As if in proof of what Blenship said, the next day it rained, the swelling waters carried out their rude dam, and it was three days more before they got it repaired and began sluicing again. Yet when they did, they took out three thousand in a single day. The next day it was only a thousand, because they had used up part of their ground and had to move their sluices, which took time. But on the third they found a hollow in the clay bottom that was a veritable treasure house, and yielded up over five thousand dollars in fine gold and nuggets. That morning three men came over the hills with packs on their backs. They camped near by and examined the notices with much disgust. It did not please them that the whole creek was staked. Blenship greeted them jovially, showed them his records in proof of the validity of the claims, and advised them to stake the benches, which they did. They prospected these and found a certain amount of gold there. Others came, on foot and with pack-horses,—evidently the story had spread. The place began to assume quite a mining-camp air. Meanwhile Blenship and his lieutenants worked on industriously. They were questioned much, but not otherwise disturbed. The newcomers were as yet too busy prospecting and staking ground for themselves. One day Harry dropped his shovel with a start. The long roar of a steam whistle sounded from the sea. A steamer! How it brought back memories of the Bowhead, now scattered in ruin along the Arctic shore, and through her the home thought again. Suppose Captain Nickerson should be aboard. Perhaps he was bound north once more in search of them. The bustle of the new camp and the glamour of the greed of gold slipped from him like a garment, and his soul soared from it, free, back to the home fireside and his father and mother. The voice of Blenship recalled him. “Come on, boy,” he said kindly; “let’s keep her a-going. I reckon that’s old Pap Lane come up in his steamer to see about this new strike. We want to have a good clean-up just going on when he strikes camp.” An hour later Blenship stood by his tent door talking with a square-shouldered, resolute-looking man of perhaps sixty. His hair was gray, but there was no stoop in his figure and he seemed in the prime of forceful life. “Pshaw! Blenship,” he was saying, “you have no business to stake all this creek. Even discovery would only entitle you to three claims, and you must have twenty. You’ll have to pull up and let my boys go in.” “Nearer forty claims than twenty,” Blenship declared coolly, “and every one of them staked on a good power of attorney from good hard-headed men in Nome. If you try to cut them out, they’ll fight you, every one of them, and you know what that means in the Alaska courts. No, sir, those claims are legally staked, on the square, and I propose to hold ’em.”