STRANGE DISCOVERIES
It was a strange sight that met the eyes of the two girls as they
paused halfway to the dark patch on the surface of the ice which loomed
like a giant's shadow in the snow-fog. With eager feet they dashed on,
leaping narrow chasms and stumbling over ice barriers in their mad rush.
The revelation which came as they rounded the last pile of ice was both
a surprise and a disappointment. Great heaps of ashes, piles of
bottles and tin cans, frozen masses of garbage; junk of every
description, from a rusty tin dipper to a discarded steel range, met
their eyes.
"It's a graveyard," murmured Marian, "a graveyard of things people
don't want."
"That some people didn't want!" corrected the more practical Lucile.
"Marian, we're rich!"
"Rich?" Marian stared.
"Why, yes! Don't you see? There's an old clothes wringer; that's got
a lot of wood in it. And there's an old paper bucket. That'll burn.
There's a lot of things like that. It won't take any time at all to
get enough wood to cook our duck!"
"A fire! A fire!" exclaimed Marian, jumping up and down in a wild
dance. Then, seized with Lucile's spell of practical philosophy, she
grasped a rusty tin kettle.
"We can cook it in this. There's a hole in it, but we can draw a cloth
into that, and we can scour it up with ashes."
The next few minutes echoed with glad exclamations: "Here's an old
fork!" "Here's half a sack of salt!" "Here are two rusty spoons!"
"Here's a broiler," and so it went on.
One would have believed they were in the greatest department store in
the land, with the privilege of carrying away anything that would fit
in their kitchen and that suited their fancy. Truth was, they were
rummaging over the city of Nome's vast garbage pile. That garbage pile
had been accumulated during the previous year, and was, at this time,
several hundred miles from the city. During the long nine months of
winter the water about Nome is frozen solid some two miles out to sea.
All garbage and junk is hauled out upon the ice with dog-teams and
dumped there. When spring comes the ice loosens from the shore, and,
laden with its great cargo of unwanted things, carries it through
Bering Straits to haunt the Arctic Ocean, perhaps for years to come.
It is moved hither and yon until time and tide and many storms have at
last ground it into oblivion.
The long Arctic twilight had begun to fall when the two girls, hungry
and weary, but happily laden with many treasures which were to make
life more possible on their floating palace of ice, made their way
toward their camp.
Besides scraps of wood enough for two or three small fires, and cooking
utensils of various sorts, they had found salt, a part of a box of
pepper, and six cans of condensed milk which had doubtless been frozen
several times but had never been opened.
"We could live a week," said Lucile exultantly, "even if we didn't have
another bit of good luck."
"Yes-s," said Marian slowly, "but let's hope we don't have to; I'm
afraid I'd get awful hungry."
They dined that night, quite happily, on a third of their duck, soup
made of duck's broth and condensed milk, and half of a pilot biscuit.
"Oh, Marian," said Lucile, as she thought of sleep, "that kiak's so
crowded when we sleep there."
"Yes-s," said Marian, thoughtfully, "it is. I wonder if we couldn't
make a sleeping-bag?"
At once needles and some sinew thread found in the native's hunting bag
were gotten out, the four deerskins were spread out, two on the bottom
and two on top, with the fur side inside, and they went to work with a
will to fashion a rude sleeping-bag.
Their fingers shook with the chill wind that swept across the ice and
their eyelids drooped often in sleep, yet they persevered and at last
the thing was complete.
"Are you sure it won't be cold?" said Lucile, who had never slept in a
sleeping-bag.
"Oh, no, I know it won't," Marian assured her. "I've heard my father
tell of spreading his on the frozen ground when it was thirty below
zero, and sleeping snug as a 'possum in a hollow tree."
"All right; let's try it," and Lucile spread the bag on the sealskin
square.
After removing their skirts and rolling them up for pillows, together
they slid down into the soft, warm depths of their Arctic bed.
"Um-m," whispered Marian.
"Um-m," Lucile answered back. And the next moment they were both fast
asleep.
All through the night they slept there with the Great Dipper circling
around the North Star above them, and with the ice-floe carrying them,
who could tell where?
The two following days were spent in fruitless hunting for wild duck
and in making trips to the rubbish pile. These trips netted nothing of
use save armfuls of wood which helped to add a cheery tone to their
camp. Though the fog held on, the nights grew bitterly cold. They
were glad enough to creep into their sleeping-bag as soon as it grew
dark. There for hours they lay and talked of many things: Of the land
to which the ice-floe might eventually bring them, the people who would
be living there, and the things they would have to eat. Then, again,
they would talk of school days, and the glad, good times that now
seemed so far away. Of one subject they never spoke; never once did
one wonder to the other what their families were doing in their
far-away homes. They did not dare. It would have been like singing
"Home Sweet Home" to the American soldiers on the fields of France.
