forces of nature and man had created;
her body was instinct with the same nervous leashed impotent energy.

XXV

The white rain clouds, rolling as ever like a nervous intruder over the
great snow peaks behind the steep hills black with forest that rose
like a wall back of the little settlement of Sitka, parted for a
moment, and the sun, a coy disdainful guest, flung a glittering mist
over what Nature had intended to be one of the most enchanting spots on
earth, until, in a fit of ill-temper--with one of the gods, no
doubt--she gave it to Niobe as a permanent outlet for her discontent.
When it does not rain at Sitka it pours, and when once in a way she
draws a deep breath of respite and lifts her grand and glorious face to
the sun, in pathetic gratitude for dear infrequent favor, comes a wild
flurry of snow or a close white fog from the inland waters; and, like a
great beauty condemned to wear a veil through life, she can but stare
in dumb resentment through the folds, consoling herself with the
knowledge that could the world but see it must surely worship.
Perhaps, who knows? she really is a frozen goddess, condemned to the
veil for infidelity to him imprisoned in the great volcano across the
sound--who sends up a column of light once in a way to dazzle her
shrouded eyes, and failing that batters her with rock and stone like
any lover of the slums. One day he spat forth a rock like a small
hill, and big enough to dominate the strip of lowland at least,
standing out on the edge of the island like a guard at the gates, and
never a part of the alien surface. Between this lofty rock and the
forest was the walled settlement of New Archangel, that Baranhov, the
dauntless, had wrested from the bloodthirsty Kolosh but a short time
since and purposed to hold in the interest of the Russian-American
Company. His log hut, painted like the other buildings with a yellow
ochre found in the soil, stood on the rock, and his glass swept the
forest as often as the sea.

As Rezanov, on the second of July, thirty-one days after leaving San
Francisco, sailed into the harbor with its hundred bits of volcanic
woodland weeping as ever, he gave a whimsical sigh in tribute to the
gay and ever-changing beauties of the southern land, but was in no mood
for sentimental reminiscence. Natives, paddling eagerly out to sea in
their bidarkas to be the first to bring in good news or bad, had given
him a report covering the period of his absenc