Kayak was right. Within twenty-tour hours the worst southwest gale experienced racked the Island. The strange reverberating roll from the south Cliffs beat with weird insistence on their ears for three long days and nights. When the weather cleared the immediate need for shellfish sent Jean and Harlan out among the rocks again.
They were coming home from Skeleton Rib with their pails full of "gumboots," making a desultory search for pay-sand, which no one had seen for weeks. They left the beach and turned toward the little lake visible from the cabin porch. The storm had shifted the cannon-ball shaped boulders which characterized that part of the shore, stripped the tundra of every sign of vegetation, and exposed the brown turf beneath. Gregg in restoring his knife to his pocket, dropped it. As he stooped to pick it up a look of astonishment crossed his face. He sank on his knees and eagerly scanned the brown surface beneath.
"Jean!" There was excitement in his voice as he beckoned her. "Look!"
The girl rushed to his side. She bent to look and caught her breath.
The dark surface of the turf was flecked with glittering colors of gold.
CHAPTER XXVII
SPRING
Once again gold cast its magic spell over the Island of Kon Klayu. The daily food hunting was alternated with preparations for mining the gold-bearing turf—the top of which had caught, like the nap of a blanket, the flakes of yellow metal washed up by the storms of years. Though the men knew they had not yet found the source of the Island gold, they were confident there was a small fortune in sight.
In his enthusiasm Boreland put behind him for a time the growing hatred for the White Chief of Katleean that was slowly eating into his heart, and with Kayak Bill and Harlan went about the "dead work" that preceded the actual mining. There were puddling-boxes and sluices to be built at the edge of the little lake off Skeleton Rib, and the top of the gold-carrying turf was to be cut up into squares and piled like cordwood until they were ready to shred it and run it through the sluices.
While the work went on everyone kept a sharp lookout for cannery ships going west, for along the Alaskan coast the first sign of spring is the coming of the fishing fleet from the States.