THE DREAD WHITE LINE
Three days the blizzard raged about the cabin where Lucile and Marian
had found shelter. Such a storm at this season of the year had not
been known on the Arctic for more than twenty years.
For three days the girls shivered by the galley range, husbanding their
little supply of food, and hoping for something to turn up when the
storm was over. Just what that something might be neither of them
could have told.
The third day broke clear and cold with the wind still blowing a gale.
Lucile was the first to throw open the door. As it came back with a
bang, something fell from the beam above and rattled to the floor.
She stooped to pick it up.
"Look, Marian!" she exclaimed. "A key! A big brass key!"
Marian examined it closely.
"What can it belong to?"
"The wreck, perhaps."
"Probably."
"Looks like a steward's pass-key."
"But what would they save it for? You don't think--"
"If we could get out to the wreck we'd see."
"Yes, but we can't. There--"
"Look, Marian!" Lucile's eyes were large and wild.
"The white line!" gasped Marian, gripping her arm.
It was true. Before them lay the dark ocean still flecked with foam,
but at the horizon gleaming whiter than burnished silver, straight,
distinct, unmistakable, was a white line.
"And that means--"
"We're trapped!"
Lucile sank weakly into a chair. Marian began pacing the floor.
"Anyway," she exclaimed at last, "I can paint it. It will make a
wonderful study."
Suiting action to words, she sought out her paint-box and was soon busy
with a sketch, which, developing bit by bit, or rather, seeming to
evolve out of nothing, showed a native dressed in furs, shading his
eyes to scan the dark, tossing ocean. And beyond, the object of his
gaze, was the silvery line. When she had finished, she playfully
inscribed a title at the bottom:
"The Coming of the White Line."
As she put her paints away, something caught her eye. It was one
corner of the blue envelope with the strange address upon it.
"Ah, there you are still," she sighed. "And there you will remain for
nine months unless I miss my guess. I wish I hadn't kept my promise to
the college boy; wish I'd left you in the pigeon-hole at Cape Prince of
Wales."
Since the air was too chill, the wind too keen for travel, the girls
slept that night in the cabin. They awoke to a new world. The first
glimpse outside the cabin brought surprised exclamations to their lips.
In a single night the world appeared to have been transformed. The
"white line" was gone. So, too, was the ocean. Before them, as far as
the eye could reach, lay a mass of yellow lights and purple shadows,
ice-fields that had buried the sea. Only one object stood out, black,
bleak and bare before them--the hull of the wrecked and abandoned ship.
"Look!" said Lucile suddenly, "we can go out to the ship over the
ice-floe!"
"Let's do it," said Marian enthusiastically. "Perhaps there's some
sort of a solution to our problem there."
They were soon threading their way in and out among the ice-piles which
were already solidly attaching themselves to the sand beneath the
shallow water.
And now they reached a spot where the water was deeper, where
ice-cakes, some small as a kitchen floor, some large as a town lot,
jostled and ground one upon another.
"Wo-oo, I don't like it!" exclaimed Lucile, as she leaped a narrow
chasm of dark water.
"We'll soon be there," trilled her companion. "Just watch your step,
that's all."
They pushed on, leaping from cake to cake. Racing across a broad
ice-pan, now skirting a dark pool, now clambering over a pile of ice
ground fine, they made their way slowly but surely toward their goal.
"Listen!" exclaimed Marian, stopping dead in her tracks.
"What is it?" asked Lucile, her voice quivering with alarm.
A strange, wild, weird sound came to them across the floe, a grinding,
rushing, creaking, moaning sound that increased in volume as the voice
of a cyclone increases.
Only a second elapsed before they knew. Then with a cry of terror
Marian dragged her companion to the center of the ice-pan and pulled
her flat to its surface. From somewhere, far out to sea, a giant tidal
wave was sweeping through the ice-floe. Marian had seen it. The
mountain of ice which it bore on its crest seemed as high as the solid
ridge of rock behind them on the land. And with its weird, wild,
rushing scream of grinding and breaking ice, it was traveling toward
them. It had the speed of the wind, the force of an avalanche. When
it came, what then?
With a rush the wild terror of the Arctic sea burst upon them. It
lifted the giant ice-pan weighing hundreds of tons, tilted it to a
dangerous angle, then dropped from beneath it. Marian's heart stopped
beating as she felt the downward rush of the avalanche of ice. The
next instant she felt it crumble like an egg-shell. It had broken at
the point where they lay. With a warning cry of terror she sprang to
her feet and pitched forward.
