like brevity, climbed up into the loft to
investigate. Harlan followed.

He found a roll of tar paper with which to mend the hole in the roof
and helped Ellen shift the dunnage bags which had been wetted by the
water. They worked in silence for some time.

Suddenly Ellen stopped in her operations. She rested her palms on the
floor and looked up at Harlan. In the candle-lit gloom of the loft he
could see that her eyes were twinkling. A new friendliness was in the
ingenuous smile she gave him.

"Gregg," she said in a tone that finally admitted him to her
friendship, "remember--there isn't a man living who cannot be benefited
by having a good, sound scolding once in a while." . . .

And so the days passed until the end of January. They were stormy ones
for the most part, yet no ruby sand showed on the beach of Kon Klayu.
One clear, cold morning Harlan and Jean were gathering shellfish among
the boulders on Sunset Point. The air was strangely still and under
the pale sunshine the sapphire waters were tinged with rose and
lavender. They had long been accustomed to those tricks played with
sea and clouds by the magician Mirage, and today the crest of each
billow was magnified until, on the horizon the points seemed to leap up
into the sky. Above a lucid space in the southwest a mass of silver
and amethyst tinted clouds moved slowly and spread out like a platform.
They sat on a flat boulder to watch the changing beauty of the colors.
Their daily forays for shellfish had deepened their love of the
sea--its ways of mystery that were ever bringing to their attention
some new loveliness of form and tint. Now, before their incredulous
eyes there appeared rising from the cloud bank the illusion of
graciously rounded domes, spires, minarets, and the next instant they
were gazing on a city of enchantment softly reflected in a pearly
sea--a silvery city of fantasy like an exquisite shadowy drawing of
some foreign land. . . . They sat silent, entranced. How long the
vision lingered neither of them knew. . . . Then a breeze fanned their
faces and in a twinkling the city of dreams vanished.

They raced back to the cabin with their news but found the others on
the porch. They too had witnessed the phenomenon. Kayak Bill alone
showed no surprise.

"That's what sourdoughs up here calls 'The Silent City,'" he drawled.
"Alasky folks have been seein' it for yars. One time I saw it above
Muir glacier, and one time when I w