The _Phantom_ swung out from the old monastery on Priest Point, and coming around, raced back before the still freshening wind. They skirted the Olympia peninsula, and moved on up the narrowing arm. Here were the white walls of the capitol, rising from a grove of young firs, and across the channel opened the wooded capes off Cleale Place. Then came the promontory, breaking from Tumwater ridge; the Indian burial ground, where the blankets, which screened the canoes of the dead in the treetops, hung against the dark face of the bluff like gaily painted squares. And at last the yacht began to feel a back current and stalked gently up towards the white mills. This was that "cradle" out of which Forrest had stepped, and there off the bow rose the glooming cliffs, where the lower Des Chutes hung a curtain of roped pearls, and the long pale lips of the rapids curled and menaced below. Stratton took the guitar and repeated the tune, droning a pleasing undernote. And presently Louise awakened, and the receding promontory, catching the contralto, held the song a tragic moment and returned it transformed to a requiem. "For the white squall rides on the surging wave, And the bark is gulfed in an ocean’s grave, In an ocean’s grave; in an ocean’s grave." But the soprano was silent. *CHAPTER XI* *THE HOUSE-RAISING* "I’ve travelled all over ther country, prospectin’ an’ diggin’ fur gold; I’ve tunnelled, hydraulicked an’ cradled, an’ I hev be’n frequently sold. An’ I hev be’n frequently s-o-old, an’ I hev be’n frequently sold, I’ve tunnelled, hydraulicked an’ cradled, an’ I hev be’n frequently sold." Mose rested on his ax and listened. It was a boy’s voice, loud and clear, though it slurred over difficult notes, and filled in uncertain words with a whistle. And it startled the woods, rising above the thunder of the cataract, and rang a hundred echoes from cliff and spur. "So rollin’ my grub in my blanket, an’ leavin’ my tools on ther ground, I started one mornin’ to shank it, fur a country they call Puget Sound. Fur a country they call Puget So-ou-ound—" "Saprie, dat ees Lem Myers." Mose lifted his ax and lopped off a branch which trailed over the rustic table he had completed. All the space around him was filled with building material; straight logs cut into even lengths, rows of cedar shakes, piles of hewn flooring, posts and rafters, newly made by hand from the felled timber of the small clearing, and surrounded by a resinous litter of boughs and chips. "’Arrivin’ dead broke in mid-winter, I found it enveloped in fog, An’ covered all over ’ith timber, thick as hair on ther back of er dog. Thick as hair on ther back of er do-o-g, thick as hair on ther back of er dog,—’ Aw, git up ther, Ginger, git up, I tell you."