"A PHANTOM WIRELESS"
It was night, dark, cloudy, moonless night. Florence could scarcely see
enough of the sandy beach to tell where she was going. She had, however,
been over that same ground in the daytime, so she knew it pretty well.
Besides, she wasn't going any place; just walking back and forth, up and
down a long, narrow stretch of hard-packed and frozen sand.
She was thinking. Walking in the darkness helped her to think. When there
is nothing to hear, nothing to see and nothing to feel, and when the
movement of one's feet keeps the blood moving, then one can do the best
thinking. Anyway that was the way this big, healthy, hopeful college girl
thought about it. So she had wrapped herself in a heavy cape and had come
out to think.
They had been ice-locked on the island for thirty-six hours. The ice had
crowded on shore for a time. It had piled high in places. Now the wind
had gone down and it was growing colder. It seemed probable that the ice
would freeze into one solid mass, in which case they would be locked in
for who knows how long.
The water in their little natural harbor had taken on something of a
crust. It was possible that the boat would be frozen into the stream.
"Not that it matters," she told herself rather gloomily. "We can't start
the engine and as long as we can't it is impossible for us to leave the
island; only thing we can do is wait until someone discovers our plight
or we are able to hail a boat."
They were on an island; they had made sure of that first thing. She and
Marian had gone completely around it. It wasn't much of an island either.
Just a wreath of sand thrown up from the bottom of the lake, it could
scarcely be more than three miles long by a half mile wide. The stream
they had entered, running almost from end to end of it, drained the whole
of it. The highest point was at the north. This point was a sand dune
some forty feet high. Their boat was moored at the south end. The entire
island, except along the beach, was covered with a scrub growth of pine
and fir trees. As far as they could tell, not a single person had ever
lived on the island.
"It's very strange," Marian had said when they had made the rounds of it.
"It doesn't seem possible that there could be such an island on the lake
without summer cottages on it."
"No, it doesn't," Florence had answered. "What an ideal spot! Wonderful
beaches on every side. Fishing too, I guess. And far enough from land to
enjoy a cool breeze on the hottest day of summer."
Though they had constantly strained their eyes in an endeavor to discover
other land in the distance, they had not succeeded.
"Probably belongs to someone who will not lease it," said Florence at
last.
So here she was trying to think things through. There was danger of a
real catastrophe. The food in their pantry could not possibly last over
ten days. Then what? As far as she knew, there was not a thing to be
eaten on the island. It was possible that fish could be caught beneath
the lake ice or in their stream. She meant to try that in the morning.
"What a plight to put one in!" she exclaimed. "Who could have done it and
why did they do it?"
This question set her mind running over the mysterious incidents which,
she could not but believe, had led up to this present moment.
There had been Lucile's seeing of the blue face in the old Mission, her
own affair with the stranger in the museum; the blue candlestick; the
visit to Mr. Cole in the new museum; Lucile's frightful adventure on the
lake ice; the incident of the two men with the sled on the ice of the
lagoon and the single man sitting on the ice; then the spot of blue ice
discovered next day.
"Blue ice!" she exclaimed suddenly, stopping still in her tracks. "Blue!
Blue ice!"
Florence frowned, as she considered it.
A new theory had come to her regarding that spot of blue ice on the
lagoon, a theory which made her wish more than ever to get away from this
island.
"Ho, well," she whispered at last, "there'll probably be a thaw before we
get back or those men will come back and tear it up. But if there isn't,
if they don't then--well, we'll see what we'll see."
She was still puzzling over these problems when a strange noise, leaping
seemingly out of nowhere, smote her ear.
It was such a rumble and roar as she had heard but once before in all her
life. That sound had come to her over a telephone wire as she pressed her
ear to the receiver during a thunderstorm. But here there was neither
wire nor receiver and the very thought of a thunderstorm on such a night
was ridiculous.
At first she was inclined to believe it to be the sound of some
disturbance on the lake, a sudden rush of wind or a tidal wave.
