“Have we not kept the law?” With each question nearer and nearer Björk brought the black menace of his face.
“Have we not had the faith that moveth mountains? Have we not served in hardship? Have we not waited in poverty till this hour?”
“Till this hour?” said Christianson, getting up slowly out of his chair.
Björk arrested his own dreamlike advance with a suddenness that seemed to wake him. He stopped, looked round, and clutched at the back of a chair.
“Shut the door,” he commanded.
His chief obeyed. When Christianson turned round again, Björk was staring over the reindeer-herder’s head, piercing the infinite depths of space, while he held tight to every-day existence by the back of a chair.
“Brethren,” he said, “the angel of the Lord has been with me. He has shown me great riches.”
Hjalmar the herder pulled himself together and shook off his growing nervousness. There was nothing uncanny in this after all. A vision of riches was only too common since the Klondike had crazed men’s brains. Björk saw that even Christianson looked less moved.
“I tell you,” the seer burst out, “this is the answer to all our prayer, the reward of all our work. The angel took me westward up the coast. I see it now!” He unlocked his clutching hands, raised them outstretched on a level with his eyes and with hypnotic slowness moved the right hand east, the left one west.
“A sand-spit,” he said, “where the heathen gather. Beyond—a flat country, where no tree grows. But the river mouth is choked with sea-drift. A strange shaped hill. One of old Thor’s workshops. Where he hammered the sword of the gods, we shall forge weapons against the ungodly. Weapons of gold. For the river of that country—the angel showed me the sands of it! And the sands, Christianson, the sands were full of gold!”