OUTBOUND IN THE NIGHT
Petite Jeanne was disturbed. Nine o’clock had come and passed.
Reluctantly she made tea and drank it alone. Florence was not back. It
was strange.
“They went fishing, she and Sun-Tan Tillie,” she said to Tico, the bear.
“One does not fish at night, unless it is for bull-heads. And who wishes
for bull-heads? Bah! They are like snakes. You cut off their heads, and
still they bite your finger.”
Ten o’clock found her pacing the floor. Having at last arrived at a
decision, she dressed hurriedly in knickers and a heavy jacket, drew a
pair of men’s rubber boots on over her shoes, called to Tico, and went
out.
There was, she knew, a trail through the forest to the village. She had
never followed it. She dared try it now. So, armed only with a
flashlight, with the bear at her heels, she set out.
She was disturbed more than she cared to admit, even to herself. She
feared, not for herself, but for Florence. All these strange, half told
tales that had reached her ears, tales of gamblers and lady detectives,
of strange water gypsies and half savage bears, had worked upon her
imagination. One who knows no fear for his own safety is often the first
to fear for others. Such was the nature of the little French girl. So she
started out over an unknown trail at night in search of aid.
The trail was long and winding. More than once she lost herself. It was
boggy in places. There was need for boots. At times she was obliged to
take one step at a time, then lift the other foot out of the mud by the
boot straps.
When at last she reached the silent, sleeping village, she was near
exhaustion. The silence of the village frightened her more than the
lonely forest.
“It is as if everyone in the world were dead,” she told herself through
teeth that chattered.
“I must find that boy, Turkey Trot,” she said to Tico. “He may know
something.”
A faint light at the rear of Tillie’s house was reassuring. Someone was
there.
She knocked loudly at the door. A boy appeared with a lamp held high over
his head.
The lamp descended with a crash. Fortunately it went out. The boy, who
was Turkey Trot, had seen the bear, and had not seen Jeanne standing in
the shadows. He vanished.
Driven to desperation, Jeanne sprang after him, seized him by the collar,
and flashed her light in his eyes.
“Why do you run?” she demanded fiercely. “Where is my friend? Where is
Florence?”
“It was the bear!” Turkey Trot still trembled. “Where is Tillie?”
“You do not know?”
“Not me.”
“And you are alone?”
“Folks went to the Soo this morning. Be back to-morrow.
“But I got a motor, an outboard motor,” he added cheerfully. “Man gave it
to me this morning. It’s a hummer. Plenty of boats. We’ll go find them.
Broke an oar, like as not.”
“Oh! Do you think so? Could we?”
This tow-headed boy had suddenly become a savior in Jeanne’s eyes.
“What’ll we do with the bear?” the boy asked doubtfully.
“Do you think we could take him?”
“Don’t he bite?”
“Tico? Never! He is tame. Oh, very!”
“We might try.”
Ten minutes later an outboard motor began its put-put-put. A sixteen foot
boat with Jeanne in the prow, Turkey Trot in the stern, and the ponderous
bear in the middle, was headed out toward Gull Rock Point.
“Know where they fish, I do,” Turkey Trot shouted above the noise of the
motor. “Find ’em out there somewhere.”
“Perhaps,” Jeanne whispered to herself. There was doubt in her mind and
misgiving in her heart. Florence had not stayed out like that before,
without announcing her purpose. And there were strange doings about, very
strange doings indeed.
The water was black with the peculiar blackness that is night. The path
of pale light cast across it by the moon only served to intensify that
blackness. From time to time Jeanne sent a narrow pencil of light from
her electric torch. In a wavering circle this light searched the sea. Its
efforts were in vain. No craft was on the water at all at that late hour.
Florence and Tillie, as you know, were far away.
They reached Gull Rock Point. Still they discovered nothing. They began
circling the deep bays between points of land. One wide circle passed
within their view, a second and a third.
Then, all of a sudden, Turkey Trot, whose eyes were familiar with every
detail of those shores, uttered a low exclamation. Turning sharply, he
headed straight for a log-strewn, sandy beach.
Petite Jeanne had seen only logs. Turkey Trot had seen that which set his
blood racing.
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime, on their bleak and barren island, Tillie and Florence
were not idle. The fish shanty which they had found was composed of a
light frame of wood and an outer covering of fibre board. Tillie seized
the edge of the roof, Florence the bottom. Thus, in the half darkness,
stumbling over stumps and stones, but cheered by the thought that here at
last was shelter and a degree of warmth, they made their way to the
beach.
There, with the aid of the axe, they split a dry cedar stick into small
splints. They next lay down side by side in order to break the force of
the wind, and Tillie struck a match. It flickered and flashed, then
blazed up. Another moment, and the dry cedar was crackling like corn in a
popper.
“A fire!” Florence breathed. “A fire! Oh, Tillie, a fire!”
For the moment she was as emotional as her companion.
Soon they had a roaring fire of driftwood. The lake level had risen three
feet that spring. Great quantities of dead timber, to say nothing of logs
and planks from docks, had been carried away. There was no scarcity of
fuel.
The dance they did that night beneath the moon while their clothes were
drying was a thing of wild witchery. But what of that? There was none to
witness save the stars. The island was all their own.
When at last their clothes were dry, with a fire of hot coals before
them, they packed themselves like two very large sardines into the fish
shanty, which lay side down on the beach with its door open to the fire.
In ten minutes they were both sound asleep.