And then he came to other things, the first low log buildings of
Churchill, to the silence of sleeping life. New buildings loomed
up--working quarters of men who were grubbing for dollars, the new
wharves, the skeletons of elevators, sullen, windowless
warehouses, the office-buildings of men who were already fighting
and quarreling and gripping at one another's throats in the
struggle for supremacy, for the biggest and ripest plums in this
new land of opportunity. The dollar-fight had begun, and the
things that already marked its presence loomed monstrous and
grotesque to Philip, as if jeering at the forgotten efforts of
those whom the sea was washing away. And suddenly it struck Philip
that the sea, working ceaselessly, digging away at its dead, was
not the enemy of the nameless creatures in the gun-case coffins,
but that it was a friend, stanch through centuries, rescuing them
now from the desecration that was to come; and for a moment he was
resistless to the spirit that moved him about and made him face
that sea with something that was almost a prayer in his heart.
As he turned he saw that a light had appeared in one of the low
log buildings which contained the two offices of the Keewatin
Mines and Lands Company.
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