THE CALL OF THE GYPSIES
The following day was bright and clear. The waters of Old Superior were
as blue as the sky. Even the wreck took on a scrubbed and smiling
appearance.
“As if we were all prepared to shove off for one more voyage,” Jeanne
said with a merry laugh.
As soon as the sun had dried the deck, Jeanne and Greta spread blankets
and, stretching themselves out like lazy cats, prepared for a glorious
sun bath.
It was a drowsy, dreamy day. In the distance a dark spot against the
skyline was Passage Island where on stormy nights a search-light, a
hoarse-hooting fog horn and a whispering radio warned ships of danger.
All manner of ships pass between Isle Royale and Passage Island. They
were passing now, slowly and, Jeanne thought, almost mournfully. First
came a dark old freighter with cabins fore and aft, then a tugboat towing
a flat scow with a tall derrick upon it, and after these, all painted
white and with many flags flying, an excursion boat. And then, reared
over on one side and scooting along before the wind, a sailboat.
Just to lie in the sun and watch this procession was life enough for
Jeanne and Greta. Not so Florence. She was for action. Dizzy needed fish.
She would row over to the shoals by Blake’s Point. There she would troll
for trout.
The water about Blake’s Point is never still. It is as if some great
green serpent of the sea lies stretched among the rocks and keeps it in
perpetual motion by waving his tail. It was not still when Florence
arrived.
“Just right,” she whispered, as if afraid the fishes might hear. “Rough
enough for a little excitement, and no real danger.”
Casting a shining lure into the water, she watched the line play out as
she rowed.
A big wave lifted her high. Still the line played out. The boat sank low.
She checked the line. Then, watching the rocks that she might not come
too close and snag them, she rowed away.
For some time she circled out along the shoals, then back again. She had
begun to believe there were no fish, and was musing on other things,
phantom violins, black schooners, gray wolves, Old Uncle Ned, when, with
a suddenness that was startling, her reel began to sing.
Dropping her oars, she seized the pole and began reeling in rapidly. Next
moment she tossed a fine three pound trout into her boat. “You get ’em
quick or not at all,” Swen had said to her. She had got this one “quick.”
An hour later four fine trout lay in the stern of her boat. “Enough,” she
breathed. “We eat tonight, and so does Dizzy.”
The day was still young. She had not meant to visit Duncan’s Bay, but now
the place called to her.
Swen’s short, powerful rifle lay in the prow of her boat. Why had she
brought it? Perhaps she could not tell. Now she was glad it was there.
“Go ashore on Duncan’s Bay,” she told herself. “Go hunting phantoms and,
perhaps, a gray wolf or two. Wouldn’t mind shooting them, the murderers,
not a bit!”
It was a strange wolf she was to come upon in the forest that day.
With corduroy knickers tucked in high laced boots, a flannel shirt open
wide at the neck, and a small hat crammed well down on her head, this
stalwart girl might have been taken for a man as, rifle under arm, she
trudged through the deep shadows of the evergreen forest covering the
slope of Greenstone Ridge.
That she was in her element was shown by the spring in her footstep, the
glad, eager look in her eyes.
“Life!” she breathed more than once. “Life! How marvelous it is!
“‘I love life!’” She hummed the words of a song she had once heard.
“Life! Life!” she whispered. Here indeed was life in its most primitive
form. At times through a narrow opening she caught a glimpse of gray
gulls soaring like phantom ships over the water. To her ears came the
long, low whistle of some strange bird. She was not surprised when she
found herself standing face to face with a magnificent broad-antlered
moose. She stood quite still.
Great eyed, the moose stared at her. A sound to her right caught her
attention. She looked away for an instant. When her gaze returned to the
spot where the monarch of the forest had stood, he had vanished.
“Gone!” she exclaimed low. “Gone! He was taller than a man, yet he
vanished without a sound! How strange! How sort of wonderful! But I
wonder—”
But there was that sound from below. Snapping of twigs and swishing of
branches. No moose that. She would see what was down there.
