Produced by Al Haines
_Adventure Stories for Girls_
The Blue Envelope
By
ROY J. SNELL
Chicago
The Reilly & Lee Co.
Copyright, 1922
by
The Reilly & Lee Co.
All Rights Reserved
The Blue Envelope
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE
II A BOLD STROKE REWARDED
III THE MYSTERIOUS PHI BETA KI
IV FOR HE IS A WHITE MAN'S DOG
V CAST ADRIFT
VI THE DREAD WHITE LINE
VII THE BLUE ENVELOPE DISAPPEARS
VIII THE VISIT TO THE CHUKCHES
IX A CLOSE CALL
X FINDING THE TRAIL
XI "WITHOUT COMPASS OR GUIDE"
XII "WHAT IS THAT?"
XIII STRANGE DISCOVERIES
XIV A LONESOME ISLAND
XV TWO RED RIDING HOODS
XVI A FORTUNATE DISCOVERY
XVII OUT OF THE NIGHT
XVIII A NEW PERIL
XIX MYSTERIES EXPLAINED
FOREWORD
When considering the manuscript of "The Blue Envelope" my publishers
wrote me asking that I offer some sort of proof that the experiences of
Marian and Lucile might really have happened to two girls so situated.
My answer ran somewhat as follows:
Alaska, at least the northern part of it, is so far removed from the
rest of this old earth that it is almost as distinct from it as is the
moon. It's a good stiff nine-day trip to it by water and you sight
land only once in all that nine days. For nine months of winter you
are quite shut off from the rest of the world. Your mail comes once a
month, letters only, over an eighteen-hundred-mile dog trail; two
months and a half for letters to come; the same for the reply to go
back. Do you wonder, then, that the Alaskan, when going down to
Seattle, does not speak of it as going to Seattle or going down to the
States but as "going outside"? Going outside seems to just exactly
express it. When you have spent a year in Alaska you feel as if you
had truly been inside something for twelve months.
People who live "inside" of Alaska do not live exactly as they might
were they in New England. Conventions for the most part disappear.
Life is a struggle for existence and a bit of pleasure now and again.
If conventions and customs get in the way of these, away with them.
And no one in his right senses can blame these people for living that
way.
One question we meet, and probably it should be answered. Would two
lone girls do and dare the things that Lucile and Marian did? My only
answer must be that girls of their age--girls from "outside" at
that--have done them.
Helen C----, a sixteen-year-old girl, came to Cape Prince of Wales to
keep house for her father, who was superintendent of the reindeer herd
at that point. She lived there with her father and the natives--no
white woman about--for two years. During that time her father often
went to the herd, which was grazing some forty miles from the Cape, and
stayed for a week or two at a time, marking deer or cutting them out to
send to market. Helen stayed at the Cape with the natives. At times,
in the spring, unattended by her father, she went walrus hunting with
the natives in their thirty-foot, sailing skin-boat and stayed out with
them for thirty hours at a time, going ten or twelve miles from land
and sailing into the very midst of a school of five hundred or more of
walrus. This, of course, was not necessary; just a part of the fun a
healthy girl has when she lives in an Eskimo village.
Beth N----, a girl of nineteen, came to keep house for her brother, the
government teacher on Shishmaref Island--a small, sandy island off the
shore of Alaska, some seventy-five miles above Cape Prince of Wales.
She had not been with her brother long when a sailing schooner anchored
off shore. This schooner had on board their winter supply of food.
Her brother went on board to superintend the unloading. The work had
scarcely begun when a sudden storm tore the schooner from her moorings
and sent her whirling southward through the straits.
For some ten or twelve days Beth was on that barren, sandy island
entirely alone. The natives were, at this time of the year, off
fishing up one of the rivers of the mainland. She did not have as much
as a match to light a fire. She had no sort of notion as to how or
when her brother would return. The fact of the matter was that had not
her brother had in his possession a note from the captain asking him to
come aboard, and had he not known the penalty for not returning a
landsman to his port under such conditions, the unprincipled seaman
would have carried him to Seattle, leaving Beth to shift for herself.
He reached home on a gasoline schooner some ten days after his
departure.
This same Beth, when spring came and she wished to go "outside,"
engaged a white guide to take her by dog team to Cape Prince of Wales,
where the mail steamer might be caught. It was late in the spring and
the ice was soft. They had been traveling for some time on the rough
shore ice when they discovered, much to their horror, that their ice
pan had broken loose from the shore and was drifting out to sea. They
hurried along the edge of it for some distance in the hope of finding a
bridge to shore. In this they were disappointed. Beth could not swim.
