There was a burst of excited exclamations from all sides.
Every one turned to Jim, who was looking out across the sea toward Alaska.
"Bull, old pardner," he said softly, "I reckon I've made good for your little gal!"
CHAPTER XII
A SIBERIAN FILIBUSTER
By July, Chukalook Bank was humming with noise. The clank of machinery, the pounding of stamp mills, and the grinding smash of giant jets of water driven from hydraulic nozzles, set vibrating the tiny islands on the borders of the Arctic Ocean.
The terns and gulls, driven from their century-old refuge, circled over the little spot of land with shrill cries and fled to nest on Ingalook; polar bears, who, in other seasons, had found a dinner of fat seal on Chukalook, swam toward the island from floating cakes of ice, and then retreated hurriedly; the sea otter, shyest of all the fur-bearing creatures of the world, sped to more isolated haunts.
The island itself was melting like a snowbank beneath a summer sun. A three-inch jet of water, immeasurably more powerful than the forceful spout that hisses from a fire-engine hose, roared vengefully night and day against the gravel bank, and ate away the hill.
The never-ceasing torrent of gravel and boulders, mingled with the water, rattled and rumbled downwards with the force of the current into a massive sluice. The bottom of this sluice was constructed of paving blocks, crossed with copper-plated riffles of tremendous strength, on which not less than two tons of mercury had been placed.
Thus considered, the installation of the Bull Mine—as Jim insisted that it should be called—was but a simple miners' sluice on an enormous scale. It was the same device as that which Jim's father and his partners were working on the Carson River when the Comstock Lode was discovered, save that the hydraulic jet performed all the work of digging and shoveling the pay dirt into the sluice.