"You can bet yore life they do," said Lund. "They're smart, but they overlooked that beach an' they've given us three weeks to cash in." Lund himself had imbibed enough of the _sake_ to make him loose of tongue, added to his elation at the success he had achieved. The gunboat was gone on its patrol, and he had a free hand. He half filled a glass with whisky. "Here's to luck," he cried. And spilled a part of the liquor on the floor before he set the glass to his lips. "Here's to you, Doc," he added. "An' to Peggy!" He rolled eyes that were a trifle bloodshot at the girl. "Our relations have gone back as usual, Mr. Lund," she said quietly. Lund glared at her half truculently. "I'm agreeable," he said. "As a daughter, I disown you from now on, Miss Peggy. Here's to ye, jest the same!" CHAPTER XVII MY MATE From the day following the arrival and departure of the Japanese gunboat, 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 a woman, they went at the despoiling of it with a sort of obsession, led, rather than driven, by Lund, who worked among the rest of them like a Hercules. From the beginning the tongue of shingle promised to be almost incredibly rich. Between these two spurs of mountain the tide had washed and flung the rich, free-flaking gold of a submarine vein, piling it up for unguessable years. Ebb tides had worked it in among the gravel, floods had beaten it down; the deeper they went to bedrock, the richer the pan. The men's fancy estimate of a million dollars began speedily to seem small as the work progressed, systematically stripping the rocky floor of all its shingle, foot by foot, and cubic yard by cubic yard, cradling it in crude rockers, fluming it, vaporizing the amalgam of gold and mercury, and adding pound after pound of virgin gold to the sacks in the schooner'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 drilled here and there where it had frozen into conglomerate, and exploded 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 boilers that melted ice to provide water for the cradles and flumes, and help to cook the meals that Tamada prepared 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 crowbarred out the rich gravel.