The second day's tramp to the rubbish pile brought them a great
surprise. They were busily searching through the piles of cans for a
possible one that had not been opened, when Lucile, happening to hear a
noise behind her, looked up. The next instant, with a startled
whisper, which was almost a cry, "Marian! Quick!" she seized Marian by
the arm and dragged her around an ice-pile.
"Wha--what is it?" whispered the startled Marian.
"Bear!"
* * * * * *
At this very moment, on another section of that same vast floe, Phi lay
flat on his stomach, his eye traveling the length of his rifle barrel.
His brow was wrinkled. He moved uneasily, as a gambler moves who would
risk all on one throw of the dice but does not quite dare.
He shook the benumbed fingers of his right hand, then gripped the rifle
once more. His forefinger was on the trigger. He had arrived at a
crisis. He was half starved and freezing. For three days now he had
wandered over the vast expanse of ice-pans that covered the waters of
Bering Straits. During that three days he had secured only two small
birds, dovekies they were, birds who linger all winter in the Arctic.
These he had shared with Rover.
From the moment the snow-fog had settled down upon him and the break in
the ice-floe had blocked his way so effectively, he had wandered about
without knowing where he was going. The ice-floe constantly drifting,
first this way, then that, may have carried him east, west, north,
south. Who could tell where? Who could guess his position on the
surface of the ocean at the present moment?
A brown seal was the cause of his excitement now. The seal, lying
asleep upon the ice-pan before him, must weigh something like seventy
pounds. This was meat enough to last him and his dog many days.
He was not a good shot and knew it. He had wandered over the ice-floes
of the ocean at times with a rifle under his arm, yet never before had
he stalked a seal. Only the grimmest necessity could have induced him
to do so now. There was something altogether too human in those
bobbing brown heads as they appeared above the water or lifted to gaze
about them on the ice. But now his need and the need of the dog
demanded prompt action.
Two things made a perfect shot a necessity: The seal was sleeping
beside his hole; if he was not killed instantly he would drop into the
hole and be lost to the hunter. And this was the last cartridge in the
rifle. The two birds had cost him four shots. The seal must be
secured by his last one. There seemed a certain irony about a fate
which would allow him to waste his ammunition on small birds, then
offer him such a prize as this with only one shot to win.
He knew well enough how to stalk a seal; he had watched the Eskimos do
it many times. Lying flat on your stomach, you cautiously creep
forward. Every moment or two you bob your head up and down in
imitation of a seal awakened and looking about. If your seal is awake,
since his eyesight is poor he will take you for a member of his own
species and will go back to sleep again.
Knowing all this, Phi had dragged himself a hundred feet across the
ice, without disturbing the seal. Only fifty feet remained, yet to his
feverish brain this seemed too great a distance. Seeing his seal
bobbing his head, he bobbed in turn, then, when the seal had dozed off
again, continued his crawl.
He had made another six yards when, with a sudden resolve, he slid the
rifle forward, lifted it to position, glanced steadily along its
barrel, then pulled the trigger.
There followed a metallic snap, then a splash, The rifle had missed
fire; the seal had dropped into its pool.
For a moment the boy lay there motionless, stunned by the realization
that he was still without food and was now powerless to procure any.
"Well, anyway it was luck for the seal," he smiled uncertainly. "It
sure was his lucky day!"
Rising unsteadily, he put two fingers to his mouth and uttered a shrill
whistle. From behind a towering ice pile, Rover, gaunt and miserable
yet unmistakably a white man's dog, and, by his bearing, a one time
leader of the team, came limping toward him.
"Well," the boy said, patting the dog, "it's hard luck, but we don't
eat. It's harder for you than for me, for you are old and I'm young,
but somehow--somehow, we'll have to manage. If only we knew. If
only--"
He stopped abruptly and his eyes opened wide. Off to the left of them,
like a giant fist thrust through the fog, there had appeared the dark
bulk of a granite cliff.
"Land, Rover, land!" he muttered hoarsely.
The next moment, utterly overcome with excitement, he sank weakly to
the surface of the ice-pan.
"This won't do," he said cheerily, after a brief period of rest.
"Rover, old boy, we must be traveling. If the ice is crowding that
shore, which it must be from the feel of the wind, there's a chance for
us yet."