Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 2 — page 116: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE wash it out on the way home. I'll strip that beach down to bedrock if I have to work the toes an’ fingers off ’em.”’ By noon the schooner was glazed in as firmly as a toy model that is mounted in a glass sea. The wind blew itself entirely out, but the current bore them steadily on to the clamorous shore, where the swells were creating promontories, bays, cliffs, and chasms in the piled-up confusion of the floes pounding on the rocks, breaking up or sliding atop each other in noisy confusion. The marble-whiteness of the ice masses was set off by the blues.and soft violets of their shadows, and by a pearly sheen wher- ever the planes caught the light at a proper slant for the play of prisms. Beautiful as it was, the sight was fearful to Rainey, in common with the crew. Only Lund sur- veyed it nonchalantly. “Tt’s all bustin’ up fast,” he said. “ All we need is a little luck. If we ain’t got that there’s no use of worryin’. We can’t blast ourselves out o’ this without riskin’ the schooner. We ought to be thankful we froze in gentle. There ain’t a plank started. The floe 1] fend us off. There ain’t enny big chunks enny way near us aft. Luck— to make a decent landin’, is all we need, an’ it’s my hunch it’s comin’ our way.” His “‘ hunch ” was correct. Though they did not actually make the little bay on which the treasure beach debouched, they fetched up near it against a broken hill of ice that had lodged on the sharp slopes of a little promontory, making the connection without further damage than a splitting of the forward end of their encasing floe, with hardly a jar to the Karluk. Lund sent men ashore over the ice, climb- ing to the promontory crags with hawsers by which they tied up schooner, floe and all, to the land. If the broken hill suffered further catastrophe, which did not seem likely, its fragments would fall upon the floe. In case of emergency Lund ordered men told off day and night to stand by the hawsers, to cast loose or cut, as the extrem- | ity needed. The main danger threatened from follow- ing floes piling up on theirs and ramming over it to smash’the schooner, but that was a risk that must be met as it evolved, and ARGOSY. there did not seem much prospect of the happening. It was dark before they were snugged. The men volunteered, through Hansen, to commence digging that night by the light of big fires, so crazy were they at the near-_ ness of the gold. But Lund forbade it. “You'll work reg’lar shifts when you git started,” he said. ‘An’ you won’t start till ter-morrer. We’ve got to stand by the ship ter-night until we find out by mornin’ how snug we’re goin’ to be berthed.” All night long they lay in a pandemonium of noise. After a while they would become used to it as do the workers in a stamp- mill, but that night it deafened them, kept them awake and alert, fearful, with the tremendous cannonading. The bite of the frost made the timbers of the Karluk creak and its thrust continually worked among the stranded masses with groaning thunders and shrill grindings, while the surf ever boomed on the resonant sheets of ice. The place held a strange mystery. On top of the main cone the volcanic glow hung above the crater chimney, reflected waveringly on the rolling clouds of smoke that blotted out the stars. There were no tremors, no rumblings from the hidden fur- nace, only the flare of its stoking. The stars that were visible were intensely bril- liant points, and, when the moon rose, it was accompanied by four mock moons bound in a halo that widely encircled the true orb. The moon-dogs shone intermittently with prismatic colors, like disks of mother-of- pearl, and the moon itself was fur-rayed. Under moon and stars the coast snaked away to end in a deceptive glimmer that persisted beyond the eye-range of definite dimensions. And, despite all the sound, muffled and sharp, of splinterings and ex- plosions, of the reverberation of the swell, outside all this clamor, silence seemed to gather and to wait. Silence and loneliness. It awed the crew, it invested the spirits of Peggy Simms and Rainey, gazing at the mystic beauty of the Arctic landscape. The walls of forced up ice shifted about them and came clattering down, booming on their floe as if it had been a drum, and threatening to tilt it by sheer weight had they not been fairly grounded forward. .OO (COLMMUCE S (E@)