The following morning was sunless. The air was still and heavy with foreboding. Leaden-colored waters heaved under a gloomy sky and though the sea appeared smooth to the eye the hollow roar of distant surf sounded louder than usual. There was a strong smell of kelp and salt brine, and a new, wild note in the cries of the gulls.

"I say," Boreland called to Kayak Bill, who was tying back the flap of the tent in which he slept. "It looks as if there's a storm brewing. But I never saw the sea smoother. I think, if we're quick about it, we can get a boat-load of grub down here before she breaks. What you say, Kayak?"

Kayak spread his legs and leaned back to take a long look at the sky, just as Harlan came down over the hill and joined them.

"I'm yore man, Boreland," he said at last. "But we'd better be spry about it, for it'll be Davy Jones' locker for us if we get caught in a gale off the reefs."

A hasty breakfast over, Ellen joined the men and the four left for the West Camp to select the most important things with which to load the whale-boat.

Arrived at their destination they worked swiftly, Ellen making her selection of necessities while the men skidded the boat down to the water's edge. It was soon loaded. A small pile of lumber from Katleean for making sluice-boxes and furniture was made into a raft to be towed.

"About three more trips with the boat, and we'll have everything down at the cabin," said Ellen, as she tied the flap of the tent. She had noted that while he worked, Shane had glanced uneasily from time to time at the grey sky. It was rapidly taking on a purple tinge, though the sea was still as oily-smooth as it had been early in the morning.

When the last sack had been stowed away and the raft made fast to the boat, Ellen saw Harlan call her husband aside. In a low voice she heard him make some suggestion which Boreland dismissed with a gesture.

"Thanks, old man," he said, "but this is a job for all three of us," and he turned to join Ellen who was standing at the edge of the water. "We'll be home in time for supper, El," he said, with forced cheeriness. "Don't worry, now—mind!" And he patted her hand reassuringly before he turned to the boat.

As she watched the craft slip away from the shore she conquered a wild impulse to reach out and drag it back again. Shane and Harlan shoved on their oars with long, slow strokes, as they faced the reefs that lay between them and the open sea; Kayak Bill steered. Ellen watched them move in and out between the protruding rocks. On the grey slope of the sullen swells that rose and fell unbroken about them the raft in tow shone wetly yellow. From time to time she caught glimpses of streaming tangles of kelp which somehow suggested the floating hair of dead women. . . .

The boat crept off-shore to get outside the most dangerous of the reefs, and once free, Boreland, small now in the distance, looked back to wave a hand at her. At last, having seen the craft swing and move slowly southward on the home stretch round the Island, Ellen sighed with relief, and turning away from the sea, started down the beach toward the cabin.

Across the dark pall of the sky in the southwest clouds were beginning to form in heaving sombre masses. A breeze, coming at first in scarcely perceptible breaths, freshened almost in a moment, until the glassy surface of the sea was wrinkled and streaked far out with black. It was impossible to see the whaleboat now because of the barrier reefs. Ellen's heart grew heavy with foreboding. The wind . . . Remembering the tales of quick-rising wind and sea, she prayed that these fitful puffs might not be the first breaths of a borning gale.

She found Jean and Loll on the beach below the house. They had felt the danger of the coming storm and were looking out anxiously for a first glimpse of the boat.

Only rearing waters and lowering sky bounded their vision.

The wind increased.

Silence grew upon them.

The cloud banks in the southwest separated into weird-shaped masses which detached themselves and began to travel swift and low toward them across the sky. Some menacing quality in this relentless, headlong rush increased Ellen's fears, and in growing alarm she watched the tiny white-caps that were beginning to form on the waves.

As they hurried down to the point off the bluff to command a wider view of the waters, the wind whipped their skirts about them and tore at their hair.

Three grey gulls flew swiftly overhead with plaintive, long-drawn cries quite different from their usual raucous screams. In her anxiety Ellen remembered that these wild birds of Kon Klayu had as many moods as the sea, and were prophetic of them. Loll, holding tightly to his mother's hand, looked up at her with grave eyes.

"Mother," he said, "Senott told me one time that sea-gulls are the souls of little dead Indian babies and they always cry for their mothers before a storm. Hear them now?"

