Driven
ahead by the breeze she dipped and splashed sending showers of whitened
water away from her prow and leaving a wake of foam-laces behind her
like a veil.

Already the adventurers had left behind the creatures of their kind,
for Silvertip at the wheel was headed out into the lonely North
Pacific, laying his course for the Island of Kon Klayu.

PART II

CHAPTER XI

THE ISLAND OF THE RUBY SANDS

Next morning the schooner was rolling easily on a long swell. Through
the open hatchway the sun streamed down into the hold where Harlan lay,
and as he awoke, the appetizing fragrance of boiling coffee drifted in
to him from the cabin in the stern. Above the calls and the sound of
feet on deck came a thin wild chorus which he had learned to associate
with the island nesting grounds of thousands of sea-birds.

Hastily slipping into his clothes he climbed to the deck and looked
about him. The _Hoonah_ was riding at anchor--ninety miles out at sea!

The morning air of sea-swept spaces filled his lungs with freshness.
On three sides the sun-silvered green of the ocean fairly sang to the
eye as it rolled away to meet the far blue of the horizon. Half a mile
off the starboard bow, edged by lines of breaking surf, sand-dunes
topped with green merged gradually southward, into strange jade-green
hills, low and soft as brushed velvet in the distance. To the North
the dunes tapered to a long, narrow shoal over which, as far as the eye
could reach, swells of clearest emerald broke into a splendor of flying
spray.

Above this sand-spit thousands of gulls flashed, skirling and
screeching in the sunlight, their weird, thin calls mingling with the
diapason of the surf that boomed against the beach and the hundred
reefs of Kon Klayu. Overhead a constant stream of gulls and
sea-parrots plied between their fishing grounds and the south end of
the island where they had their young.

"By Jove, it's a regular little island paradise?" Harlan called to
Kayak Bill. "How comes it that everyone is afraid of such an inviting
looking spot?"

Kayak, who was picking his way forward to where Boreland was already
busy with the outfit, paused and leaned a moment against the main-mast.
His eyes with one slow glance took in land and sea.

"Wall, son, I reckon she's somethin' like a pussy-cat. She's a-smilin'
and a-purrin' in the sun today, but I'm thinkin' when it blows up a
sou'easter, with nothin' in God's world a-tween he