The cry was too late. As she rose unsteadily to her knees, she saw a
dark brown bulk topple at the edge of the cake, then roll like a log
into the dark pool of water which appeared where the cake had parted.
That object was Lucile. Dead or alive? Marian could not tell. But
whether dead or alive she had fallen into the stinging Arctic brine.
What chance could there be for her life?
For the time being the ice-field was quiet. The tidal wave had spent
its force on the sandy beach.
That other, less violent disturbances, would follow the first, the girl
knew right well. Hastily creeping to the brink of the dark pool, she
strained her eyes for sight of a floating bit of cloth, a waving hand.
There was none. Despair gripped her heart. Still she waited, and as
she waited, there came the distant sound, growing ever louder, of
another onrushing tide.
When Lucile went down into the dark pool she was not dead. She was
conscious and very much alive. Very conscious she was, too, of the
peril of her situation. Should that chasm close before she rose, or as
she rose, she was doomed. In one case she would drown, in the other
she would be crushed.
Down, down she sank. But the water was salt and buoyant. Now she felt
herself rising. Holding her breath she looked upward. A narrow ribbon
of black was to the right of her.
"That will be the open water," was her mental comment. "Must swim for
it."
She was a strong swimmer, but her heavy fur garments impeded her. The
sting of the water imperiled her power to remain conscious. Yet she
struggled even as she rose.
Just when Marian had given up hope, she saw a head shoot above the
water, then a pair of arms. The next instant she gripped both her
companion's wrists and lifted as she never lifted before. There was
wild terror in her eye. The roar of the second wave was drumming in
her ears.
She was not a second too soon. Hardly had she dragged the
half-unconscious girl from the pool than it closed with a grinding
crash, and the ice-pan again tilted high in air.
The strain of this onrush was not so great. The cake held together.
Gradually it settled back to its place.
Marian glanced in the direction of the wreck. They were very much
nearer to it than to the shore. She thought she saw a small cabin in
the stern. Lucile must be relieved of her water soaked and
fast-freezing garments at once.
"Can you walk?" she asked as Lucile staggered dizzily to her feet.
"I'll help you. The wreck--we must get there. You must struggle or
you'll freeze."
Lucile did try. She fought as she had never fought before, against the
stiffening garments, the aching lungs and muscles, but most of all
against the almost unconquerable desire to sleep.
Foot by foot, yard by yard, they made their way across the treacherous
tangle of ice-piles which was still in restless motion.
Now they had covered a quarter of the distance, now half, now
three-quarters. And now, with an exultant cry, Marian dragged her
half-unconscious companion upon the center of the deck.
"There's a cabin aft," she whispered, "a warm cabin. We'll soon be
there."
"Soon be there," Lucile echoed faintly.
The climbing of the long, slanting, slippery deck was a terrible
ordeal. More than once Marian despaired. At last they stood before
the door. She put a hand to the knob. A cry escaped her lips. The
cabin door was locked.
Dark despair gripped her heart. But only for an instant.
"Lucile, the key! The key we found in the cabin! Where is it?"
"The key--the key?" Lucile repeated dreamily.
"Oh, yes, the key. Why, that's not any good."
"Yes, it is! It is!"
"It's in my parka pocket."
The next moment Marian was prying the key from a frozen pocket, and the
next after that she was dragging Lucile into the cabin.
In one corner of the cabin stood a small oil-heater. Above it was a
match-box. With a cry of joy Marian found matches, lighted one, tried
the stove, found it filled with oil. A bright blaze rewarded her
efforts. There was heat, heat that would save her companion's life.
She next attacked the frozen garments. Using a knife where nothing
else would avail, she stripped the clothing away until at last she fell
to chafing the white and chilled limbs of the girl, who still struggled
bravely against the desire to sleep.
A half-hour later Lucile was sleeping naturally in a bunk against the
upper wall of the room. She was snuggled deep in the interior of a
mammoth deerskin sleeping-bag, while her garments were drying beside
the kerosene stove. Marian was drowsing half-asleep by the fire.
Suddenly, she was aroused by a voice. It was a man's voice. She was
startled.
"Please," the voice said, "may I come in? That's supposed to be my
cabin, don't you know? But I don't want to be piggish."
Marian stared wildly about her. For a second she was quite speechless.
Then she spoke:
"Wait--wait a minute; I'm coming out."