Immeasurably sad and longing the bird call struck through the sound of increasing surf. Above, the whole sky was a mass of swiftly moving clouds. The wind increased steadily.

Another dragging hour went by with no sign of the whale-boat. With the incoming tide the wind had risen until Ellen's heart quaked with a great fear for the men who must row against it. Her senses tingled with the welter of torn, tempestuous sea and clouds that seemed to mingle and snatch at her with stinging, salt fingers. Her straining eyes smarted from the high-flung spray of increasing combers.

Bracing against the gale, she suddenly found herself aching from the stress of trying, by sheer will, to keep back the force of the storm. Some pagan thing within her had endowed the elements with a godlike personality. She caught herself praying, beseeching the sea to rise no higher; to be kind to her loved ones tossing somewhere on its seething bosom. Both wind and tide were against the whale-boat now, and looking out across the rearing waters it seemed to her that no small craft could live in such a sea.

A few drops of rain stung her face. Afar off from the southwest more was coming. . . . She turned hopelessly from it, then almost at once her dull misery was changed to joy.

Half a mile out a blurred, dark thing rose for an instant on the crest of a billow. She started to point it out to Jean, but simultaneously the rain-squall struck her, drenching, stinging, cutting off for a moment her view of the sea. From under the grey curtain of the driving rain combers of muddy green raced in, spouting high in wind-torn fury against the rocks and rolling swiftly toward her to fling themselves roaring at her. . . . Again in a lull she caught a glimpse of the boat tossing skyward . . . dropping from sight . . . rising again and creeping slowly, slowly onward. . . .

Hatless and coatless Boreland and Harlan were standing in the bottom of the boat shoving on the oars with every ounce of their strength. Twice she saw the younger man take the oars alone while her husband bailed. Kayak Bill, rigid, watchful, sat in the stern his hand on the tiller, ready with the instinct that comes of long experience for every motion of the sea.

Inch by inch they battled their way around the point in the face of flying spray and driving rain. Behind them, like a live thing tugging on the rope the raft rose and fell on the combs of the dark swells. Pathetic and tear-compelling was the courage of these three men pitting their puny strength against the pitiless violence of the elements. Once the little boat seemed to stand still a long time, swashing up and down in the hollows of the waves, while over it the chop of the sea splashed in spiteful fury. . . . At last it advanced again slowly and Kayak swung broadside, turning in towards the beach on which the anxious woman stood.

A gust of wind caught viciously at the tarpaulin spread over provisions in the stern. It carried its fluttering blackness straight back into the white and green of a giant comber directly behind. The onrushing breaker reared its cruel head . . . then just as another rain-squall broke, hiding it from view, it curled down swift, terrifying, and the whale-boat disappeared in its foaming maw. . . .

With a cry of despair Ellen rushed to the very edge of the surf, straining her eyes over the wild sea. Had the force of the breaker swept everyone from the whale-boat? Had the canvas stretched tightly over the provisions been sufficient to keep the water from filling and swamping the boat? Would the violence of the tide and wind bring them in if—if—Kayak Bill had not been torn from his post? Suddenly she knew that on Kayak depended everything: Kayak Bill who had once been a pilot at surf-bound Yakataga; Kayak Bill who had run the raging bars of the delta-mouthed Copper River. Would he be equal to the surf of Kon Klayu? Could he keep his hold on the tiller? . . . Oh, if the rain-curtain would only lift! If she could but see out there in that foaming, roaring swelter of water!

She dashed a hand across her face tearing aside the wet hair that flattened itself against her eyes. . . . The squall was letting up. . . . She could see now, but there was nothing—nothing but breakers. . . . A sob tore itself from her throat. She started to turn away. Then dimly, she saw. . . .

Low in the water, veiled by flying white-caps, they came—Boreland and Harlan bailing desperately, and in the stern Kayak Bill, his hand still on the tiller, keeping the oarless boat steady a-top the swift, rushing wave that was sweeping them on to the beach!

With outstretched, welcoming arms Ellen waded out into the foam of the spent breaker that grounded the whale-boat almost at her feet. . . .