"But there is little wind and the sea is calm," she told herself.
She was in the midst of these perplexities when the sound broke into a
series of sput-sput-sputs. Her heart stood still for a second, then raced
on as her lips framed the word:
"Wireless."
So ridiculous was the thought that the word died on her lips. There was
no wireless outfit on the yacht; could be none on the island, for had
they not made the entire round? Had they not found it entirely
uninhabited? Whence, then, came this strange clash of man-made lightning?
The girl could find no answer to her own unspoken questions.
After a moment's thought she was inclined to believe that she was hearing
the sounds created by some unknown electrical phenomena. Men were
constantly discovering new things about electricity. Perhaps, all unknown
to them, such isolated points as this automatically served as relay
stations to pass along wireless messages.
Not entirely satisfied with this theory, she left the beach and, feeling
her way carefully among the small evergreens, came at last to the base of
a fir tree which capped the ridge. This tree, apparently of an earlier
growth, towered half its height above its fellows.
Reaching up to the first branch she began to ascend. She climbed
two-thirds of the way to the top with great ease. There she paused.
The sound had ceased. Only the faint wash-wash of wavelets on ice and
shore, mingled with the mournful sighing of the pines, disturbed the
silence of the night.
For some time she stood there clinging to the branches. Here she caught
the full sweep of the lake breeze. She grew cold; began to shiver; called
herself a fool; decided to climb down again, and was preparing to do so,
when there came again that rumbling roar, followed as before by the
clack-clack-clack, sput-sput.
"That's queer," she murmured as she braced herself once more and
attempted to pierce the darkness.
Then, abruptly, the sound ceased. Strain her ears as she might she caught
no further sound. She peered into the gloom, trying to descry the wires
of an aerial against the sky-line, but her search was vain.
"It's fairly spooky!" she told herself. "A phantom wireless station on a
deserted island!"
Ten minutes longer she clung there motionless. Then, feeling that she
must turn into a lump of ice if she lingered longer, she began to climb
down.
"I'll come back here in the morning and have a look," she promised
herself. "Won't tell the girls; they've troubles enough."
She made her way back to the yacht and was soon in her berth fast asleep.
It was with considerable amusement that she retraced her steps next
morning. There could not, she told herself, be a wireless station of any
kind on that island. A wireless station called for a home for the
operators and there was no such home. She and Marian had made sure of
that.
"But then what was it?" she asked herself, "What could it have been?"
She climbed the tree, this time up to its very top, then, turning, shaded
her eyes to gaze away the length of the island.
"Just as I thought," she murmured. "Nothing. Just nothing at all."
It was true. There could be no wireless tower. If there had been she
could have seen it. What was more, there certainly was no house on the
island. Had there been, she could not have failed to detect its roof from
her point of vantage.
There was no house and no wireless station, yet, as she looked her lips
parted in an exclamation of surprise.
She was witnessing strange things. Toward the other end of the island
something was moving in and out among the drifting ice-cakes. This, she
made out presently, by the flash of a paddle, was some sort of a boat.
"And it is," she breathed. "No--no it can't be! Yes, it is, it's an
Eskimo kiak!"
At once she thought of the Negontisks. Could it be possible that they had
stumbled upon a secret home of some of these people?
As if in answer to her question, the strange manipulator of this queer
craft drew the kiak on shore, then, skipping hurriedly along the beach
and up a sandy ridge, suddenly put two hands on something and the next
instant dropped straight down and out of sight.
Florence caught her breath sharply. She clutched the fir boughs in the
fear that she would fall.
Then, realizing that she might be plainly seen if anyone chanced to look
her way, she began hastily to descend.
"He might come out of his igloo and see me," she told herself.
That the thing the person had entered was an igloo she had no reason to
doubt. Igloos go with kiaks and are built beneath the earth.
"But," she said suddenly, "the other girls will know a great deal more
about those things than I do. I must tell them at once. We will hold a
council of war."