"And may God strike me dead if I ever stop HATING you!" she cried,
her voice coming thick and hoarse with passion.

Turning, she walked proudly forward towards her cabin, a trim,
straight, haughty figure; and he did not know that her knees were
shaking and weak.




CHAPTER IV

THE KILLING


For four days the Santa Maria felt blindly through the white
fields, drifting north with the spring tide that sets through
Behring Strait, till, on the morning of the fifth, open water
showed to the east. Creeping through, she broke out into the last
stage of the long race, amid the cheers of her weary passengers;
and the dull jar of her engines made welcome music to the girl in
the deck state-room.

Soon they picked up a mountainous coast which rose steadily into
majestic, barren ranges, still white with the melting snows; and
at ten in the evening under a golden sunset, amid screaming
whistles, they anchored in the roadstead of Nome. Before the
rumble of her chains had ceased or the echo from the fleet's
salute had died from the shoreward hills, the ship was surrounded