Fortunately the guide could. Leaping into the stinging water he swam
from one cake to the next one, leading the dogs. Beth clung to the
back of the sled and was thus brought ashore. After wading many
swollen torrents, they at last reached Cape Prince of Wales in safety.
This sounds very much like fiction but is fact and can be verified.
As to crossing Bering Straits and living with the Chukches in Siberia.
I did that very thing myself--went with a crew of Chukches I had never
seen, too. I was over there for only three days but might have stayed
the summer through in perfect safety. While there I saw a character
known as the French Kid, a white man who had crossed the Straits with
the natives late in the year and had wintered there.
Crossing twenty or more miles of floe ice might seem a trifle
improbable but here, too, actual performance bears me out. I sent the
mail to Thompson, the government teacher on the Little Diomede Island,
across 22 miles of floe ice by an Eskimo. This man had made the trip
many times before. It is my opinion that what an Eskimo can do, any
white man or hearty young woman can do.
Well, there you have it. I don't wish to make my fiction story seem
tame, or I might tell you more. As it is I hope I may have convinced
you that all the adventures of Lucile and Marian are probable and that
the author knows something about the wonderland in which the story is
set.
THE AUTHOR.
THE BLUE ENVELOPE
CHAPTER I
A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE
At the center of a circular bay, forming a perfect horseshoe with a
sandy beach at its center and a rocky cliff on either side, two girls
were fishing for shrimps. The taller of the two, a curly-haired,
red-cheeked girl of eighteen, was rowing. The other, short and rather
chubby, now and again lifted a pocket net of wire-screening, and,
shaking a score or more of slimy, snapping creatures into one corner of
it, gave a dexterous twist and neatly dropped the squirming mass into a
tin bucket.
Both girls had the clear, ruddy complexion which comes from clean
living and frequent sallies into the out-of-doors. Lucile Tucker, the
tall one of curly hair, was by nature a student; her cousin, Marian
Norton, had been born for action and adventure, and was something of an
artist as well.
"Look!" exclaimed Lucile suddenly. "What's that out at the entrance of
the bay--a bit of drift or a seal?"
"Might be a seal. Watch it bob. It moves, I'd say."
Without further comment Lucile lifted a light rifle from the bow and
passed it to her cousin.
Marian stood with one knee braced on the seat and steadied herself for
a shot at the object which continued to rise and fall with the low roll
of the sea.
Born and reared at Nome on the barren tundra of Alaska, Marian had
hunted rabbits, ptarmigan and even caribou and white wolves with her
father in her early teens. She was as steady and sure a shot as most
boys of her age.
"Boat rocks so," she grumbled. "More waves out there, too. Watch the
thing bob!"
"It's gone under!"
"No, there it is!"
"Try it now."
Catching her breath, Marian put her finger to the trigger. For a
second the boat was quiet. The brown spot hung on the crest of a
wavelet. It was a beautiful target; Marian was sure of her aim.
Just as her finger touched the trigger, a strange thing happened; a
something which sent the rifle clattering from nerveless fingers and
set the cold perspiration springing to her forehead.
A flash of white had suddenly appeared close to the brown spot, a slim
white line against the blue-green of the sea. It was a human arm.
"Who--who--where'd you suppose he came from?" she was at last able to
sputter.
"Don't ask me," said Lucile, scanning the sea. Never a mist nor a
cloud obscured the vision, yet not a sail nor coil of smoke spoke of
near-by craft. "What's more important is, we must help him," she said,
seizing the oars and rowing vigorously. Marian, having hung the shrimp
trap across the bow, drew a second pair of oars from beneath the seats
and joined her in sending the clumsy craft toward the brown spot still
bobbing in the water, and which, as they drew nearer, they easily
recognized as the head of a man or boy. Lucky for him that he had
chanced to throw a white forearm high out of the water just as Marian
was prepared unwittingly to send a bullet crashing into his skull.
Realizing that this person, whoever he might be, must have drifted in
the water for hours and was doubtless exhausted, the two girls now gave
all their strength to the task of rowing. With faces tense and
forearms flashing with the oars, they set the boat cutting the waves.
The beach and cliffs back of the bay in which the girls had been
fishing were part of the shore line of a small island which on this
side faced the open Pacific Ocean and on the other the waters of Puget
Sound, off the coast of the state of Washington.
Nestling among a group of giant yellow pines on a ridge well up from
the beach, two white tents gleamed. This was the camp of Marian and
Lucile. The rock-ribbed and heavily wooded island belonged to Lucile's
father, a fish canner of Anacortes, Washington. There was, so far as
they knew, not another person on the island. They had expected a
maiden aunt to join them in their outing. She was to have come down
from the north in a fishing smack, but up to this time had not arrived.
