A thousand times the two must have camped like this in the days when Alaska was new and there were no maps to tell them what lay beyond the next range.
Olaf felt resting upon him something of the responsibility of a doctor, and after supper he sat with his back to a tree and talked of the old days as if they were yesterday and the day before, with tomorrow always the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow which he had pursued for thirty years.

He was sixty just a week ago this evening, he said, and he was beginning to doubt if he would remain on the beach at Cordova much longer.

Siberia was dragging him--that forbidden world of adventure and mystery and monumental opportunity which lay only a few miles across the strait from the Seward Peninsula.

In his enthusiasm he forgot Alan's tragedy.

He cursed Cossack law and the prohibitory measures to keep Americans out.