THE LANDING
On the beach the last sack and box had been carried up to a place
selected by Silvertip as being above the high-tide line.
"Well, old man, I think we'll take a stroll around and see where that
cabin is located," said Boreland cheerfully. "It can't be far from the
anchorage here."
"No, no. Youst a little vay. Youst a little vay," hurriedly answered
Silvertip as he waved an indefinite hand across the dunes. "You'll
find it so easy you don't need me. Ay tank she makes a big vind in the
sout'vest, so Ay go before a heavy sea coomes."
They talked about the island anchorage for a few minutes. Boreland
insisted that the breeze would die down at sunset as is often the case
during good weather, but Silvertip persisted in his determination to
get away from the Island at once.
Finally Shane turned to Kayak Bill with a somewhat contemptuous laugh.
"What do you say, Kayak? This fellow seems scared to death to stay
here any longer. I reckon we can get along without him now, don't you?"
Kayak Bill spat meditatively at a knot of brown kelp.
"Wall, we _mout_ be a-makin' a false play, but--durn the critter
anyway, Shane! He ain't got no more backbone than a wet string! He's
been in a hell of a stew ever since we got here about this storm
a-brewing and it's beginnin' to roil me just havin' him pesticate
around. Let him go."
During the conversation Silvertip's pale eyes had been shifting back
and forth between Boreland and Kayak. If he resented Kayak's
disparaging remarks he made no sign. When the old man finished he
began moving swiftly toward the whale-boat where his mate was adjusting
the oar-locks.
Five minutes after a last hurried direction relating to the location of
the house, he and his partner were making their way out over the
breakers to the _Hoonah_. Shane and Kayak started out at once to look
for the cabin in which they intended to sleep that night. As they left
they called cheerily to the women standing on the beach, but Ellen
hardly heard them.
As the distance between the shore and the moving whale-boat lengthened
she felt a growing depression, a sinking of the heart. She was filled
with a vast loneliness. All about her and above her was illimitable
distance--ocean spaces green and rolling; sky spaces far and wide and
blue; spaces through which the winds of the world swept unhindered;
spaces filled eternally with the sound of the sea. She was awed and
silenced by the immensity, the impersonality of it all.
Jean, too, was silent and meditative. Ellen wondered if she were
thinking of young Harlan. That problem at least was solved, she
thought with relief. The girl came close and placed an arm about
Ellen's waist as if for the comfort her physical presence might bring.
Together they looked on while the _Hoonah_ got under weigh. Flying
before the wind it grew smaller and smaller in the distance. The awe
in Ellen's heart gradually gave place to an acute homesickness for the
comfort of the little craft that would be her home no more. Time
passed, and as she watched the topmast sail going down on the horizon
she realized, as never before, that the fate of herself and her family
was dependent solely on the White Chief of Katleean. His word was law,
his power absolute. She was aghast at her blindness in permitting the
shaping of such a situation. Blaming herself, she went over the events
of the last two weeks step by step, perceiving too late what she would
have done, what she should have said to dissuade her husband from this
last mad venture.
She turned her eyes from the sea at last, resolving to shake off her
depression. She must prepare to meet the future. Jean had left her
some time before and was busy tucking her violin away more securely in
its wrapping of silk. Lollie kneeling before the cage in which his
pigeon fluttered experimentally was trying to force bunches of wild
peas through the bars. Ellen went close to the cage and looked down at
the bird.
There was something sinister in the gleam of the bright, beady eye it
turned up at her. The words of the White Chief came back to her.
"You'll want me. . . . The pigeon loose, comes back. _I will
understand_." . . . "You'll want me." What had he meant by that? The
pigeon--She looked down at it again thoughtfully. That afternoon, in
lowering the cage from the deck of the _Hoonah_ into the whale-boat,
the fastening had slipped and it had fallen into the sea, but
Silvertip, by a quick movement, had grasped it before it sank.
Suddenly Ellen found herself beset by two conflicting emotions--one
moment she wished it had gone down into the depths--the next she felt
that she must let nothing happen to this last, this only connecting
link with the mainland.
She was brought back to her surroundings by Jean's call, as the young
girl hailed Shane and Kayak Bill, who were coming toward them through
the tall rice-grass. The faces of both men wore looks of unusual
seriousness and there was no answer to Jean's greeting until they
stopped beside the piled-up outfit.
"Oh, Shane, you didn't find the cabin?" Even as she asked the question
Ellen knew the answer.
"No, dear. It doesn't seem to be at this end of the Island at all.
But--" noting the dismayed faces of those about him--"we needn't worry
about it. We'll put up the tents here for the night and make an early
start in the morning."
Loll had left his pigeon, and was listening, wide-eyed and serious.