Not that the girls were much concerned about this; they had lived much
in the open and rather welcomed the opportunity to be alone in the
wilds. It was good preparation for the future. They had pledged
themselves to spend the following winter in a far more isolated spot,
Cape Prince of Wales, on Bering Straits in Alaska. Lucile, who, though
barely eighteen years of age, had finished high school and had spent
one year in normal school, was to teach the native school and to
superintend the reindeer herd at that point. Marian had lived the
greater part of her life in Nome, Alaska, but even from childhood she
had shown a marked talent for drawing and painting and had now just
finished a two-year course in a Chicago art school. Her drawings of
Alaskan life and the natives had been exhibited and had attracted the
attention of a society of ethnology. In fact, so greatly had they been
impressed that they had asked Marian to accompany her cousin to Cape
Prince of Wales to spend the winter sketching the village life of that
vanishing race, the Eskimo.
So this month of camping, hunting and fishing was but a preparatory one
to fit them the more perfectly for the more important adventure.
When they reached the mysterious swimmer they were surprised to find
him a mere boy, some fourteen years of age.
"What a strange face!" whispered Marian, when they had assisted the
dripping stranger into the boat.
They studied him for a moment in silence. His hair and eyes were
black, his face brown. He wore a single garment, cleverly pieced
together till it seemed one skin, but made of many bird skins,
eiderduck, perhaps. This garment left his arms and legs free for
swimming.
He said nothing, simply stared at them as if in bewilderment.
"We must get him ashore at once," said Lucile. "He must have swum a
long way."
Fifteen minutes later, after tying up the boat, Lucile came upon Marian
picking the feathers from a duck they had shot that morning.
"Goin' to make him some broth," she explained, tossing a handful of
feathers to the wind. "Must be pretty weak."
Lucile stole a glance at the stranger's face.
"Do you think he's oriental?" she whispered.
"Might be," said Marian. "You don't have to be so careful to whisper
though; he doesn't speak our language, it seems, nor any other that I
know anything about. Very curious. I tried him out on everything I
know."
"Chinese, trying to smuggle in?"
"Maybe."
"He doesn't seem exactly oriental," said Lucile, looking closely at his
face.
With his eyes closed as if in sleep, the boy did not, indeed, seem to
resemble very closely any of the many types Lucile had chanced to meet.
There was something of the clean brown, the perfect curve of the
classic young Italian; something of the smoothness of skin native to
the Anglo-Saxon, yet there was, too, the round face, the short nose,
the slight angle at the eyes which spoke of the oriental.
"He looks like the Eskimos we have on the streets of Nome," suggested
Marian, "only he's too light-complexioned. Couldn't be, anyway."
"Not much likelihood of that," laughed Lucile. "Come two thousand
miles in a skin kiak to have his craft wrecked in a calm sea. That
couldn't happen."
"Whoever he is, he's a splendid swimmer," commented Marian. "When we
reached him he was a mile from any land, with the sea bearing
shoreward, and there wasn't a sail or steamer in sight."
The two of them now busied themselves with preparing the evening meal,
and for a time forgot their strange, uninvited guest.
When Lucile next looked his way she caught his eyes upon her in a
wondering stare. They were at once shifted to the kettle from which
there now issued savory odors of boiling fowl.
"He's hungry all right," she smiled.
When the soup was ready to serve they were treated to a slight shock.
The bird had been carefully set on a wooden plate to one side. Their
guest was being offered only the broth. This he sniffed for a moment,
then, placing it carefully on the ground, seized the bird and holding
it by the drumsticks began to gnaw at its breast.
Marian stared at him, then smiled. "I don't know as a full meal is
good for him, but we can't stop him now."
She set a plate of boiled potatoes before him. The boy paused to
stare, then to point a finger at them, and exclaimed something that
sounded like: "Uba canok."
"Do you suppose he never ate potatoes?" exclaimed Lucile in surprise.
"What sort of boy must he be?"
She broke a potato in half and ate one portion.
At once a broad smile spread over the brown boy's face as he proceeded
to add the potatoes to his bill of fare.
"Guess we'll have to start all over getting this meal," smiled Lucile;
"our guest has turned into a host."
When at last the strange boy's hunger was assuaged, Lucile brought two
woolen blankets from one of the tents and offered them to him.
Wrapping himself in these, he sat down by the fire. Soon, with hands
crossed over ankles, with face drooped forward, he slept.
"Queer sort of boy!" exclaimed Lucile. "I'd say he was an Indian, if
Indians lived that way, but they don't and haven't for some
generations. Our little brown boy appears to have walked from out
another age."
