ld not have
been more than sixty feet distant, a little more than her own beam, and
he fully expected that she would grind against some outlier in the next
instant. But the _Kansas_ had a charmed life. She ran on unscathed, and
seemed to be traveling in smoother water after this escape.

Walker's dark skin was the color of parchment when he reached the
chart-house.

"Captain," he said, weakly, "I 'll do owt wi' engines, but I'm no good at
this game. That thing fairly banged me. Did ye see it?"

"Did _you_ see land?" demanded Courtenay, imperatively. His spirits rose
with each of these thrills. He felt that it was ordained that his ship
should live.

"Yes, sir. The-aw 's hills, and big ones, a long way ahead, but I 'm no'
goin' up that mast again. It would be suicide. I'm done. I'll nev-ah
fo-get yon stone ghost, no, not if I live to be ninety."

Then Joey, sniffing the morning, uncurled himself, stretched, yawned
loudly, and thought of breakfast, for he had passed a rather disturbed
night, the second in one week. To cope with such excitement, a dog
needed sustenance.

CHAPTER VIII

IN A WILD HAVEN

Fortune has her cycles, whether for good or ill. The _Kansas_, having
run the gauntlet of many dangers, seemed to have earned an approving
smile from the fickle goddess. A slight but perceptible veering of the
wind, combined with the increasing power of the sun's rays, swept the
ocean clear of its storm-wraiths. Soon after passing the pillar rock,
Courtenay thought he could make out the unwavering outline of
mountainous land amid the gray mists. A few minutes later the waves
racing alongside changed their leaden hue to a steely glitter which
told him the fog was dispersing. The nearer blue of the ocean carpet
spread an ever-widening circle until it merged into a vivid green.
Then, with startling suddenness, the curtain was drawn aside on a
panorama at once magnificent and amazing.

Almost without warning, the ship was found to be entering the estuary
of a narrow fiord. Gaunt headlands, carved on Titanic scale out of the
solid rock, guarded the entrance, and already shut out the more distant
coast-line. Behind these first massive walls, everywhere unscalable,
and rising in separate promontories to altitudes of, perhaps, four
hundred feet, an inner fortification of precipitous mountains flung
their glacier-clad peaks heavenward to immense heights,--heights which,
in that region, soared far ab