one another in noisy confusion.

The marble-whiteness of the ice masses was set off by the blues and soft
violets of their shadows, and by a pearly sheen wherever the planes
caught the light at a proper slant for the play of prisms. Beautiful as
it was, the sight was fearful to Rainey, in common with the crew. Only
Lund surveyed it nonchalantly.

"It's bustin' up fast," he said. "All we need is a little luck. If we
ain't got that there's no use of worryin'. We can't blast ourselves out
o' this without riskin' the schooner. We ought to be thankful we froze
in gentle. There ain't a plank started. The floe'll fend us off. There
ain't enny big chunks enny way near us aft. Luck--to make a decent
landin'--is all we need, an' it's my hunch it's comin' our way."

His "hunch" was correct. Though they did not actually make the little
bay on which the treasure beach debouched, they fetched up near it
against a broken hill of ice that had lodged on the sharp slopes of a
little promontory, making the connection without further damage than a
splitting of the forward end of their encasing floe, with hardly a jar
to the _Karluk_.

Lund sent men ashore over the ice, climbing to the promontory crags with
hawsers by which they tied up schooner, floe and all, to the land. If
the broken hill suffered further catastrophe, which did not seem likely,
its fragments would fall upon the floe. In case of emergency Lund
ordered men told off day and night to stand by the hawsers, to cast
loose or cut, as the extremity needed.

The main danger threatened from following floes piling up on theirs and
ramming over it to smash the schooner, but that was a risk that must be
met as it evolved, and there did not seem much prospect of the
happening.

It was dark before they were snugged. The men volunteered, through
Hansen, to commence digging that night by the light of big fires, so
crazy were they at the nearness of the gold. But Lund forbade it.

"You'll work reg'lar shifts when you git started," he said. "An' you
won't start till ter-morrer. We've got to stand by the ship ter-night
until we find out by mornin' how snug we're goin' to be berthed."

All night long they lay in a pandemonium of noise. After a while they
would become used to it as do the workers in a stampmill, but that night
it deafened them, kept them awake and alert, fearful, with the
tremendous cannonading. The bite of the frost made the timbers of the
_Karluk_ creak and its thru