Here was a girl who would demand certain standards in the man with whom
she would mate, not merely accompany through life. There were times when
Rainey felt irresistibly the charm of her as a woman, longed for her in
the powerful sex reactions that inevitably follow hard labor. There were
times when he felt that she did not consider that he measured up to her
gages, and he would strive to change the atmosphere, to dominate the
situation in which Lund was the greater figure of the two men.

The rivalry that Lund had suggested between them as regards the girl,
Rainey felt almost thrust upon him. There were moods which Peggy Simms
turned to him for sharing, but there was scant time in the waking hours
for love-making, or even its consideration.

Lund was centered on one achievement, the gold harvest. He ordered the
girl with the rest; there were even times when he reprimanded her, while
Rainey burned with the resentment she apparently did not share.

A little before dawn on the eighteenth day of the work upon the beach,
Lund was out upon the floe examining the condition of the ice. He had
declared that two days more of hard endeavor would complete their
labors. What dirt remained at the end of that time they would transship.
Rainey had joined the girl and Tamada at the cook fires.

The sky was bright with the aurora borealis that would pale before the
sun. The men were not yet out of their bunks. They were bone and muscle
tired, and Rainey doubted whether Lund, gaunt and lean himself, could
get two days of top work out of them. Near the fires for the cooking,
the melting of water and the forge, that were kept glowing all night,
the tools were stacked, to help preserve their temper.

The aurora quivered in varying incandescence as Rainey watched Lund
prodding at the floe ice with a steel bar. The girl was busy with the
coffee, and Tamada was compounding two pots of stew and bubbling peas
pudding for the breakfast, food for heat and muscle making.

Sandy appeared on deck and came swiftly over the side of the vessel and
up the worn trail to the fires. He showed excitement, Rainey fancied,
sure of it as the lad got within speaking distance.

"Where is Mr. Lund?" he panted.

Rainey pointed to Lund, now examining a crack that had opened up in the
floe, a possible line of exit for the _Karluk_, later on. The men were
beginning to show on the schooner. They, too, he noted somewhat idly,
acted differently this morning. U