r there was little food and often we lay down
to die. But at last we came to the cold sea, and but three were left to
look upon it. One had shipped from Yeddo as captain, and he knew in his
head the lay of the great lands, and of the place where men may cross
from one to the other on the ice. And he led us--I do not know, it was
so long--till there were but two. When we came to that place we found
five of the strange people which live in that country, and they had
dogs and skins, and we were very poor. We fought in the snow till they
died, and the captain died, and the dogs and skins were mine. Then I
crossed on the ice, which was broken, and once I drifted till a gale
from the west put me upon the shore. And after that, Golovin Bay,
Pastilik, and the priest. Then south, south, to the warm sunlands where
first I wandered.

'But the sea was no longer fruitful, and those who went upon it after
the seal went to little profit and great risk. The fleets scattered,
and the captains and the men had no word of those I sought. So I turned
away from the ocean which never rests, and went among the lands, where
the trees, the houses, and the mountains sit always in one place and do
not move. I journeyed far, and came to learn many things, even to the
way of reading and writing from books. It was well I should do this,
for it came upon me that Unga must know these things, and that someday,
when the time was met--we--you understand, when the time was met.

'So I drifted, like those little fish which raise a sail to the wind
but cannot steer. But my eyes and my ears were open always, and I went
among men who traveled much, for I knew they had but to see those I
sought to remember. At last there came a man, fresh from the mountains,
with pieces of rock in which the free gold stood to the size of peas,
and he had heard, he had met, he knew them. They were rich, he said,
and lived in the place where they drew the gold from the ground.

'It was in a wild country, and very far away; but in time I came to the
camp, hidden between the mountains, where men worked night and day, out
of the sight of the sun. Yet the time was not come. I listened to the
talk of the people. He had gone away--they had gone away--to England,
it was said, in the matter of bringing men with much money together to
form companies. I saw the house they had lived in; more like a palace,
such as one sees in the old countries. In the nighttime I crept in
through a window