"But this Chukalook Bank of the Road Agent's map, where the pay gravel and the lignite coal lie—supposing that it's the same as this little unnamed dot marked on the charts—seems to be right on the international boundary line. We'll have to wait until we get there to make accurate observations."
"Can you do that, too, Mr. Juneau?"
"Me? No! I can take a sight of course, but not accurate enough where it's a matter of minutes or even seconds of a degree. But Captain Robertson can. Like many of these amateur yachtsmen, he's a better navigator than the captain of some Atlantic liners. It's his hobby. Besides, he's got instruments of precision aboard that an admiral would envy. What's more, he's a certificated man, and his say-so on a nautical observation of longitude would be legal in the courts. Mine wouldn't."
"And suppose the island should prove to be on the Russian side?"
"Then, young lady, you'll have to turn Russian!"
"What nonsense! You know I wouldn't. No, but speaking seriously?"
"Well, seriously, then, you'd have to buy the island from the Bolsheviks, or from the Eastern Siberian Republic, or from the Japanese, or whoever happens to be claiming it. International rights up in the Asiatic Arctic are badly mixed up, these days. And that wouldn't be the worst of it. You'd have to pay stiff royalties and you wouldn't be sure of any sort of protection—unless it was the Japanese."
"We'll buy it, if we have to!" declared Jameine decidedly. "I'm not going to have anything happen that will spoil Uncle Jim's strike!"
"He's a regular dad to you, Miss Evans, eh?"
"He's the only one I ever remember," the girl replied. "My real father went up to Skagway, just a few weeks after I was born, only having stayed down in Montana long enough to see me. And, as you know, Mr. Juneau, he went over the Chilkoot Pass with Uncle Jim and never came back any more. Mother died when I was quite small. I know Uncle Jim feels that 'Bull's little gal' is his own. I feel so, too!"