Page:To Alaska for Gold.djvu/234

212 the corner posts of the cabin and had whip-sawed two-score of rough boards. With this material they went to work, and four pairs of willing hands soon caused the building to take definite shape. Seeing them at work, the other miners also got at it, and soon there was sawing and hammering all day long beneath the cliff.

Of necessity the cabin was a simple affair. It was set partly on the flat rock and partly on the hard ground, and was twenty feet wide by twelve feet deep, the back resting almost against the cliff. In the front was a door and a window, and there was another window at the end nearest to the door. Inside, a spare blanket divided the space into two compartments, the first, the one having the door, being the general living-room, and the second being the sleeping-room. In the living-room was placed a cooking-stove, a rude table, and four home-made chairs, while the sleeping-room was provided with four bunks, ranged along the rear and end walls. Later on a closet was built for the cooking-utensils, but for the present these were piled up in a corner.

Foster Portney was very particular that all the cracks in the side walls of the cabin should be filled in with mud, and the top, which was nearly on a level with the cliff, was also made water and wind tight, excepting where a circular hole was left for the upper section of a stovepipe.

As soon as the cabin was in habitable shape, an