would be lost.

“Aren’t you going to bid our cave good-by?”

I took a step away. I should have taken many; for I felt then that right and safety prescribed that I step out of the lives of Betty and George, promptly and forever.

And seconds passed, seconds that seemed minutes, and I hoped that she would not speak again.

Presently she was standing behind me. I knew it, though I had not heard or seen her come. Straight ahead I looked, out over the bay, denying the force that urged me to do otherwise.

“Gardy!”

“Don’t!” I moaned. “Go back—get in the canoe; go back to George—alone—quick!”

“Gardy!”

She placed her fingers on my arm. And I turned around and faced her, because I could not do otherwise. Then suddenly all the winds in the world seemed to be pressing upon me, drawing, coaxing, forcing me toward her. One agonized cry my conscience sent up in protest at the wrong I did. Then I swept her to me; I held her against my breast; I kissed her; then tore myself away.

Slowly, painfully I lifted my gaze from the ground to take my punishment from her eyes. And then my heart leaped and stopped within me. For Betty, with her hands clasped rapturously before her, was looking up at me with the soft flame of grateful happiness in her expression.

“Oh, Gardy, Gardy!” She swayed her shoulders a little. “Then you do care for me; you do—you do—don’t you?”

“Betty!”

“Oh, oh!” She teetered up and down on her toes, unable to contain herself. “He cares for her; he isn’t going to leave little Betty all lonesome and unhappy!”

I saw her and heard her in a half-daze.

“Betty!” I cried. “What does this mean?”

“It means that I’m happy—happy! I’m the happiest girl in the world!”

“Happy? Now? Because I kissed you, when you’re engaged to George?”

It was her turn to stare blankly.

“Engaged to George?” she said.

I stammered brokenly a flood of words.

“He said you’d come to an understanding—that everything was all right—and as it should be.”

“That’s true. Oh, that’s very true!”

“That you’d opened your heart to him.”

“I did—I did!”

“And—and I knew by the look in his eyes as well as his saying so that you had come to an understanding.”

“And you knew right, Gardy; perfectly right.”

“Then, what——”

“I did open my heart to him, and I told him everything. And we both knew it was all right—everything all right—and as it should be.”

My voice grew small and faint and all but failed me.

“Then—then what was it you told him, Betty?”

She wrung her hands, and her eyes were filled with tears, but neither the gesture nor the tears were those of distress.

“Oh, Gardy, my boy!” she cried holding out her arms. “Are you going to make me propose to you?”

XL

We stayed there at the cave much longer than we had planned. At times, during the forenoon, conscience smote us.

“Really, they’ll be worrying about us on the yacht,” said I.

“They certainly will,” agreed Betty.

“They’re probably getting ready to sail now.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“We’re short-handed; I ought to be there to help,” I suggested.

“You certainly had.”

“We’d better go.”

“Oh, positively!”

And then we would forget the yacht, the imminence of sailing, everything but ourselves, for a considerable space of time. It was all a little too wonderful for me to grasp intelligently, but Betty accepted it with the woman’s genius for such events.

“I don’t understand?” I repeated over and over. “You had an understanding with George while I was knocked out, and George seemed satisfied?”

“Yes; he was satisfied, dear. He was fine enough and strong enough to be that.”

“And you told him?”

“Gardy, dearest! Are you going to make me say it after all?”

“Positively. You know I’m harsh and stern. You told George——”

She clasped her arms about me, pressing against my breast, surrender and victory in her upturned face.

“I told him that I loved you. I told him that if you didn’t get well—oh, my boy, my boy! I was so frightened over you!”

“And George was satisfied with that?”

“Yes. He had accepted it by that time. He said he knew it from the moment I came on board, and he knew now that it was all right.”

After a long silence I persisted—

“When did you know it, Betty?”

She blushed.

“I don’t want to tell you that.”

I coaxed.

“Well, if you must know, I—I hoped from the first time I saw you.”

“You hoped! Good heavens, dear! Why didn’t you let me know. I—I didn’t think I had a chance.”

She snuggled more closely against me.

“A girl can’t let a man know she loves him until she knows that he loves her, dear. You seemed so far away, and so—so disinterested. I was afraid you would never let me know that—that you loved me.”

“But I thought it was George, Betty. How could I let you know? You see, it’s the first time I’ve done this sort of thing.”

“You dear, blind darling!”

“I know it now. I see. But even now I can’t see why—I can hardly believe——”

“Tut, tut!” She pinched my arm. “Can he believe now? Isn’t it real, to him?”

“I’ve acted like a brute since the night we left the cave, Betty.”

“So you have. Deep, ’bysmal brute.”

“I was angry because you said you wouldn’t have George risking his life for you. I was jealous.”

“Oh, darling! Were you really? I gloat!” She rocked in my arms, then grew suddenly serious. “How could I have him risking his life for me, Gardy, dear? I had nothing to give him. I knew then it was you, you; only you. I had no right to let George make any sacrifice for me. You—you were my man. Do you understand?”

“Yes, dear.”

“And when I called to poor Captain Brack that night, Gardy, I was calling to you with my heart. Oh! I was calling so to you. Do you understand that, too, dear?”

“Yes; yes!”

“And—and you heard, too, didn’t you, Gardy? You heard me, because you wanted to hear it, didn’t you? And when we came here this morning, and you were so far-awayish I was afraid you hadn’t heard at all. Oh, Gardy!” She looked up with eyes wet from happiness too great to be suppressed. “Isn’t life good to us? Isn’t it glorious to be alive!”

“And think of it!” I whispered. “We’re just beginning a new life—just beginning to live.”

“Yes,” she whispered, stroking my hand. “We’ve explored the hidden country.” Then she quoted Brack: “‘There is hidden country in all of us; and until we’ve explored it we don’t know what it is to live.’”

A silence fell upon us as deep, as primitive as the aged rocks about us, and ere we spoke again the Wanderer’s siren had sent its strident notes down the fiord warning us that it was time for luncheon.

“I suppose we must really go now,” sighed Betty as we rose. “Ah, little cave, little cave!” she murmured, holding her arms out to it. “You are a good little cave and you helped make one little girl very, very happy.”

“And one man, too,” said I. “We’ll never forget this cave, dear, even though the time we spent in it was trying enough.”

“No, we’ll never forget it.” Her grave, gray eyes were looking far out over the fiord. “It has become a part of our lives. It has all become a part of our lives—our new lives, Gardy, dear. We’ll not forget any of it. Oh, dearest! Maybe sometime we can come back here, and camp here, and remember all these wonderful days. You’ll never forget them, and what they’ve meant to us, will you, dear?”

“We will neither of us forget as long as we live!”

“Yes. I feel that, too. We’ll look back, and we’ll never forget any of it, not even Captain Brack.”

“Poor Brack!”

She leaned against me, as if seeking shelter from the sad thoughts of the moment.

“Yes, we’ll even remember him with gladness, Gardy. Won’t we?”

“Yes. Of course. For it was Brack who led us into the hidden country.”

“Yes; yes.” She lifted her eyes slowly to mine. “He led us into the hidden country; but, oh, Gardy, my heart! What was it that led us out!”

And I answered with my lips, but not with words.

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December, 1916 issue of Adventure magazine.

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