A LONESOME ISLAND
After fleeing from the great white bear, the two girls crouched behind
the ice pile with bated breath. Expecting at any moment to see the
long neck of the gigantic beast thrust around the corner of the ice
pile, they longed to flee, yet, not daring, remained crouching there.
"Do you think he saw us?" Marian whispered.
"No. He was snuffing around looking for something to eat."
Marian shivered.
Lucile worked her way about the ice-pile to a point where she could see
through a crack between cakes, then she motioned Marian to join her.
Together they watched the antics of the clumsy white bear.
"My! Isn't it huge!" whispered Marian.
For a time the bear amused himself by knocking rusty ten-gallon
gasoline cans about. At last, seeming to scent something, he began
tearing up a particular garbage pile. Presently a huge rat ran out and
went scurrying away. There followed a lively chase which ended in a
prolonged squeal.
"He got him!" Marian shivered.
The bear had moved out of their view. Cautiously, they turned and made
their way from ice-pile to ice-pile, from the rubbish heap toward camp.
"I hope he doesn't get our scent and follow us," said Lucile. "They
don't usually bother people much, though."
In spite of her belief that the bear would not harm them, Lucile did
not sleep well that night. "You can never tell what a hungry bear
might do," she kept saying over and over to herself.
At last, late in the night, she fell asleep and slept soundly until
morning. When finally she did awake, it was with the feeling that
somehow something had changed.
"Land! Land!" something seemed to be whispering to her. It could have
been nothing short of intuition which gave her this suggestion. They
had been riding on the surface of a gigantic ice-floe. It was,
perhaps, twenty miles wide by a hundred long. There was no sense of
motion. So silent was its sweep, one might imagine oneself to be upon
land; yet, as she crept quickly out of her sleeping-bag, she saw at
once that the motion of the floe was arrested and off to the right she
read the reason. A narrow stretch of rocky shore there cast back the
first rays of the morning sun.
"Marian! Marian!" she called excitedly. "Land! Land! An island!"
There could be no questioning this great good fortune. The one
remaining problem was to reach the shore of that island. They did not
dare to abandon their kiak, sleeping-bag, and scanty supplies, for who
could tell them that this was not a small uninhabited island? They had
traveled many miles with the ice-floe in some direction, perhaps many
directions. Who could say where they were now?
"The ice must be piling close to shore," said Lucile, "but we must try
it. It's our only chance."
After a hasty breakfast of tea and a last remaining bit of cold duck,
they piled all their supplies and equipment into the kiak, then,
bidding farewell to the humble ice-pan which had given them such a long
ride, they began dragging the kiak toward the island.
This proved a long and tedious task, requiring all the skill and
strength they possessed, for the island, though scarcely four miles in
length, had appeared to be much closer than it really was. The
ice-piles, too, grew rougher and more uneven as they advanced. When
they neared the shore, they found themselves in infinite peril, for the
ice was piling. Here a huge cake a hundred feet across and eight feet
thick glided without a sound, up--up, into mid-air, at last to crumble
and fall; and here a mass of small cakes were thrown into convulsions.
Pick their way as they might with greatest care, they were more than
once in danger of being crushed by overhanging ice-pans, or of being
plunged into a dark pool of water.
When, at length, in triumph, they dragged their kiak to a rocky shelf
well above the trembling ice, Marian, from sheer exhaustion, threw
herself flat upon the rock and lay there motionless for some time.
Lucile sat beside her absorbed in thought.
At last Marian sat up. "Well, we're here," she smiled, giving her
blistered hands a woeful look.
"Yes," smiled Lucile, "we're here. Now where is 'here' and what's it
like?"
The two girls looked at one another solemnly for a full minute. In
their larder was still a little tea, a pint bottle of weak duck soup, a
half-can of much frozen condensed milk--and that was all. They were on
an island of which as yet they knew nothing. Above them towered great,
overhanging cliffs. Before them the giant ice-pans rose, crumbling and
creaking in mad turmoil.
"Life is so strange," said Lucile, at length; then energetically:
"Let's make some soup of the things we have left. Then, if we can get
up there, we'll explore our island. We'll have three or four hours of
daylight left, and if there's anything for us to eat anywhere, the
sooner we find it out the better."
The climb to the top of the island, which they undertook an hour later,
was scarcely less dangerous than had been the struggle to cross the
tumbling ice-floe, for this island was little more than a gigantic
granite bowlder rising for a distance of some five hundred feet out of
the sea.