Night crept down over the island. Long tree shadows spread themselves
everywhere, to be at last dissolved into the general darkness. Still
the boy sat by the fire, asleep, or feigning sleep.
Not feeling quite at ease with such a stranger in their camp, the girls
decided to maintain a watch that night. Marian agreed to stand the
first watch until one o'clock, Lucile to finish the night. In the
morning they would take their small gasoline launch, which was at this
moment hidden around the bend in a small creek, and would carry the boy
to the emigration office at Fort Townsend.
They had worked and played hard that day. When Lucile was wakened at
one o'clock in the morning, she found herself unspeakably drowsy. A
brisk walk to the beach and back, then a dash of cold spring water on
her face, roused her.
As she came back to camp she thought she caught a faint and distant
sound.
"Like an oarlock creaking," she told herself, "yet who would be out
there at this time of night?"
She retraced her steps to the beach to scan the sea that glistened in
the moonlight. Not hearing or seeing anything, she concluded that she
had been mistaken.
Back at the camp once more, she glanced at the motionless figure seated
by the bed of darkening coals. Then, creeping inside the tent, she
drew a blanket over her shoulders and sat down, lost at once in deep
thought.
As time passed her thoughts turned into dreams and she slept. How long
she slept she could not tell. She awoke at last with a start; she felt
greatly disturbed. Had she heard a muffled shout? Or was that part of
a dream?
Lifting the flap of the tent, she stared at the boy's place by the
fire. It was vacant. He was gone!
"Marian," she whispered, shaking her cousin into wakefulness. "Marian!
He's gone. The brown boy's gone!"
"Let him go. Who wants him?" Marian murmured sleepily.
At that instant Lucile's keen ears caught the groan of oarlocks.
"But I hear oars," she whispered hoarsely. "They've come for him.
Someone has carried him away. I heard him try to cry for help. We
must stop them if we can find a way."
Catching up their rifles they crept stealthily from their tents.
Nothing was to be seen save the camp and the forest.
"Think we better try to follow them?" asked Lucile, as she struggled
into her shoes, wrapping the laces round and round her ankles for the
sake of speed.
"I don't know," said Marian. "They're probably rough men and we're
only girls. But we must try to find out what has happened."
In a moment they were creeping stealthily, rifles in hand, toward the
beach. As they paused to listen they heard no sound. Either the
intruders had rounded the point or had stopped rowing.
Lucile threw the circle of her flashlight out to sea.
"Stop that!" whispered Marian in alarm. "They might shoot."
"Look!" exclaimed Lucile suddenly; "our boat's gone!"
Hastening down the beach, they found it was all too true; the rowboat
had disappeared.
"There weren't any men," exclaimed Marian with sudden conviction.
"That boy's taken our boat and rowed away."
"Yes, there were men," insisted Lucile. "I just saw a track in the
sand. There it is." She pointed to the beach.
An inspection of the sand showed three sets of footprints leading to
the water's edge where a boat had been grounded. These same footprints
were about the spot where the stolen boat had been launched.
"There's one queer person among them," said Lucile, after studying the
marks closely. "He limps; one step is long and one short, also one
shoe is smaller than the other. We'd know that man if we ever saw him."
"Listen!" said Marian suddenly.
Out of the silence that ensued there came the faint pop-pop-pop of a
motorboat.
"Behind the point," said Lucile.
"Our motorboat!" whispered Marian.
Without a word Lucile started down the beach, then up the creek. She
was followed close by Marian. Tripped by creeping vines, torn at by
underbrush, swished by wet ferns, they in time arrived at the point
where the motorboat had been moored.
"Gone!" whispered Lucile.
"We've been deceived and robbed," said Marian mournfully. "Deceived by
a boy. His companions left him swimming in the sea so we would find
him. As soon as we were asleep, he crept away and towed the schooner
down the river, then he flashed a signal and the others came in for
him. Probably Indians and half-breeds. They might have left us a
rowboat, at least!" she exclaimed in disgust.
With early dawn streaking the sky they sat down to consider. The loss
of their motorboat was a serious matter. They had but a scant supply
of food, and while their aunt might arrive at any moment, again she
might not. If she did not, they had no way of leaving the island.
"We'd better go down the beach," said Marian. "They might have engine
trouble, or something, and be obliged to land, then perhaps we could
somehow get our boat."
"It's the only thing we can do," said Lucile. "It's a good thing we
had our food supply in our tent, or they would have taken that."
"Speaking of food," said Marian, "I'm hungry. We'd better have our
breakfast before we start."