ighted
itself after every roll Ellen's nerves would relax. Unclasping her
arms, she would snuggle close to the back of the bunk,--the few inches
of the _Hoonah's_ hull that separated her and her loved ones from the
black, bull-throated billows that sought to swallow them. The feel of
the cool wood brought a sense of safety, a certainty that with Shane's
strong, thin hands on the wheel the _Hoonah_ would bring them all
safely through any danger of the sea. Then bit by bit approaching
sleep would dim the fury of the gale until at last it was but a lullaby
zephyr wafting her, like her little son, once more into the harbor of
dreams. . . .

She had not realized how dear the schooner had grown to her until she
had signed, against her better judgment, the bill-of-sale that
transferred the vessel to Paul Kilbuck. On the reef-sown coast of Kon
Klayu it appeared there was no harbor where a ship might find shelter,
and Shane needed money for his winter outfit. Half the purchase price
the trader had paid down--the other half was to be given Boreland when
Kilbuck took the remainder of the outfit to Kon Klayu later in the fall.

Ellen aroused herself from her reverie. Shane had been speaking some
minutes and his first words had been lost to her. He was quoting:

"One more trip for the golden treasure
That will last us all our lives!"

Life to Shane was a sweet and wonderful thing. Though there had been
years of hardship and struggle and often failure in the mining game, he
still retained an eager joy in existence, a faith in men and women and
something of the wonder of a boy. Perhaps it was because the place of
his questing had ever been the forests, the mountains, the clean,
unpeopled places.

His present life of a prospector, sailing his little schooner boldly
across dangerous reaches of ocean, through the intricate lovely
waterways of Alaska's Inland Sea, poking her prow into hidden crescent
coves, trying his luck with a gold-pan on unknown streams, always sure
that the next shift of the gravel in the pan would reveal a
fortune--all this made life fascinating for Shane Boreland. No matter
how far short realization fell, he was always ready with another dream,
always eager when a new adventure beckoned.

And now it was the mysterious Island of Kon Klayu.

Stripped of the golden glamour with which Shane had invested it, Ellen
knew it to be an island but five miles long and a mile and a half wide,
which lay