THE NIGHT OF THE TEMPEST
I
THE sun went down that evening on a weird northern world. The wind,
which had been pressing out of the east all day, had dropped as at some
elemental sunset signal; but the great lake, lashed to fury, raced by
windrow upon windrow of long, curling “shanty” waves—the terrible seas
for which Superior in its wrath is peculiar. Three “mock suns” stood in
vertical alignment above the declining orb of day, and the air was filled
with a ghostly, brassy light that tinted the wild hills, the forests and
the raging sea with its exotic saffron glow.
Nannabijou camp, aglare in the unreal light, its windows flashing like
blood-red jewels, stood out against the setting of the sombre mountain
ranges like a fantastic painting on the canvas of some mad master. Above
the southeastern horizon hung a lowering blackness that presaged the
hurricane to come, while up from a hundred lonely bays along the rocky
North Shore the flailing waves sent up a thunderous, pounding roar.
From a plateau on Nannabijou Mountain above the beaver dam lake on
Solomon Creek, a figure that seemed the _genius loci_ of the fearsome
night looked out upon these things. His was a face of evil cunning,
dusky almost to blackness except where two red gashes stood out under the
black eyes—eyes which alone of all his sinister countenance seemed alive
and human. He wore no covering over his long straight black hair save a
band of purple which held in place a single eagle’s feather at the back
of his head. Round his neck were hung many strings of glistening wolves’
teeth.
Behind the Indian magician were ranged four headmen of the Objibiways, as
motionless as he, faces to the setting sun.
For moments they stood thus like statues of bronze, until a lake gull,
wheeling with a shrill scream inland, swooped close to their heads. The
Medicine Man turned, his gaze sweeping Nannabijou Bay where the great
booms of poles lay secure from the assaults of the seas, took in the
waterfront where the patrols of police paced back and forward, and
travelled to the blackness of the coming storm.
Suddenly he raised his arms aloft and his lips gave utterance to a
strange, guttural incantation in which his companions joined—a lugubrious
sing-song in the Objibiway tongue. It ended with a leaping, whirling
sort of dance. The witch doctor flung out a hand and from it there flew
a short cylindrical object that sang through the air like a spent bullet
and dropped with a soft “plop” far out in the little lake.
In that cylinder was wrapped the Great Medicine of the North—a charm
which once used, the pagan tribes believe, insures the success of any
project no matter how beset with difficulties and dangers.
At a low grunting command from the Medicine Man the Indians turned and
silently melted into the murk of the forest. And, as they did so, there
swept up from the woods a long-drawn, frightful cry that carried far and
wide above the surf roar from below.
It was not the call of a timber wolf nor of other beast of the
wilderness. In its swiftly rising and falling cadences it was half
laughter, half wail; a curious and awesome blending of mockery and
lamentations.
The rim of the setting sun flicked out in the gash of the western
cloud-banks and starless night dropped over the troubled waters and the
sighing woods.
II
The tempest broke over Nannabijou camp in shrieking fury between seven
and eight o’clock out of a night of stygian blackness. It came a great
gust that screamed and skirled overhead like legions of the damned on a
terrestrial rampage. Tents of the Mounties along the waterfront were
overthrown by the first blast and pressed flat as before the smash of a
giant’s hand. Great trees were bent and twisted until they turned over
at the roots or broke at the base like matches.
The rain was flung down with the wind in great drenching splashes that
beat through crevices of the windows and doors of the camp buildings in
hissing jets of spray. Every path and roadway into the hills was
transformed into a miniature torrent racing down to the bay.
It was a night such as mocks the courage of the stouthearted and sends
the wonder-fright of children into the beings of men. Every living thing
in the camp scuttled to the most convenient shelter, except the
patrolling policemen, who maintained their beats like fantastic wraiths
of the storm the while their searchlights played feebly into the murk and
downpour over the field of pulpwood booms in the bay.
Secure in a stout log cabin, Norman T. Gildersleeve and Artemus Duff sat
by a roaring fire in a sheet-iron Queen heater. Duff, twisting his
inevitable dead cigar from corner to corner of his mouth, was obviously
trying to conceal the nervousness that was upon him. At each succeeding
blast of the storm, which seemed to swoop down upon the cabin like a
demon bent on pressing it into the face of the earth, and at the
intermittent crash of falling timber, he would half start from his chair,
his fat cheeks blanching with terror and his chubby knees quaking.
