I hurried back down the river-trail until I reached the ridge. Here I
quitted the way I had come and climbed away over the hills toward the
sea. My plan was to step aboard the _Wanderer_ while Brack was absent,
and without being seen by any of his men. Hence, I gave the cove where
I had struck down Barry a wide berth. In fact, I did not follow the
windings of the fiord at all but struck straight across the rough
country toward where I judged the sea to be.
I got lost twice. Once I found myself turning toward the fiord and
once I had circled back toward the lake. It was well into the
afternoon when I found the rough seacoast and following it southward
came to the mouth of the fiord and, from a hilltop looked down upon
the _Wanderer_ at anchor.
I saw now why my first impression of the morning had been that the
yacht was surrounded by mountains. This was nearly so. The hills, one
of which I was lying on, walled the fiord in on both sides, while
across its mouth, shutting it in from the sea and leaving only a
narrow channel on either side, lay a narrow, crescent-shaped island
consisting of a fir-covered hill of equal height to those of the
mainland.
The Hidden Country! It was the inevitable name for the region.
Small wonder that Kalmut Fiord was not on the maps. It lay behind its
crescent-shaped island securely hidden from all the world. Outside,
the dun, gray North Pacific heaved and murmured, a part of the busy
world. Somewhere on its restless water ships were sailing, men were
active in the doings of our day and age. But in the hidden country
behind the island there was no such suggestion.
The fiord lay hill-ringed and calm, a part of the world, and yet not
of it. Its green Spring foliage, delicate, masking gray hills and
black cliffs, its quiet blue water, its virgin beaches, its very air,
all were heavy with the primitive’s eternal calm.
As I looked about I saw that the heights immediately about the fiord
were in reality but foot-hills of a great valley. And the valley was
ringed in by a mountain range. West, north, east—everywhere save
toward the open sea southward—a curving wall of towering mountains
shut it in. There was snow on most of the peaks, and others were
wrapped in wisps of clouds. One great narrow gash, seeming to cleave
the range down to sea level, was visible in the west. Save for this,
the Kalmut Valley seemed a spot walled in by frowning stone.
The colossal scheme of the scene left me awed. The sense of the
primitive which dominated it all held me spellbound. We had left the
world with which I was familiar. This was the sensation that crept
over me. We were in a new world—no, an old one, so old that modernity
had nothing in common with it. Skin-clad, white-skinned vikings, might
have stepped out on those moss-clad rocks and have fitted perfectly
into the picture. But not the _Wanderer_, not its personnel—save
Brack. Yes, Brack and that valley belonged together.