The St. Charles herald., 1922-04-22
CHAPTER XIi..-
My Mate.

From the day following the arrival
and departure of the japanese gun
beat, they attacked the little U-shaped
beach that lay between two buttreSses
of the volcano and slOped sharply
down to the sea. Twenty-one men, a
lad and woman, they went at the
despoiling of it with Sort of obses-
sion, led, rather than driven, by Lund,
who worked among the rest of them
like Hercules.
The mems fancy estimate Of a mil
lion dollars began speedily to seem
small as the work progressed. system
atically stripping the rocky floor of all
it's shingle, foot by foot, and cubic
yard by cubic yard, cradling it in
crude rockers, fiuming it, vaporizing
the amalgam Of gold and mercury,
and adding pound after pound Of
virgin gold to the sacks in the schoon-
er's strong room.
They worked at first in alternating
shifts Of four hours, by day and night,
under the sun, the moon, the stars and
the flaming aurora. The crust was
drifted here and there where it had
frozen into conglomerate, and explod-
ed by dynamite, carefully placed so as
not to dislodge the masses Of ice that
overhung the schooner. Fires to
thaw out the ground were unavailable
for sheer lack of fuel; there was no
driftwood between these forestless
shores What fuel could be spared
was conserved for use under the boil
ers that melted ice to provide water
for the cradles, and fumes, and help
to cook the meals that Tamada pre-
pared out-of-doors for the workers.
Buckets Of coffee, stews, and thick
soups of peas and lentils, masses of
beans with plenty of fat pork, these
were what they craved after hours of
tremendous endeavor. Despite the
cold, they sweated profusely at their
tasks stripping off over-garments as
they picked and shOveled or crow
barred out the rich gravel.
Through all of it Lund was supreme
as working superintendent. There was
no job that he could not, did not, handle
better than any two Of them, and
though Rainey could see q shrinkage,
or compression, of his bulk, as day
by day he called upon it for heroic
service, he never seemed to tire. "Got
to keep 'em at it," he would say in the
cabin. mo time to lose, an the odds
all against us, in a way. Barring
Luck. That's what we got to count
on, but we don't want them thinkin'
that. If the weather don't break-an'
break jest right-as soon as we've
cleaned up, we're stung. Though I'll
blast way out of this shore ice, If
1t comes to the worst. saved out
some dynamite on purpose"
With Lund handling all of the
men as unit, 1t was not long before
the shovcls began to scrape ON the
bare rock that underlay the gravel at
tide edge, and work swiftly back to
the end Of the U. The outdoors
kitchen had been established on top Of
the promontory between the schooner
and the beach, primitive arrange
ment Of big pots slung from tripods
over fires kindled on a fiat area that
was partly sheltered from the sea and
the prevailing winds by outcrops of
weathered lava.
At dawn the men trooped from the
schooner to be fed and warmed, and
then they flung themselves at their
task. The more they got out the
more there was in it for them. But
Lund was their overlord, their better,
and they knew it. Only Deming
worked with one hand the handle Of
the force bellows, or fed the fires, and
sneered.
On the fifteenth day, with the work
better than half done, with more than
a ton of actual gold in colors, that
ranged from flour dust to nuggets, in
the strong-room, the weather began to
change. 1t misted continually, and
Lund, rejoicing, prophesied the break
ing up of the cold snap.
By the eighteenth day a regular
Chinook was blowing, melting the
Shdi pei OutiihCo VI lliG ISy SldSS duU
pinnacles, and providing streams of
moisture that, in the nights now grad.
ually growing longer, glazed every yard
Of rock with peril.
The men worked in a muck with
their rubber sea-boots worn out by
constant chatting, sweaters torn, the
blades Of their shovels reduced by the
work demanded Of them, the drills,
shortened by steady sharpening, gone
like the spare flesh of the laborers,
who, at last, began to show signs of
quicker and quicker exhaustion with
occasional mutterings of discomfort,
while Lund, intent upon cleaning of
the rock as a dentist cleans a
crumbling tooth, coaxed and cursed,
blamed and praised and bullied. and
did the actual work of three Of them.
Dead with fatigue, filled with food,
drowsy from the liberal grog allow
ance at the end Of the day, the men
slept in a torpor every night and
showed less inclination to respond,
though the end Of their labors was al
most in sight.
"What's the use, we got enough"
was the comment beginning to be
heard more and more frequently.