“ARE you satisfied, Len? Does it make you feel good?”

McLagan was observing the dark, mobile features of the younger man. They were alight with the look he knew so well. It was the expression he had seen time and again in those men of Beacon whose whole horizon was bounded by gold and all it meant in their lives. It was a similar expression to that which had played in Len Stern’s features at that time when his strong fingers had raked through the heaping gold dust spread out before him at the far-off camp on the Australian coast.

McLagan was more than interested. For the man was gazing upon the goodly pile of smallish canvas bags lying on the earthen floor against the log wall of the hut overlooking the mouth of the Alsek River. At that moment humanity was uppermost in the engineer. A goodly satisfaction was stirring in his heart. And his manner had lost much of that roughness which was so characteristic of him.

Len nodded, his eyes remaining fascinated by the thing they were gazing upon.

“That don’t begin to say the thing I feel,” he said awkwardly. He raised a strong, sunburnt hand and passed it back over his forehead. Then he laughed. It was a short, jerky laugh that was an expression of some feeling he had no words for. “Do you know how a shipwrecked feller ’ud feel when his feet find solid earth again?” He shook his head. “That’s how those darn bags of dust make me feel. That, an’ something else. Yes, I feel I want to say all sorts of stuff how I think of you. But I can’t.”

McLagan brushed aside the man’s desire to express his gratitude.

“But you weren’t—shipwrecked?” he said quickly.

The other’s reply came with a laugh.

“It cost me all but my last thousand dollars to answer that message you sent out, and—get around.”

“But you were on a big strike? You and poor Jim?”

“Sure. The biggest in the world—on a fever-racked coast that I don’t guess I’ll ever get near to again. The fever got me. I only got away by the scruff of my neck. And the stuff I took out did little more than satisfy the dope merchants of Perth who did their best for me. I guess I was shipwrecked both ways. Physical and financial. Man, you’ve done an almighty glad thing.”

McLagan sat himself on the cabin trunk just behind him, and Len Stern flung himself into the chair which usually stood against the table where McLagan was accustomed to work. The small wood stove, radiating a pleasant warmth in the chill of the late summer air, stood between them. And Len Stern mechanically held out the palms of his hands to it.

There was physical weariness in him. It was the same with the hard-driving engineer. The voiceless waste of desolate muskeg with its surface of shaking tundra lay far behind them now. So with the wearisome portage to the Alsek River meandering through its coal-laden, oil-soaked territory of hills. The gateway to the ocean had been reached and passed only that morning. And now they had gained the shelter of McLagan’s home overlooking the bay, ready for the last stage of that effort which had been crowded into days that should have been weeks.

It had all been a whirlwind rush from the moment of Stern’s landing until this return to McLagan’s home. Stern was the least weary of the two. But then he and Sasa Mannik had had the blessed break of a day’s complete rest up at McLagan’s oil camp, while the engineer endured an added gruelling in the work that was his. He had spent the time with Peter Loby in completing preparations for the time when the men of finance behind him should arrive to set the seal of their approval upon his achievements. It had meant a swift change of effort for him from that which had been an expression of a man’s deepest emotions to the sheerly mental aspect of those affairs which represented the material side of his life.

They had eaten the midday meal with which Sasa Mannik’s indifferent skill had provided them. And the whole place was a-litter with books, charts, papers, and clothing, hopelessly mixed up with the utensils of the meal of which they had just partaken. They were in the midst of the preparations for McLagan’s final quittance, which was to take place that day. It was a portentous operation regarded without optimism by the engineer. And Len Stern, while ready and willing, found himself of little service.

McLagan lit one of his long, lean cigars, glad enough to abandon his labours for a few minutes. Stern lit and drearily sucked his charred old briar. The contemplation of those bags of gold dust, that never in his most fantastic dreams had he hoped to see again, had warmed his heart and eased the strain he had laboured under.

It was all very amazing, and McLagan himself was the most amazing thing of it all. It was all mystifying, too. And as he sat luxuriating in the reek of his pipe the man from Australia found himself marvelling at the mystery in the midst of which he had found himself so suddenly plunged.

