tened as she talked with the newcomer--confound it all,
was he getting jealous? he asked himself. Why shouldn't her eyes
brighten? What concern was it of his?

A second boat had been lowered, and the outfit of the shore party was
landed rapidly. A dozen of the crew put the knocked-down boats together
on the beach. There were five of these craft--lean and narrow, with
flaring sides, and remarkably long. Each was equipped with three paddles
and several iron-shod poles.

"You chaps certainly seem to know river-work," Sheldon told one of the
carpenters.

The man spat a mouthful of tobacco-juice into the white sand, and
answered,--

"We use 'em in Alaska. They're modelled after the Yukon poling-boats,
and you can bet your life they're crackerjacks. This creek'll be a snap
alongside some of them Northern streams. Five hundred pounds in one of
them boats, an' two men can snake it along in a way that'd surprise you."

At sunset the _Martha_ broke out her anchor and got under way, dipping
her flag and saluting with a bomb gun. The Union Jack ran up and down
the staff, and Sheldon replied with his brass signal-cannon. The miners
pitched their tents in the compound, and cooked on the beach, while Tudor
dined with Joan and Sheldon.

Their guest seemed to have been everywhere and seen everything and met
everybody, and, encouraged by Joan, his talk was largely upon his own
adventures. He was an adventurer of adventurers, and by his own account
had been born into adventure. Descended from old New England stock, his
father a consul-general, he had been born in Germany, in which country he
had received his early education and his accent. Then, still a boy, he
had rejoined his father in Turkey, and accompanied him later to Persia,
his father having been appointed Minister to that country.

Tudor had always been a wanderer, and with facile wit and quick vivid
description he leaped from episode and place to episode and place,
relating his experiences seemingly not because they were his, but for the
sake of their bizarreness and uniqueness, for the unusual incident or the
laughable situation. He had gone through South American revolutions,
been a Rough Rider in Cuba, a scout in South Africa, a war correspondent
in the Russo-Japanese war. He had _mushed_ dogs in the Klondike, washed
gold from the sands of Nome, and edited a newspaper in San Francisco. The
President of the United States was his friend. He was equally a