lf had
been cast up on the shores of Kon Klayu. The women, with the help of
the Indian, had lifted the inert form of the dazed man to a mattress at
the spot where they had found him, and dragged it literally inch by
inch along the beach to the cabin. They put him to bed in Kayak's bunk
in the little room off the living-room.

For Ellen and Jean the days were filled with intangible doubt and
mounting fear, for no sail whitened off Kon Klayu. Added to the acute
anxiety in regard to their men was now the problem of the White Chief
of Katleean. What queer twist of Fate had tossed the trader, helpless
and without food, on the Island where his very life depended on those
he had left to starve? And, if their men were lost at sea, what would
happen to them when Kilbuck recovered his strength?

Gradually, from the disjointed utterances of the superstitious Indian
and from their own knowledge of the trader, they were able to piece
together the story of the White Chief's mishap,--not the story as
Swimming Wolf knew it, tinged with eerie Thlinget superstition and
mystery--but the prosaic version of the white man, who sees everything
through logical eyes, and is ever explaining away all that is
mysterious in life and much that is interesting.

The White Chief, sometimes going for months without liquor, had, as
they knew, periods when he drank as no other man in all Alaska.
Curiously enough, he never gave way to his desire while at Katleean,
but with one faithful native to attend him, he would go aboard some
visiting vessel, and there sink himself into the oblivion brought about
by quantities of hootch.

It was in the latter part of May that a schooner, the _Silver Fox_,
came to anchor in the Bay of Katleean. The owner and captain was a
German, bound for Cook's Inlet with a load of gasoline and enough
equipment to start an illicit still at Turn-again-arm. Paul Kilbuck,
after nearly a year of abstinence, succumbed to his craving, and with
Swimming Wolf, sought the cabin of the _Silver Fox_. After two days of
the German's liquid hospitality, he was ready for any mad adventure.
Doubtless the thought of Ellen and her family must have been with him
during the winter. Perhaps he had some inchoate drunken plan of
seeking her when he put to sea with the potvaliant captain of the
_Silver Fox_; but six hours from the post he collapsed in a stupor on
the captain's bunk.

Tales of the North are replete with instances of the incred