He turned his dark face to windwards, where a sharp and lofty headland shut out something of his view. His movement possessed no real inspiration. It was the mechanical result of his thought. This way lay the northern channel which surged round the rugged beach at the foot of the headland. He had no thought of passing out that way. It would be simple madness to make the attempt. Besides, it would be impossible. No boat could face the torrential rush of the current in that direction. He knew it as the “Channel of Death.”
Not even a crazy white man with his boat of iron and smoke could face that channel and hope to reach the sea. But the current had its uses for a real sailorman like himself. Oh, yes. A hundred times he had sailed home to this beach upon it. And even to do that was an adventure that stirred his native vanity and yielded him vaunting satisfaction in his own skill. No. He would run down on the southern channel. He would fish with the ebb till it was nearing flat water, then he would beat up northward and sail home down the northerly raceway with a free wind. That is, if no gale arose to----
His train of thought suddenly broke off short. Something had caught and held his whole attention out there somewhere beyond the sharp-cut headland. And as he gazed, his eyes screwed up in the brilliant sunshine, he drew a sharp breath which was his only expression of astonished incredulity. Just for one brief moment he stood thus. Then he suddenly set off at a run, making all speed for the fierce beach where the ocean rollers roared impotently at the foot of the headland.
More than a month had passed since the night of the Speedway’s festival. It had been a time of intensive work for the head of the Mountain Oil Corporation. The summer was short, all too short, for the work he was engaged upon, and of necessity he was forced to drive hard while the season permitted. Now he was at home drafting an earlier survey of a territory which looked like revolutionizing the work of his company.
In the midst of his labours he looked up as the door of his log shanty was unceremoniously thrust open.
The table before which he was seated was a rough enough piece of furniture, as were most of the fitments of this shelter he had set up on the wind-swept cliffs. It was littered with the mechanical drawings, and charts, and maps he was at work upon. There was a queer assemblage, too, of the instruments of his profession lying scattered over the completely untidy apartment.