He knew now that McLagan had been responsible for the message Goodchurch had sent out. Even its enticing wording. At the time he had read it in the local news sheet in Perth he had not seriously considered it beyond the reply he must make. Then had come his arrival at the coast on the tubby mail boat on its way to Seward. Then his meeting with McLagan, and his instant whirling off on a breathless rush that was only just about to terminate. He had been asked very little and told less. McLagan had relied on visual rather than verbal demonstration. He had seen the Imperial again after believing the vessel to be fathoms deep at the bottom of the ocean. He had gazed upon some weird, supernatural demonstration upon her deck. He had been hurried off to help in the capture of the man who had murdered his partner, and robbed them of the fruits of their labours. The capture had been achieved and a confession extracted. Then he had been called upon to agree to the murderer’s release. True, he had the assurance of McLagan that the murderer would not, could not escape. But——

And now he was sitting in McLagan’s home gazing on the wealth of gold dust that he and poor Jim Carver had washed out on the fever-laden coast of Australia. It had come back to him. And McLagan was the man who had recovered it. How? How? How had it all been achieved? How had McLagan discovered in the Limpet of Boston the foul tragedy of his friend’s death, and recovered for him the gold that had been stolen? The mystery of it all; McLagan’s refusal to enlighten him; these things were utterly confounding. In his own phraseology he felt the whole thing was just “one darn mystery after another” and he wanted to fling up his hands in complete helplessness.

But there was no outward expression of these feelings. He sat gladly regarding that small, comforting pile of wealth which McLagan had told him was his.

“I’m glad you’ve told me that, Len.” McLagan’s smile was almost gentle. “We haven’t told much, have we?”

“No. And sometimes I feel it ’ud be good to tell—things.”

Len Stern’s eyes came back from the pile of gold. It almost seemed as though McLagan had broached something of a deeper interest for him.

“Maybe it would. Well, ther’s Claire and her mother’ll be yearning.” McLagan laughed. “And I’ll be there, too.”

“Which is just another way of saying you haven’t a thing you’re going to tell.”

Len grinned into the other’s face and shook some juice out of his pipe stem on to the stove.

“It doesn’t mean just that, boy,” McLagan said.

“No?”

Len waited. Then he went on.

“See, McLagan, you’ve done a swell thing. Sure I don’t want to say a thing to hurt. You’ve left me guessing, an’ I’m content to go right on guessing if it suits you. You see, I’m just thankful. But maybe you won’t mind saying ‘Why,’ if you object to ‘How.’ The only thing that finds me worrying is leaving that swine Caspar free.”

McLagan removed the cigar from his strong mouth. He rolled it between his fingers which seemed to crush it unnecessarily. He shook his head.

“I’m not yearning to tell ‘why’ any more than ‘how,’” he said, with a return to his rougher manner. “It wouldn’t hurt a thing telling it, except for the laugh it’s liable to raise. You see, boy, I’ve a head full of notions. Some of ’em some folks might reckon sort of crazy. But they aren’t. They’re just a throw back to something that’s in us all. The only thing is I’ve given way to ’em, and they’ve got so that I have to hand ’em best. One time I felt the only thing in life was to make good. I’m older since then. I still guess that making good needs to be done, but I get tired beating the other feller. It kind of seems waste of effort, unless the other feller needs beating. I’m glad for poor old Jim, who’s Claire’s brother, to be able to hand you back his dough. Then it’ll make things better for you. You two boys were swell triers taking a Chink yarn for gospel. Good luck, boy, anyway. Handle that stuff right when you get it into Beacon.”

“I’ll do the best I know, Mac. Say—That oil play of yours? It looks like beating every other feller. It’s big. It’s big for Beacon, an’ the folks around.”

McLagan’s smile deepened.

“Sure,” he said simply. “It means so much I can’t just see it all. This’ll be a swell country after awhile. It’ll get oil-crazy when I let my story go.”

“They don’t know yet?”

McLagan shook his head.

“They will when I get in this time. And I want it that way. You know this country’s got right into my guts. I want to set the decent citizens lying around it whooping with the things that make life easy, and pass ’em a time that won’t leave ’em yearning to muss themselves with the dirt lying back of human nature. What’ll you do? Quit for the sun places?” He glanced down at the gold bags significantly. “With that bunch a wise guy don’t need to worry beyond this coast.”

“That’s so.”

Len was thoughtfully regarding his treasure. He looked up with a grin.

“Maybe I’ll do what I know to get into your proposition.”

McLagan laughed.

“You’ll need to do it on the jump. In a month ther’ won’t be money enough in the world to buy our stock. You haven’t seen a circumstance of what’s to come later. Gee! I must get on with all this truck.”

McLagan rose with a sigh of real weariness. He flung open the trunk on which he had been sitting, and passed over to a pile of folded suits. He stood for a moment contemplating them. They were clothes he had never worn since he came to the coast. He picked some of them up, and came back to the trunk. Len rose to aid him. He moved over to pass him the rest of the piled clothes. He picked up some of them, and revealed a folded white garment underneath. It caught and held his attention. It was voluminous. And, at first glance, appeared to be some sort of bath robe, or dressing gown. But the top fold of it had three cut holes in it, which looked like the eye and mouth holes of a mask.