They crept along a narrow shelf where a slip on some pebble might send
them crashing to death in the tumbled mass of ice below. They scaled
an all but perpendicular wall, to drag their sleeping-bag and the few
other belongings, which they had dared attempt to carry, after them by
the aid of a skin-rope. Then, after a few minutes' rest, they would
rise to climb again.
But at last, their efforts rewarded, they found themselves standing on
the edge of a snow-capped plateau. "Now," said Lucile, "if there are
any people living on the island, it won't be on top of it, but in some
sheltered cranny down by the shore where they are away from the
sweeping winds and where they can hunt and fish."
"But think what they may be like!" said Marian. "They may be savages
who have never seen a white man. We don't even know whether we are a
hundred miles from Bering Straits or five hundred. And neither of us
has ever been on an island in the Arctic Ocean!"
"That," said Lucile, "has nothing to do with it. We're on one now. We
can't very well go back to the ocean ice. We haven't any food. We
couldn't hide on this little island if we wished to. So the best thing
to do is to try to find the people, if there are any, and cast our lot
with them. I once heard a great bishop say that 'humanity is
everywhere very much the same.' We've just got to believe that and go
ahead."
Shouldering the sleeping-bag, and leaving to Marian the remaining
seal-oil in the skin-sack, the butcher knife, and the fishing outfit,
she marched steadily forward on a course which in time would enable
them to make the outer circle of the island.
"See those piles of stones?" Lucile said fifteen minutes later. "Those
did not just happen to be there. They were put there by men. See how
carefully they are piled. The piles look tall and slim. I have heard
a sea captain say that the natives of this coast, in very early days,
when there was warring among tribes, piled stones on high points like
this to make those who desired to attack them think they were men, and
that there were many warriors in the place."
"Then," said Marian, catching her breath at the thought, "there must be
people on this island."
"Not for sure," said Lucile. "The people who piled up those rocks
might merely have been living here temporarily, using this island as a
hunting station; and then, even if they were living here permanently,
famine and contagious diseases may have killed all of them off."
They trudged on again in silence. Everywhere the rocky rim of the
island frowned up at them, offering no suggestion of a path down to the
foot, or of a rocky shelf below where a group of hunters might build a
village.
"There's a place somewhere," said Lucile stoutly, as she lowered her
burden to the snow and paused for a brief rest. "There's a path down
and we must find it, if it's nothing more than to find a safe spot by
the sea where we can fish for smelt, tomcod and flounders."
Dusk was falling when, at length, with a little cry of joy, Lucile
sprang forward, then began a cautious descent over a winding and
apparently well-worn trail which even the snow did not completely
conceal.
With hearts beating wildly, in utter silence they made their way down,
down the winding way--to what? That, they could not tell.
Finally Lucile paused. She caught her breath quickly and clutched at
her throat.
At length, in a calmer moment, she pointed down and to the right of the
trail.
"See that square of white?"
Marian strained her eyes to peer through the gathering darkness.
"Yes," she said at last, "I see it."
"That," said Lucile in a tone that was tense with emotion, "is the roof
of a house--a white man's house!"
"Wha--what makes you think so?" gasped Marian.
"There's nothing as square as that in nature's panorama. And a native
does not build a house like that."
"And if it is?"
"If it is, we must trust ourselves to their care, though I'd almost
rather they were natives." She closed her eyes and saw again the
rough, unkempt white men, beach combers, who lived by trading, hunting
and whaling with the natives. They were a hard, bad lot, and she knew
it.
"Well," she sighed, "come on. Let's go down."
Down they went, each turn of the path bringing them closer to the
mysterious house.
"There's no light," said Lucile at last.
"There are no tracks in the snow," added Marian, a moment later.
"It's boarded up," said Lucile, as they came closer. It would have
been hard to judge whether there was more of relief or of
disappointment in the tone in which she said this.
They stood there staring at the house. It was a nice house, a bungalow
such as one might desire for a summer home in the mountains or at the
seashore.
"Who do you suppose brought all that fine lumber up here and built that
house?" said Lucile.
"I wonder who," echoed Marian.
They took a turn about it. All the windows had been boarded up with
rough lumber. There were two doors. These were fastened with padlock
and chain. An examination of the locks showed that keys had not been
used in them for months.
Lucile's eyes were caught by poles and some platforms to the right,
along the rocky shore. She walked in that direction.
"Marian, come here!" she cried presently. Marian came running. "Look!
Here's a whole native village! They've built their homes out of rocks.
See! It's like tunneling into the side of the mountain. Must be homes
for a hundred people!"
"And not a soul here! How strange!"
"Not even a dog!" Lucile's own voice sounded strangely hollow to her,
as if echoed by the walls of a tomb.