None of the other three in the lifeboat could make out the little, gray
line on the horizon that Captain Knutsen identified as land. Ned, who
had been wide awake, prayed that he was not mistaken, yet could not find
it in his heart to believe him. Bess and Lenore both started out of
their sleep, and the former turned her head wearily, a wan smile about
her drawn lips.
“Row, man, row!” Knutsen called happily to Ned. “The only way we can
save that girl from collapse is to get her to a fire.” His own oars
dipped, and his powerful back bent to the task.
So the issue had got down to that! Ned knew perfectly well that Lenore
was the girl meant; in spite of the added blanket, she had fared worse
than Bess. Perhaps she had less vitality: perhaps she had not met the
night’s adversity with the same spirit. Ned was not an expert oarsman,
but it was ever to his credit that he gave all his strength to the oars.
And he found to his joy that the night’s adventure had left it largely
unimpaired.
With the waves and the wind behind them, Knutsen saw the gray line that
was the island slowly strengthen. The time came at last, when his weaker
arms were shot through with burning pain, that Ned could also make it
out. It was still weary miles away. And there was still the dreadful
probability—three chances out of four—that it was uninhabited by human
beings.
And death would find them quickly enough if they failed to find human
habitations. For all Knutsen’s prowess, for all that he was so obviously
a man of his hands, Ned couldn’t see any possibility of sustaining life
on one of the barren, wind-swept deserts for more than a few days at
most. They had no guns to procure meat from the wild: their little
stores of food would not last long. The cold itself, though not now
severe, would likely master them quickly. Even if they could find fuel,
they had no axe to cut it up for a fire. In all probability, they
couldn’t even build a fire in the snow and the sleet.
The stabbing pain in his arms was ever harder to bear. He was paying the
price for his long pampering of his muscles. The time soon came when he
had to change his stroke, dipping the oars at a cheating angle. Even if
it were a matter of life and death to Lenore he couldn’t hold up. He
couldn’t stand the pace. Knutsen, however, still rowed untiringly.
Soon the island began to take shape, revealing itself as of medium size
in comparison with many of the islands of Bering Sea, yet seemingly
large enough to support a kingdom. The gray line they had seen first
revealed itself as a low range of mountains, bare and wind-swept,
extending the full length of the island. What timber there was—meager
growths of Sitka spruce and quivering aspen—appeared only on some of
the south slopes of the hills and in scattered patches on the valley
floor.
In the gray light of dawn the whole expanse was one of unutterable
desolation. Even the rapture that they had felt at deliverance from the
sea was some way stifled and dulled in the brooding despair that seemed
to be its very spirit. They had passed many bleak, windy islands on the
journey; but none but what were gardens compared to this. Ned tried to
rouse himself from a strange apathy, a sudden, infinite hopelessness
that fell like a shadow over him.
Likely enough it was just a mood with him, nothing innate in the island
itself. Probably his own fatigue was playing tricks on his imagination.
Yet the solid earth seemed no longer familiar. It was as if he had
passed beyond his familiar world, known to his five senses and firm
beneath his feet, and had come to an eerie, twilight land beyond the
horizon. It was so still, lying so bleak and gray in the midst of these
endless waters, seemingly so eternally isolated from all he had known
and seen. The physical characteristics of the island enhanced, if
anything, its mysterious atmosphere. The mossy barrens that comprised
most of the island floor, the little, scattered clumps of timber, the
deep valleys through which the shining streams ran to the sea, the
rugged, shapeless hills beyond, each real in itself, combined to convey
an image of unreality. Over it all lay the snow. The whole land was
swept with it.
It was evidently the kingdom of the wild. It was the home of caribou and
bear, fox and wolverine rather than men. And the dreadful probability
was ever more manifest that the island contained not a single hearth, a
single Indian igloo in which they might find shelter.
The place seemed to be utterly uninhabited by human beings. The white
shore was nearing now, the craft had reached the mouth of a large harbor
formed by the emptying waters of a small river; and as yet the voyagers
could not make out a single roof, a single canoe on the shore. Knutsen
peered with straining eyes.
“It looks bad,” he said tonelessly. “If there was a village here it
ought to be located at the mouth of that river. It’s the logical place
for a camp. They always stay near the salmon.”
Straining, Ned suddenly saw what seemed to him a manifestation of human
inhabitants. There were clearly pronounced tracks, showing dark against
the otherwise unbroken snow, leading from the sea to a patch of heavy
forest a quarter of a mile back on the island. He pointed to them, his
eye kindling with renewed hope.