Gildersleeve, whose early life had inured him to the savage moods of the
North, sat silent, imperturbable, as though engrossed with some
irrelevant problem.
Suddenly the millionaire, like one awaking from a doze, straightened in
his chair and lit a fresh cigar. “Gad, what a night, Duff,” he mused.
“What a hell of a night.” He glanced at his watch. “I wonder what in
blazes has become of my man, Lynch?”
“If he’s up there—in this—” Duff waved excitedly in the direction of the
hills. “If he’s up there—he’s likely got his—by now.”
“The confounded idiot!” stormed Gildersleeve with unfeeling heat. “He
ought to have had sense enough to get out of the timber when he saw what
was coming. Even a child would know enough to do that.”
“Maybe when he saw it coming he decided to stay in some safe place until
it was over.”
“No—not Lynch. He’s scared plain stiff of the bush at night. For a
detective who’s done dirty, risky jobs all over the country he’s the
veriest coward in the woods after nightfall. He’d sneak into a king’s
bed chamber and steal his private papers for a ten-dollar bill, but he
wouldn’t go into the big timber after sun-down for a million.”
“Then—what do you think—could have happened to him?” Duff was glad of
any diversion, gruesome or otherwise, that might take his thoughts off
the raging of the storm outside.
“It’s hard to say, Duff.” Gildersleeve got up and paced the floor. “He
must have met with some accident; twisted an ankle in the windfalls,
fallen over a cliff, or else—well, it’s hard to say—”
He stopped in his tracks as a scraping thud resounded at the cabin door.
Duff lurched to his feet as the door sprang open and the bedraggled
figure of a man thrust itself across the threshold accompanied by a
welter of flying rain that spattered across the floor to the wall beyond.
“Lynch!” gasped Gildersleeve.
“That’s me—least—what’s left—of me,” asserted the newcomer between
panting gasps as he crowded the door shut.
He was a wiry-looking little man with a face like a rat; beady eyes back
of an insignificant nose, high upper lip and receding chin. He
immediately proceeded to divest himself of his reefer and boots and stood
up a-drip and steaming by the sheet-iron stove.
“That’s right, Lynch,” approved Gildersleeve, “let your clothes dry on
you, and you won’t catch cold. Here, have a bolt of Scotch.” He poured
out a stout bracer from a silver pocket-flask into a metal cup and handed
it to Lynch who downed it neat at a gulp, his beady eyes glittering.
“There,” said Gildersleeve, “that’ll make a new man of you, Lynch. How
is it you didn’t strike out for camp before it got dark and the storm
came up?”
“Got lost,” explained Lynch. “Didn’t notice it was getting late until it
was near sun-down. Tried to make a short cut through the bush to the
creek and lost my bearings in that rotten mess. Couldn’t see the sun or
a blessed thing to guide me out. Struggled in all kinds of circles
through windfalls breast-high and every time I’d stop for breath I’d hear
sneaking sounds all round me like things watching for me to fall so they
could jump me while I was down.
“Then—then—I heard a horrible yell. No, it wasn’t a yell either; it was
like wailing and laughing all mixed up. It made my blood run cold. I
can hear it yet.
“Ugh!” He shuddered. “I don’t know which was the worst—floundering
round in the windfalls or coming down the trail in the hurricane with
deadfalls smashing down in the wind everywhere. I nearly got mine with
falling timber a dozen times, and every ten steps or so I’d go flying on
my face in the muck. I wouldn’t go through it again for a hundred
thousand.”
III
“But you’re safe—it’s all over now,” reminded Gildersleeve handing the
detective a cigar. “The question is did you find out anything worth
while?”
“I found out something that ought to be worth a whole lot.”
“Good!” urged Gildersleeve. “I told you there was a fifty-dollar bonus
in it if you got a line on the North Star’s secret layout and their
wireless plant up there. That promise holds.”
“I don’t know what’s up in that devilish place,” remarked Lynch, “but I
did find out how they get in and out of the Cup of Nannabijou.”
“What!” Both Gildersleeve and Duff were tense. “It’s a creek-bed that
dries up when you touch a button.”
His companions stared blankly as though he had suddenly gone crazy.
