This was the first time they had been alone since the scene on the after-deck, for, besides ignoring Glenister, she had managed that he should not even see her except in Dextry’s presence.  Although he had ever since been courteous and considerate, she felt the leaping emotions that were hidden within him and longed to leave the ship, to fly from the spell of his personality.  Thoughts of him made her writhe, and yet when he was near she could not hate him as she willed—­he overpowered her, he would not be hated, he paid no heed to her slights.  This very quality reminded her how willingly and unquestioningly he had fought off the sailors from the Ohio at a word from her.  She knew he would do so again, and more, and it is hard to be bitter to one who would lay down his life for you, even though he has offended—­particularly when he has the magnetism that sweeps you away from your moorings.

“There’s no danger of being seen,” he continued, “The crowd’s crazy, and, besides, we’ll go ashore right away.  You must be mad with the confinement—­it’s on my nerves, too.”

As they stepped outside, the door of an adjacent cabin opened, framing an angular, sharp-featured woman, who, catching sight of the girl emerging from Glenister’s state-room, paused with shrewdly narrowed eyes, flashing quick, malicious glances from one to the other.  They came later to remember with regret this chance encounter, for it was fraught with grave results for them both.

“Good evening, Mr. Glenister,” the lady said with acid cordiality.

“Howdy, Mrs. Champian?” He moved away.

She followed a step, staring at Helen.

“Are you going ashore to-night or wait for morning?”

“Don’t know yet, I’m sure.”  Then aside to the girl he muttered, “Shake her, she’s spying on us.”

“Who is she?” asked Miss Chester, a moment later.

“Her husband manages one of the big companies.  She’s an old cat.”

Gaining her first view of the land, the girl cried out, sharply.  They rode on an oily sea, tinted like burnished copper, while on all sides, amid the faint rattle and rumble of machinery, scores of ships were belching cargoes out upon living swarms of scows, tugs, stern-wheelers, and dories.  Here and there Eskimo oomiaks, fat, walrus-hide boats, slid about like huge, many-legged water-bugs.  An endless, ant-like stream of tenders, piled high with freight, plied to and from the shore.  A mile distant lay the city, stretched like a white ribbon between the gold of the ocean sand and the dun of the moss-covered tundra.  It was like no other in the world.  At first glance it seemed all made of new white canvas.  In a week its population had swelled from three to thirty thousand.  It now wandered in a slender, sinuous line along the coast for miles, because only the beach afforded dry camping ground.  Mounting to the bank behind, one sank knee-deep in moss and water, and, treading twice in the same tracks, found a bog of oozing, icy mud.  Therefore, as the town doubled daily in size, it grew endwise like a string of dominoes, till the shore from Cape Nome to Penny River was a long reach of white, glinting in the low rays of the arctic sunset like foamy breakers on a tropic island.