om the land
of forbidden thought.

"You say this Lost Island is nothing but a myth, Kilbuck?" The
prospector had evidently been thinking of the White Chief's last story
as he sat rubbing the head of Kobuk, the huskie, who had placed his
muzzle on Boreland's knee.

The trader lighted and tossed away a cigarette before he answered.

"Just how much truth there is in the tale of the Lost Island I can't
say, Boreland," he said slowly, with a care to his English. He shifted
his position until his eyes could no longer rest on the white woman in
the fireglow. "It has come down from the days of the Russian
occupation of the Aleutian Islands far to the west'ard. Our Thlingets,
you know, got it from the natives of that section and the story runs
that an Aleut and his wife were banished from their village for some
crime, set adrift in a bidarka, a skin boat. Instead of perishing, as
their kinsmen intended, the pair turned up a year later with a tale of
a marvelous island many days' paddling to the eastward. On this
island, they said, the sun shone warmer and the flowers grew larger and
the snowfall was lighter than anywhere else in their world; and there
was some queer story, I don't remember the details exactly, about an
underground passage and sands flecked with shining metal, the stuff
that trimmed up the holy pictures the Russian priests brought over from
Russia."

"Gold!" interrupted Boreland. "It must have been gold!" His brown
eyes glowed and the White Chief noted that an eager alertness lighted
his lean tanned face.

"The exiles decided to let a few of their friends in on the island
proposition and set out at the head of several bidarkas. According to
the story they knocked about up and down the North Pacific from Kodiak
to Sitka for several months--but they never found their island.
Neither did the natives of later years who went in search of it from
time to time."

"But the Russians, Kilbuck, didn't they ever try to find the place?"

The trader, pleased at the interest his story had aroused, lay back
once more against his cushions. "Possibly they did," he went on
easily. "But it's likely they were satisfied with the wealth of furs
their Aleut hunters brought them. Those were great old days for
traffic in furs. The early Russians were, for the most part a lazy,
rum-drinking lot, you know. To them riches meant sea-otter skins, and
they managed by various devilish methods--I can't say more about them