That evening the adventurers sat in the warmth of the crowded cabin living over again the events of the day. Every available corner was piled high with the wet provisions that had been unloaded from the whale-boat that afternoon, but contrasted with the gale outside the place was satisfyingly snug and comfortable. Still lingered the savory aroma of the duck mulligan that had been their supper. In the Yukon stove the fire roared and crackled as if in defiance of the terrific blasts that shook the cabin. The sense of kinship that comes to those who have fought their way together through some great danger was strong upon them all tonight.

"Holy Mackinaw, boys!"—Boreland emphasized his remarks with the stem of his pipe—"I wouldn't have given a hoot in Hades for our chances when that wave broke! Thought it was all day with us then. Kayak, Harlan, a fellow never realized what small potatoes he is until he looks up from the hollow of a wave!" He stretched his long arms comfortably and laughed. "But . . . after you've been up against a proposition like that, and come through, it certainly makes a man feel like a man!"

"It certainly does, Skipper!" Harlan's eyes glowed. He appeared more alive than at any other time since his landing, beginning to understand, evidently, something of the hard freedom of the North, for which men must either fight or die.

Of the three men Kayak Bill alone had been silent concerning his sensations. Ellen thought that the praise of the others had smitten him with a strange shyness. Loll was sitting astride the old man's knees, questioning him about that moment when the giant breaker had engulfed the boat.

Determined on an answer, the boy was urging for the fifth time:

"But, Kayak, what did you feel like?"

"Wall, son,"—Kayak's hazel eyes twinkled—"I just couldn't' figger out for a minute whether I was a clam . . . or a pond-lily."

In the laugh that followed Harlan took up a roll of blankets and went into the other room. There was no thought of his crossing the Island tonight. Kayak Bill's tent had blown down during the afternoon and he was, as he put it, "forced to seek better anchorage." He and Harlan were to spread a bed on the floor of the adjoining room.

Kobuk, with appealing whines and tentative pawings at the door, had finally won an entrance and was curled up in front of the stove. Just before supper Shane had come in lugging the pigeon's cage, which he placed carefully on top of a tall packing box. Ellen felt the bird's presence in a way that was beginning to trouble her. Tonight it seemed to wear a sullen and dejected look, unlike its usual bold air. All evening it had sat motionless in the bottom of the cage. The only sign of life it displayed was in the deep orange pupils of its eyes which, she was sure, followed her about wherever she went.

She forced herself to look away from the cage. A hush had fallen on those in the room. The shrieking of rising wind challenged attention. Ellen listened with a feeling strangely compounded of delight and terror. Never before had she known such a wind. It swept down on the roof of the cabin in woolies, threatening to blow it in, and then seemingly sucking it out again. The log walls quivered. Every joist, and board creaked and strained. The box on which the lamp stood vibrated, and the flat yellow flame flickered. The air reverberated to the thunder of surf that crashed against the hundred reefs on Kon Klayu. Ellen had a feeling that the little Island trembled in the splendid abandon of wind and sea—trembled, yet exulted in the freedom of the elements. She found herself paradoxically fearing, yet hoping that the next blast of the gale might be heavier.

Harlan had finished spreading the blankets in the other room. "Skipper," he said, "I've been wondering how the whale-boat is. Before we turn in I think I'll go down and see that we made the old girl fast." He took up his oilskins from the floor and slipped into them.

When the door had closed behind him, Kayak Bill looked at Boreland and nodded.

"I make affirmation," he drawled, "that there's a paystreak in any man who looks first after his hoss—or his boat."

While the significance of the old man's remark was dawning on Ellen, there was an odd lull in the storm. Surprisingly a new sound came to them. It was a sound blown from the south cliffs; a sound that was, yet was not of the storm; a hollow reverberating roll that was deep and mellow, thrilling and strange. Boreland and Kayak rose simultaneously and looked questioningly into each other's eyes.

"What—" Boreland's words were cut off by the flinging open of the door. White-faced and dripping Harlan staggered in, slamming it to shut out the driving rain. He leaned heavily against it.

"God—Skipper," he gasped. "The whale-boat— It's gone!"

At that moment, like a happening in a sinister dream, Ellen was aware that the pigeon perched high on the packing-box, had suddenly come to life. It was flapping its wings diabolically, exultingly.