McLagan came to his side and Len heard a deep-throated chuckle.

“Guessing, boy?” the engineer said quietly. Then he added: “I’d forgot that, sure.”

Then he reached down and picked it up. He let it drop to its full length, and held it out by its arms. Len deposited his garments and gazed at it, grinning.

“Some suit,” he said.

McLagan nodded.

“Sure,” he said. And surveyed the conical, visored hood hanging down, and the many rust stains that besmirched its otherwise immaculate surface.

Then he, very deliberately, refolded it and looked squarely into his companion’s eyes.

“Makes you want to laff, Len, eh?” he said. “Don’t you do it, boy. Ther’s no feller needs to laff who sees that.”

Then his own eyes became less serious, and a twinkle of humour looked out of them.

“It’s just one of my notions. I designed it myself. And I keep it by me to remind me. I guess it won’t mean a thing to you, ever. Maybe it’ll just add another guess to the things worrying you now. Set it down a bath gown which you wear when you’re either clean or want to be clean. But it’s another meaning, another significance. It’s a symbol. That darn white gown tells me every time I look at it that human nature can’t ever be run right by academic theory or sentimental slobber. The feller that guesses to persuade human nature by argument is only one degree better than the boy in the bughouse. The notion that human nature is predominantly good is plumb busted. It hands me a story of the unutterable weakness of the modern methods by which human nature is trying to govern itself, and warns me that the only thing to bring about better conditions is to scare it plumb to death first, and beat it over the head with a club after. I didn’t mean you to see that thing, boy. But you have seen it and I don’t figure it matters any—now. Still if you reckon you’re obliged to me, why, just forget you’ve seen it. Let’s pack up all this darn junk. Gee! Ther’s a hell of a lot of it.”

Departure from the bay was delayed longer than McLagan had designed. It was delayed until the following morning by reason of one of those fierce, late-summer storms of tornado-like force, which at times descended upon the tattered coast.

It started with a rush of wind sweeping down off the hills. It came with the force of a hurricane, and set the hut creaking and groaning under its spasmodic pressure. For half an hour it battled furiously, shrieking, howling, and crashing its way through forest, and valley, and over hill-top. And then, as suddenly as it had leapt, it abated into an ominous calm.

The respite was illusive. It was sufficiently long for the men in the hut to interpret the conditions. The sudden darkening of the whole of the western sky was sufficiently indicative. Then the real storm broke. It broke in from the ocean with the rising tide, driving in direct opposition to the land wind. An electric storm, it came with sub-tropical intensity, and a fury of wind. The play of lightning was blinding; the thunderous detonations were merged into an incessant roar; and the suddenly opened heavens poured a deluge of rain upon a darkened world.

The storm raged for hours. It raged far into the night. And deep under the fury of it all the voice of the sea came up from below like an angry roar of a monster lashed and goaded to savage anger. It boomed, it thundered, its echoes playing from cliff to cliff, magnified and terrifying.

Clad in an oilskin, at the height of the storm, McLagan sought the open. He stood out on the plateau, and instantly his great body seemed to become the centre of elemental attack. But he gave no heed. He forced his way in the blinding rain as near to the precipitous edge of the cliff as he dared approach it. Then he stood there swaying to the buffets of the storm while he strove to penetrate the grey pall with which the rain enveloped the world below him. It was useless. And so, at last, he returned to shelter, and the exercise of such patience as he could command.

Dawn saw a complete reversal, a complete transformation. A keen crisp northwest wind had set in, and the furies of the night had been wholly swept away. The sun rose glorious in a cloud-flecked sky, and the world of the coast was as nearly smiling as Nature ever permitted.

But the smile of Nature meant nothing to the men who, ready to set out on their run into Beacon, stood gazing down upon the bay. The wreck of the Imperial was gone. Completely, utterly vanished. A few baulks of timber had been flung high up on the rocks at the foot of the southern cliff, but of the wreck, in its familiar form, not a sign was to be discovered. The ebb of the tide was at its lowest. The rocks on which she had lain were bare. The vessel had gone as she had come, on the race of the tide. But with the difference that her shattered hull had been carried off piecemeal by the victorious adversary she had defied so long.

McLagan was the first to turn away. Sasa Mannik was standing by the ponies hitched to the laden buckboard. He moved over to him and in silence climbed into the driving seat of the ramshackle vehicle. Then he called to Len Stern, who was still gazing down upon the cemetery of that poor restless shadow of the man who had been his friend and partner.