poured out some of
the colors on one palm, and used that for a mortar, grinding at the
grains with his finger for a pestle, still weighing the stuff with a
slight up-and-down movement of his hand.

He nodded as he slipped the poke into a side pocket, and the cabin grew
very silent. Lund's face was grimly terrible. Rainey could have gone
when the blind man reached for the gold and left the ladder clear. He
had meant to go at the first opportunity, but now he was held fascinated
by what was about to happen, and Lund stepped back across the
companionway.

"So," said Lund, his deep voice muffled by some swift restraint. "You
found it. And yo're going back after more?" His forehead was still
creased with puzzlement. "Wal, I'm going with ye, eyes or no eyes, an'
I'll keep tabs on ye, Bill Simms, by day and night. You can lay to that,
you slimy-hearted swab!"

His voice had risen again. Rainey saw the sweat standing out on the
captain's forehead as he answered:

"Of course you'll come, Jim. No need for you to talk this way."

"No need to talk! By the eternal, what I've got to say's bin steamin' in
me for fourteen months o' blackness, an' it's comin' out, now it's
started! Who's this man, who was talkin' with ye when I come aboard?"

He wheeled directly toward the man with the Vandyke, who still sat
motionless, apparently calm, looking on as if at a play that might turn
out to be either comedy or tragedy.

"That's Doctor Carlsen. He's to be surgeon this trip, Jim," said Simms
deprecatingly, though he darted a look at Rainey half suspicious, half
resentful.

Rainey, on the hint, turned toward the ladder quietly enough, but Lund
had nipped him by the biceps before Rainey had taken a step.

"You'll stay right here," said Lund, "while I tell you an' this Doc
Carlsen what kind of a man Simms is, with his poke full of gold and me
with the price of my last meal spent two hours ago. I won't spin out the
yarn.

"I rescued an Aleut off a bit of a berg one time. There warn't much of
him left to rescue. Hands an' feet an' nose was frozen so he lost 'em,
but the pore devil was grateful, an' he told me something. Told about an
island north of Bering Strait, west of Kotzebue Sound, where there was
gold on the beach richer and thicker than it ever lay at Nome. I makes
for it, gits close enough for my Aleut to recognize it--it ain't an easy
place to forget for one who has eyes--an' then we're blown south, an' we
git into ice an' t