“‘Just you wait,’ said the white man. He took the bone bowl down to the bank. He filled it full, and three times he ‘panned’ the gravel of that creek. And every time he got gold!”
“Gwacious!” said Jack, in an excited whisper.
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Mar, “when he saw colors the third time he just poured the stuff wet into his handkerchief, and told the Esquimau boy he was ready to go now. As he went up the bank, he passed the bones again. ‘I wonder if he knew!’ the castaway thought, and as he went on he thought more and more, and he got solemner and solemner. He said to himself: ‘A gold mine will do me just about as much good as it did Old Bones, if I have to stay up here with the Esquimaux. We’ll go back the other way,’ he called to the boy, and the boy didn’t think much of the plan. But the white man kept looking all round in every direction, to see if there was the least little trail leading anywhere, or the smallest human sign. Only those bones shining so white down there on the bank! The castaway went on, feeling pretty sick and anxious, till he looked straight up and saw off there against the blue, that great anvil, plainer than ever. The nose quite sharp and finely cut, the top as flat as our dining-table, and the waist gouged in exactly as a real anvil is. ‘Well, I won’t give up going to the top,’ he said out loud, ‘and if there are any settlements—’ It was a crazy thing to do, but he did it; and when he got to the top he saw something he wouldn’t have seen in time, if he hadn’t climbed Anvil Rock.”
“What did he see?” Jack gathered together his sprawled-out body and sat up.
Mar’s eyes looked over the little boy’s head into space. “No settlements. Beyond the creek, barren hills to the north. No hope that way. East and west the tundra stretched to the horizon line level as the ocean. No hope right or left. He turned round and saw off there to the south the coast where he’d been wrecked, and the sand-spit the Esquimaux were making ready to leave, and beyond that, against the horizon—what was that! He nearly fell off the rock. For a two-masted schooner was lying a couple of miles off the shore. Two masts! It flashed over him those were the two poles he’d seen sticking up above the tundra, several hours before. Well, he got down off that rock double quick, and he nearly killed himself tearing back to the coast, and signaling the ship. He was only just in time—they were weighing anchor.”
“Well,” said Jack, with a long breath of relief, “it was a good fing he climbed vat funny hill!”
“Y—yes,” said Nathaniel Mar. His tone was hardly satisfactory.
“Didn’t he get back to his fwiends all wight?”
“Oh, yes, he got back all right.”