What wild handshakings and congratulations and volleys of questions followed on the deck of the Queen, you can well guess.
But we must let Tom explain for himself his adventures, his return to civilization, and his unexpected appearance in Sitka harbor that morning.
[CHAPTER XI.]
FAIR SITKA.
“It was pretty dark and lonesome up there, I can tell you,” said Tom, having described his long tramp and the death of the bear. “The wind rose at about nine o’clock, and cut like knives. Solomon had built the camp so as to face away from the wind, and after supper Fred and I were glad to curl up in our blankets on the fir boughs. Solomon threw half a dozen of his big logs on the fire, and then sat down on our front doorstep to have a smoke.
“I wish you could have heard some of his stories, Randolph! Some years ago, before there was any Canadian Pacific, or even a Northern Pacific railroad, he guided a party across the Chilkoot Pass and down the Yukon. They were on a hunt for a ‘mountain of cinnabar,’ a ‘Red Mountain,’ which an Indian had told about, somewhere in the interior. There were women in the party, and how they ever got through the woods, I don’t see.
“Well, they struck off from the Yukon, after having a brush with the Indians, followed a native map, had to winter in the woods, almost starved to death, and at last found the ‘Red Mountain’ was Mount Wrangell—a volcano, you know, twenty thousand feet high.”
“Did they find their cinnabar?” asked Randolph.
“Only a small quantity. But there was enough outcrop of copper and gold to pay them for the trip. They rafted down the Copper River, after leaving Solomon to locate, and a year or two later sold out at a big profit to some San Francisco capitalists. So far as Solomon knows, the mines have never been worked yet, they are so far inland.”