“He looked at the teeth. They were splendid. Good as any savage’s—all but one—one was filled. When he saw that, the castaway knew that probably this white man, who had been here before him, had dropped that nugget in the creek—or it had been washed down there after the wolves had torn the dead man’s clothes. But who could tell! ‘Look here,’ the live man asked, ‘what _did_ happen?’ But the other wouldn’t say a word, just went on grinning in that irritating way of his. So the live man picked up two stones, and got out his big clasp-knife, and he went at that skull with might and main, sawing at it with the knife (which was no good at all), and hammering with first one stone and then another, working away like one possessed.” “Did he weally fink he could make ve skull tell him somefing?” and Jack Galbraith laughed aloud at so foolish an adventurer. “Seemed as if he thought he’d get _some_ satisfaction out of it, from the way he kept on. By the time the Esquimau boy got back with the jack-snipe, the white man had hammered away everything from that skull except the round basin of the cranium—this part, you know. The Esquimau boy was horrified, and made signs of disapproval. “‘Just you wait,’ said the white man. He took the bone bowl down to the bank. He filled it full, and three times he ‘panned’ the gravel of that creek. _And every time he got gold!_” “Gwacious!” said Jack, in an excited whisper. “Yes,” agreed Mr. Mar, “when he saw colors the third time he just poured the stuff wet into his handkerchief, and told the Esquimau boy he was ready to go now. As he went up the bank, he passed the bones again. ‘I wonder if he knew!’ the castaway thought, and as he went on he thought more and more, and he got solemner and solemner. He said to himself: ‘A gold mine will do me just about as much good as it did Old Bones, if I have to stay up here with the Esquimaux. We’ll go back the other way,’ he called to the boy, and the boy didn’t think much of the plan. But the white man kept looking all round in every direction, to see if there was the least little trail leading anywhere, or the smallest human sign. Only those bones shining so white down there on the bank! The castaway went on, feeling pretty sick and anxious, till he looked straight up and saw off there against the blue, that great anvil, plainer than ever. The nose quite sharp and finely cut, the top as flat as our dining-table, and the waist gouged in exactly as a real anvil is. ‘Well, I won’t give up going to the top,’ he said out loud, ‘and if there _are_ any settlements—’ It was a crazy thing to do, but he did it; and when he got to the top he saw something he wouldn’t have seen in time, if he hadn’t climbed Anvil Rock.” “What did he see?” Jack gathered together his sprawled-out body and sat up.