But Knutsen shook his head. “I can’t tell from here. They might be
animal tracks.”
The canoe pushed farther into the harbor. The roll of the waves was ever
less, and the boat rode evenly on almost quiet water. They would know
soon now. They would either find safety, or else their last, little hope
would go the way of all the others. Surely they could not live a day
unaided in this bleak, desolate land.
But at that instant Bess, who had sat so quiet that her companions had
thought her asleep, uttered a low cry. For all its subdued tone, its
living note of hope and amazement caused both men to turn to her. Her
white face was lifted, her blue eyes shining, and she was pointing to
the fringe of timber at the end of the trail in the snow.
“What is it?” she asked in a low tone. “Isn’t it a man?”
Her keen eyes had beheld what Knutsen’s had missed—a dark form half in
shadow against the edge of the scrub timber. For all that it was less
than a quarter of a mile distant, both men had to strain to make it out.
The explanation lay partly in the depths of the surrounding shadows;
partly in the fact that the form was absolutely without motion. It is an
undeniable fact that only moving figures are quickly discernible in the
light and shadow of the wild places: thus the forest creatures find
their refuge from their enemies simply by standing still and so
remaining unobserved. The thing at the timber edge had evidently learned
this lesson. In its dimness and obscurity it suggested some furtive
creature native to the woods.
Yet, for all its lack of motion, this was unmistakably a living being.
It was not just an odd-shaped stump, a dark shadow under tree limbs such
as so often misleads a big-game hunter. The brain seemed to know it,
without further verification by the senses. Bess had said it was the
form of a man, and the more intent their gaze, the more probable it
seemed that she was right. The fear that had oppressed Knutsen that it
might be merely the form of some one of the larger forest
creatures—perhaps a bear, standing erect, or a caribou facing them—was
evidently groundless. It was a man, and he was plainly standing
motionless, fully aware of and watching their approach.
Yet the atmosphere of vagueness prevailed. He was so like a woods
creature in the instinctive way he had taken advantage of the
concealment of the shadows. It was a wonder that Bess had ever observed
him. And now, drawing closer, his proportions seemed to be considerably
larger than is customary in the human species. Now that his outline grew
plain, he loomed like a giant. There is nothing so deceptive, however,
as the size of an object seen at a distance in the wilderness. The
degree of light, the clearness of the atmosphere, the nature of the
background and surroundings all have their effect: often a snow-hare
looks as big as a fox or a porcupine as large as a bear. Ned, sharing
none of Knutsen’s inner sense of unrest, yielding at last to the rapture
of impending deliverance, raised his arms and shouted across the waters.
“I want to be sure he sees us,” he explained quickly.
Knutsen strove to rid himself of the unwonted dismay that took hold of
him. A deep-buried subconsciousness had suddenly manifested itself
within him, but the messages it conveyed were proven ridiculous by his
own good sense. It was the first time, however, that this inner voice
had ever led him astray. Surely this was deliverance, life instead of
what had seemed certain death, yet he was oppressed and baffled as he
had never been in his life before.
It was soon made plain that the man had caught Ned’s signal. He lifted
his arm, then came walking down toward the water’s edge. Then Knutsen,
who until now had rowed steadily, paused with his paddles poised in the
air.
“It’s not an Indian,” he breathed quickly. Ned turned to look at him in
amazement, yet not knowing at what he was amazed. “It’s a white man!”
“Isn’t that all the better?” Ned demanded. “God knows I’m glad to see
any kind of a man.”
After all, wasn’t that good sense? Trapping, fox-farming, any one of a
dozen undertakings took white men into these northern realms. Conquering
his own ridiculous fears—fears that partook of the nature of actual
forewarnings—Knutsen drove his oars with added force into the water.
The boat leaped forward: in a moment more they touched the bank.
Their deliverer, a great blond man seemingly of Northeastern Europe, was
already at the water’s edge, watching them with a strange and
inexplicable glitter in gray, sardonic eyes. He was a mighty, bearded
man, clothed in furs; already he was bent, his hands on the bow of the
boat. Already Ned was climbing out upon the shore.
Partly to remove the silly dismay that had overwhelmed him, partly
because it was the first thought that would come to the mind of a
wayfarer of the sea, Knutsen turned with a question. “What island is
dis?” he asked.
The stranger turned with a grim, meaning smile. “Hell,” he answered
simply.
Both Ned and Knutsen stood erect to stare at him. The wind made curious
whispers down through the long slit of the river valley. “Hell?” Knutsen
echoed. “Is dat its name——”
“It’s the name I gave it. You’ll think it’s that before you get away.”