n we get out on the verandah we find the rest of the white men
belonging to the place all gathered together with revolvers in their
hands, and with one consent they move off toward the big shed. For the
life of me I can't keep out of it, and it would be rather hard to stop
your going. I wouldn't miss seeing Jones reintroduced to his friends the
Chinamen for anything. Come on, but let us keep behind where we shan't
be noticed, or Mr. Clay would send us back at once.

There is a busy hum surging out of the factory as we approach, and the
noise of it rings out on the still air; then, as the white men appear in
a little knot in the doorway, there is a dead pause, a silence so sudden
and dramatic that it seems as if one's heart must stop beating. The
half-dozen white men stroll up the gangway carelessly, but you note they
all keep together, until Jones, who doubtless has got his orders,
separates himself from the others and walks briskly ahead. His face is
very white as he bends over a Chinaman and glances at his work in as
natural a manner as he can command, then he looks sharply at another and
tells him to go ahead and not waste time. Hands grow busy, the noise
recommences, and in a few minutes the buzz rises again to concert pitch.
The critical moment has been safely passed. We follow the others into
the building and walk the whole length of it and back, and by the time
we get to the doorway again no one could tell that anything unusual had
happened.

However, I shouldn't care to be Mr. Jones on Lulu Island, and if I were
he I should apply for a job elsewhere at the end of the season!

CHAPTER XXX

THE GREAT DIVIDE

[Illustration]

We are now in the train running toward the great ridge of mountains
which rises like a backbone through the country from north to south,
cutting off the territory of British Columbia from Alberta, though both
are provinces of Canada. The Rockies! What ideas of grizzly bears and
Indians and scalps and trails the name brings up before me! I don't
suppose you have anything like the same feeling about them, because you
weren't brought up on Fenimore Cooper and Ballantyne and all those other
writers who are old-fashioned nowadays. Perhaps you have never even read
_The Wild Man of the West_, or _Nick o' the Woods_? It makes me sorry
for you!

The Clays were good to the last; they brought us up on the little launch
by river to New Westminster, and then we went by electric cable-car to