“S’help me,” insisted Lynch, “that’s just what it is. I found it out by
pure accident. Was poking around in a sort of tunnel that opens out on
the rapids of the creek when my foot caught in something, and, in trying
to stop myself from falling, I swung up a hand against a piece of rock
jutting from the wall. In my business I keep my fingers as sensitive as
a combination lock expert. I guess if it hadn’t been for that I wouldn’t
have felt that little round hole in the rock. I got out my pocket-flash
and examined it. It was only about the size of a nail, drilled into the
rock about an inch and a half. I could see then that that knob of rock
had been cleverly cemented into a hole in the wall. ‘A’ha,’ thinks I,
‘this is a spring that opens some secret entrance through the rock.’ I
wasn’t at all expecting what it really turned out to be. So I gets a
match, inserts it in the hole and presses down on it just to see what
would happen.
“There was a flash like lightning, and a queer, soft sound like a gong
came from up above somewhere. Then in a minute it seemed to me the creek
rapids just down the tunnel got awful quiet.
“I went down to investigate, and sure enough there was no water running
down, and if it hadn’t been for the wet at the bottom and sides of the
channel I wouldn’t have believed there ever had been. I slipped back and
pressed the match against the concealed button again. The bell rang and
almost right away the water came roaring down like it was before. Now I
think that was pretty good scouting for one day.”
“You didn’t try going up the creek bottom to see where it led to,”
Gildersleeve pressed him.
“Not much. I up and beat it. Something mighty queer about it all that
sort of got my goat, and besides I was scared that bell ringing would
bring some one round that might use me rough. I didn’t know it had got
so late until I was out in the daylight again.”
“So that’s it,” mused Gildersleeve, “that’s how they get up into the Cup.
Well, to-morrow we’ll—” He strode over and stood staring at the circular
draft-vent of the little stove.
What he might have said was left unfinished for there came a great crash
above the howlings of the storm that made the earth shudder. It was
followed by a continuous pounding thunder that grew louder and louder as
though the tops had slid from the mountains and were crashing down to the
lake. Nearer and more formidable it grew, setting the building a-quiver
at each succeeding smash until it seemed to sweep into and through the
very heart of the camp.
The three men stood speechless and aghast, staring into each other’s
terror-smitten countenances.
IV
Gildersleeve was the first to move. With an inarticulate cry he flung
open the door and leaped into the night.
Outside all was pandemonium. With the advent of the new terror the storm
had subsided considerably, though rain was still pouring down. Men
awakened from their sleep were rushing everywhere through the wet and
darkness. There were hysterical shouts and coarse, ugly curses. In
another moment scores of lanterns gleamed blearily in the murk and the
search-lights of the police sent shafts of light playing up from the
waterfront.
Twenty-five feet from the river Gildersleeve found the Mounties holding
back the crowd with hoarse commands, their carbines held crosswise before
them.
Conjecture ran rife. “Cloud-burst in the hills,” some one cried. And
another: “Look, look, the Nannabijou River’s roarin’ full to the top of
the banks!”
“The bridge is going!”
There came the wail of great timbers as they were twisted and torn from
their places. As Gildersleeve’s eyes became more adjusted to the dim,
uncertain light, he saw that the torrent rode almost to the brim of the
high banks of the Nannabijou, fully thirty feet above the stream’s normal
level. In mad succession on its crest swirled logs, stumps, whole trees
and other debris from the hills.
It was a terrifying, majestic sight, this great river moving out like an
all-conquering, irresistible host, and carrying captive the things that
stood in the way of its might as it swept from the confining hills to the
freedom of the lake.
From beyond the mouth of the river, above the din of the storm and the
freshet in the hills came a sibilant hissing sound like that when waves
break over jagged reefs, only this was intensified a hundred-fold.
Shafts of light from the search-lights were flung over the bay.
“The booms are going out!”
Gildersleeve stood fascinated, dumb before the inevitable. The gorged
river flinging itself out into the bay swept over the field of pulpwood
an ever-widening tidal wave; then the poles rose through the boiling
flood, heaving flat for one instant and the next rolled forward in great
jams that again held until the invading torrent, gathering head, swept
them before it in tossing, grinding masses.