She did see, and that almost at once. A few silent steps, and she came
upon him—a man. He was standing at a spot where a break in the evergreens
left a view of Duncan’s Bay.
He was looking straight ahead. On his face was a savage, hungry look.
Only the night before the girl had seen that same look in the eyes of a
wolf.
She was not long in learning the reason. In plain view through that
narrow gap was the patriarch of his tribe, the moose she had saved from
the wolf.
“But why that look?” She was puzzled, but not for long. In the hands of
that man was a rifle. An ugly smile overspread his face. His teeth shone
out like fangs as he lifted the rifle and took deliberate aim at the
moose.
She recalled Swen’s words: “Isle Royale is a game preserve. You will not
be allowed to kill even a rabbit.”
“This man is a poacher.” Her mind, always keen, worked quickly. “I can
save the moose, and I will!”
Swinging her own rifle into position, she fired well over the heads of
man and moose. The shot rang out. The startled moose fled.
And the man? She did not pause to see. Like a startled rabbit she went
dodging and gliding back and forth among the evergreens. In her mind,
repeated over and over, was the question, “Did he see me? Did he see me?”
* * * * * * * *
After a long and glorious sun bath followed by a delicious lunch served
on deck, Jeanne and Greta sat for a long time staring dreamily at the
sea. Then Jeanne, throwing off her velvet robe, stood up, slim and
straight, on the planked deck.
“Wonder if I can have forgotten,” she murmured. Then, seizing a
tambourine, she began a slow, gliding and weaving motion that, like some
beautiful work evolved from nothing by the painter’s skillful hand,
became a fantastic and wonderful dance.
For a full quarter hour Greta sat spellbound. She had seen dancing, but
none like this. Now the tambourine was rattling and whirling over the
little French girl’s head, and now it lay soundless on the deck. Now the
dancer whirled so fast she was but a gleam of white and gold. And now her
arms moved so slowly, her body turned so little, she might have seemed
asleep.
“Bravo! Bravo!” cried Greta. “That was marvelous! Where did you learn
it?”
“The gypsies taught me.” Dropping upon the deck, Jeanne rolled herself in
a blanket like a mummy.
“People,” she said slowly, “believe that all gypsies are bad. That is not
so. One of the very great preachers was a gypsy—not a converted
gypsy—just a gypsy.
“Bihari and his wife were my godparents in France. They were wandering
gypsies, but such wonderful people! They took me when I had no home. They
gave me shelter. I learned to dance with my bear, such a wonderful bear.
He is dead now, and Bihari is gone. I wish they were here!”
Next moment she went rolling over and over on the deck. Springing like a
beautiful butterfly from a cocoon, she whirled away in one more riotous
dance.
It was in the midst of this that a strange thing happened. Music came to
them from across the waters—wild, delirious music.
Jeanne paused in her wild dance. For a space of seconds she stood there
drinking in that wild glory of sound.
Then, as if caught by some spell, she began once more to dance. And her
dance, as Greta expressed it later, was “like the dance of the angels.”
“Greta,” Jeanne whispered hoarsely when at last the music ceased and she
threw herself panting on the deck, “that is gypsy music! No others can
make music like that. There is a boat load of gypsies out there by
Duncan’s Bay.”
“Yes, yes!” Greta sprang to her feet. “See! It is a white boat. It is
just about to enter the Narrows. Perhaps Florence will see it.”
“Florence—” There was a note of pain in Jeanne’s voice. “Florence has the
boat. I cannot go to them. Perhaps I shall not see them—my friends, the
gypsies. And they make music, such divine music!”
“Music—divine music,” Greta whispered with sudden shock. “Can one of
these have been my phantom violinist?
“No,” she decided after a moment’s contemplation, “that was different.
None of these could have played like that.”
“It is the call!” Jeanne cried, springing to her feet and stretching her
arms toward the distant shore. Fainter, more indistinct now the music
reached their ears. “The gypsies’ call! I have no boat. I cannot go.”