"But what if there is no cabin, dad?" With child-like directness he
voiced the question that was uppermost in the minds of every other
member of the party on the tree-less Island of Kon Klayu. In the
momentary silence that followed a gust of wind stirred the rice-grass
into questioning sound as the coarse blades swayed together.
"Oh, I know!" the boy answered himself enthusiastically, "we'll find a
cave, of course, and live in it like Robinson Crusoe."
"Right-o, boy!" Boreland assented with a cheerfulness that did not
escape being forced. "But just now we'll get busy making camp for the
night."
Two tents were pitched in the rice-grass at the edge of the beach. On
a foundation of stones was set the small rectangular sheet-iron stove
that every gold-trail in Alaska knows. Within the hour the shiny new
pipe was carrying a gay plume of smoke, and with the cheery crackling
of the flames, the spirits of everyone rose; for the adventurer may
wander where he will, but when he builds a fire--whether it be of
coconut husks on the rim of a South Sea atoll, or of drift-wood on the
beach of a northern sea, there comes a sense of home and comfort.
Boreland, unpacking what he called the "grub-box," volunteered to get
supper for the hungry band while they went in search of more driftwood
for the fire. Leaving him busy with the frying-pan they headed
northward toward the long sand-spit that pointed like an accusing
finger in the direction of the mainland ninety miles away. Above the
high-tide line the sand dunes were as powdery blue with lupine as the
April fields of California, and Loll's whooping investigation revealed
patches of wild strawberries larger than those found at Katleean, where
acres of them grow on the low sand hills along the sea.
Jean and Lollie lay flat on their stomachs filling their mouths and
grass-lined hats. The bouquet of sun-warmed strawberries and the
perfume of flowering lupine were wafted across the dunes in
intermittent gusts of fragrance. Ellen almost forgot her anxiety as
she picked the red-toned fruit and listened to the drawling voice of
Kayak Bill describing a cordial he had once made from the berries--a
liqueur so subtle in its effects, so delicious and so warming that it
had melted even the heart of a revenue officer sent up from Sitka
especially to investigate him.
Later when they returned to the tents with lupine-laden arms and hats
full of berries, there was in the air the good camp smell of
frying-bacon, warmed-over brown beans and bubbling coffee. Boreland,
apparently in the best of spirits, was setting out the dishes on a
clean piece of canvas spread on the sand.
"Get a move on, gang!" he called. "Come and get it! My stomach's
fairly cleaving to my backbone!"
As the adventurers ate, the sun, going down on the other side of the
island, tinted the sky with shades of wild rose and forget-me-not. A
cluster of tiny golden clouds floated high in the blue. As the
trembling pearl of twilight came on, an occasional belated gull flew
overhead with a single, gently-sad question. The wind died away and
the song of the surf mellowed to a croon.
After the dishes were done Ellen and Jean put Lollie to bed in the
blankets spread in the larger tent while Boreland and Kayak Bill,
smoking and discussing the possibilities of the sands of Kon Klayu,
squatted about the drift-wood fire. Presently Jean left her sister and
stepped out into the gloaming. She turned toward the south and walked
along the edge of the sea-drift. The smooth hard beach was a lure to
her feet.
She lifted her chin, breathing deeply and swinging her arms free as she
walked. The air was faintly cool with the smell of the sea and with it
mingled the multi-scented breath of northern Indian summer: lupine,
sundried sand, beach grass and celery bloom. Soft and dim and
strangely lovely dreamed this Island of the ruby sands. From a shadowy
grove of alders inland came the three plaintive notes of a sleepy
golden-crown sparrow voicing the beauty, the mystery, the gentleness of
the North. Enchantment broods in the twilight of Alaskan nights. Jean
had felt it many times during the summer, and loved it--the vague, wild
sense of romance in its dusks. Tonight the thrill and promise of life
seemed more poignantly sweet than ever before. She longed suddenly for
some one to share this hour with her. . . .
Reluctantly, at last she turned from the dim beckoning distance, and
retraced her steps.
As she neared camp, Kobuk, yawning, rose from his post by Ellen's tent,
to greet her. Boreland and Kayak Bill had gone to bed in the smaller
tent, and about the greying embers of their bonfire, rubber boots
stood, like grotesque plants, each one drying upside down over a stake
driven into the sand.
Jean undressed and slipped between the blankets beside her
sister. . . . The clean, fresh smell of trampled rice-grass drifted
about her pillow. . . . As the tide came in the murmur of surf on the
distant shoals was soothing as a cradle song, and the girl, with a
tired sigh, adjusted her body to the unyielding, sandy bed, and drowsed
off into slumber, unaware of the peril that was even then creeping
nearer and nearer to the sleepers on the beach of Kon Klayu.