It was on the wide southern foreshore, just below where the falls of the Beaver River thundered into the chasm which the centuries of its flood had hewn in the granite rock, that Standing had founded his great mill.  It lay there, in full view from the hillside, amidst a tangle of stoutly made roads, where seven years ago not even a game track had existed.  He had set it up beside his water-power, and had given it the name which belonged to the ruined trading post he had found on the southern headland of the cove when first he had explored the region.  Sachigo.  A native, Labrador word which meant “Storm.”  The trading post had since been re-built into a modern wireless station, and so had become no longer the landmark it once had been.  But Standing’s whim had demanded the necessity for preserving the name, if only for the sake of its meaning.

In seven years the translation of the wilderness had been well-nigh complete.  Its vast desolation remained.  That could never change under human effort.  It was one of the oldest regions of the earth’s land, driven and beaten and desolated under a climate beyond words in its merciless severity.  But now the place was peopled.  Now human dwellings dotted the forest foreshore of the cove.  And the latter were the homes of the workers who had come at the mill-owner’s call to share in his great adventure.

Then there was shipping in the cove.  A fleet of merchant shipping awaiting cargoes.  There was a built inner harbour, with quays, and warehouses.  There were travelling cranes, and every appliance for the loading of the great freighters with all possible dispatch.  There were light railways running in every direction.  There were sheltering “booms” in the river mouth crammed with logs, and dealt with by an army of river men equipped with their amazing peavys with which they thrust, and rolled, and shepherded the vast mass of hewn timber towards the slaughterhouse of saws.  Then, immediately surrounding the mill, there was a veritable town of storehouses and offices and machine shops of every description.  There were power-houses, there were buildings in the process of construction, and the laid foundations of others projected.  It was a world of active human purpose lost in the heart of an immense solitude which it was nevertheless powerless to disturb.

“Yes, it’s all too good to have things happen, Bat,” Standing went on presently.  “Hark at the roar of the falls.  What is it?  Five hundred thousand horsepower of water, summer and winter.  Listen to the drone of the grinders.”  He shook his head.  “It’s a great song, boy, and they never get tired of singing it.  There’s only thirty-six of ’em at present.  Thirty-six.  We’ll have a hundred and thirty-six some day.  Look down there at the booms.”  He stood pointing, a tall, lean figure on the hillside.  “Tens of thousands of logs, and hundreds of men.  We’ll multiply those again and again—­one day.  It’s fine.  The freighters lying at anchor