The unequal struggle lasted but a few brief seconds. Then when the
connecting links of the boom timbers beyond gave way the whole field of
pulpwood sprang forward with a mighty, grinding roar and crowded out of
the bay into the raging lake beyond where wind and wave carried it off in
howling triumph.
In less time than it takes to tell the magnificent field, comprising
thousands of cords of wood ready for grinding, had vanished all but an
insignificant remnant the backwash had flung up on the shores of the bay.
The torrent in the river was gradually subsiding now, but still the crowd
hung about in the drenching rain.
“What do you think caused it!” some one who had just come up asked of a
little knot near Gildersleeve.
“Cloud-burst in the hills most likely,” vouchsafed one of the group.
“Cloud-burst nothing,” derided another. “I could tell you just what
happened: The beaver-dam in Solomon Creek has busted and let that lake of
water behind it loose.”
“Anyway, it will make more work for the workers,” piped a loose-tongued
disciple of Lenin. “We’ll be kept busy salvagin’ them poles up along the
shore till the freeze-up comes and all next spring. The North Star won’t
let all that good timber go to waste.”
“Salvage!”
The word rang in the brain of Norman T. Gildersleeve like a clang of
doom. It meant—it meant that those poles could now never be recovered in
time to start the Kam City Mills on the date set by the government.
The crowd was thinning out, but Gildersleeve, soaked to the skin, stood
as one in a daze till a police officer came up.
“Costly night’s damage for the North Star Company, sir,” he remarked
gravely.
Norman T. Gildersleeve made a strange noise in his throat but no more
coherent answer as he stood staring into the blackness over the lake.
“But then they say that timber can be salvaged in due time,” suggested
the friendly officer.
“Salvaged—in due time,” echoed the financier vacantly. Then to the
policeman’s amazement he let loose a torrent of bitter curses and flung
his arms about like a madman.
V
Back at the cabin Duff and Lynch ceased their chatter about the disaster
at sight of Gildersleeve’s grim, ghastly face. In silence he made
preparations to retire.
Just before he blew out the light, Lynch approached Gildersleeve’s bunk.
“Will we be going up into the hills to look over that secret passageway
in the morning?” he asked tactlessly.
“You can go where you damned well please—to hell and back, if you like,”
came the snarling retort. “Any place will suit me to-morrow—any place
outside this cursed country.”
But while Gildersleeve cursed the north country, as others who have
failed to conquer its moods and its tremendous difficulties have cursed
it, he sensed in this last disaster the hand of an agency that was not
the elements—an inscrutable, sinister agency that had thwarted, blocked
and bankrupted his projects on the North Shore for two decades—an agency
that, however exotic the idea might seem, had in its destructive designs
the coordination of the tempest.
As he tossed sleepless between the grey blankets his thoughts kept
converging on something Lynch had given utterance to in the story of his
flight down Nannabijou Mountain—something that faintly but insistently
brought up black memories out of his early youth. He tried to think of
other things, to laugh it away as a foolish bit of imagination. It was
no use—the face of a youth rose before his tortured eyes, a face handsome
and boyish, but very dark of skin. It was the eyes in that face—those
terrible, great black eyes where he saw mirrored in turn entreaty,
despair—then black, black hate.
“Alexander!”
Gildersleeve breathed it in wretched entreaty. His hands involuntarily
went upwards as he felt a stinging smash first under the right eye, next
under the left. The points where the two tiny scars were stung like
fire.
Then he heard. . . . Great God, he heard out in the night somewhere a
cry that made his soul quake.
Gildersleeve sprang from his bunk. With hands that trembled he lit the
lamp and shook Lynch into wakefulness.
“Lynch,” he demanded, “that cry you heard up in the hills when you were
coming down—just what was it like?”
The detective sat up blinking. “I’m not likely ever to forget it, Mr.
Gildersleeve,” he replied. “It was a howl that was half laughter, half
wail—like the cry of a loon.”
Gildersleeve started back a-tremble. “And—and did you see anything,
Lynch?”
“S’help me the only living thing I saw I didn’t want to tell you of
before—you wouldn’t believe it. As heaven is my judge, the thing that
gave that terrible cry _was in the shape of a man_.”
“That’s all I wanted to know, Lynch.”
Gildersleeve stumbled back to his bunk leaving the light burning.
Between teeth that chattered he mumbled to himself:—
“The cry of a loon—from a man. At last—at last, I understand.”