THE CABIN
It was long past midnight when Jean was startled into wakefulness.
Kobuk was barking with the queer, short woofs of the huskie, and
outside the tent Ellen's voice fraught with fear and anxiety, was
calling:
"Shane! O, Shane! Wake up! Quick!"
There was a stealthy sound as of lapping water close at hand; then
Boreland's shout:
"For God's sake, Kayak, get up!"
Jean, now fully awake, ran out into the grey that precedes the dawn.
There was not a breath of wind, and the sea, glassy and as grey as the
sky above, was smoother than she ever saw it afterward on Kon Klayu.
There was something sinister in the gently heaving stillness of the
vast body of water, for not ten feet from the flap of the tent tiny
ripples of the incoming tide were swallowing at the dry sand with
sibilant softness. One end of the pile of provisions just below the
tent was already a foot deep in the advancing flood.
There was no thought of dressing. The race with the sea began at once.
No one knew when the tide would be full, but each realized that should
the provisions be ruined or swept away by the water, slow starvation
would terminate the quest for the gold of Kon Klayu. Every moment
counted. Every hand must help.
Grim-faced and silent, Boreland and Kayak Bill drew on their tremendous
reserve power, and during the next few hours performed almost
super-human feats of strength and endurance in transferring the
provisions to safety. Ellen and Jean, regardless of unbound hair and
thin night-robes, dashed out time after time into the ever rising tide
to snatch up sacks of flour or boxes of canned goods, running with them
far above the beachline. In the face of the threatened catastrophe
they were hardly aware of wet or cold or the weight of objects. They
were small women, but in the peril of the moment they carried
back-breaking loads that would ordinarily have taxed the muscles of a
strong man. Even Lollie, after the first look of sleepy wonder, became
alive to the situation when he saw his new pet, the pigeon, clutching
the top of its cage above six inches of water. He rescued the bird and
while the others were busy with the outfit, rolled up the blankets one
by one, and carried them beyond danger. Before he had finished, the
relentless tide had crept up about the stove, the box where all the
cooking utensils had been placed, and the four rubber boots drying on
their stakes. The little fellow, looking absurdly babylike in his
nightgown, for all his eight years, splashed out to rescue the
threatened articles. Later, at a word from his father, he gathered
some high-thrown drift-wood to make the fire, by that time sorely
needed by all.
The sun was coming up radiantly over the edge of the ocean when they
finished their labors. Though nothing had been carried away, the tide
had risen two feet after discovery, and a third of the provisions was
wet. Silvertip, in his haste to get away from the Island had landed
them on the tide lands. As they afterward learned but one or two tides
a month reached that particular level, but the Borelands had
encountered one of them. Had there been any sea on whatever that night
everything would have been swept away, leaving them destitute, even if
they had escaped with their lives.
The sun and a good, hot breakfast warmed and cheered everybody.
Besides there was little time to discuss their escape, since every wet
dunnage bag and box had to be unpacked and the contents spread out in
the sun to dry.
In making her round of the salvage, Jean came upon the box containing
the old magazines and books from the collection of Add-'em-up Sam. It
had been wetted on one end. Taking out the top layer of books she
paused over the tattered volume of _Treasure Island_ to put into place
a crumpled paper which protruded from beneath the cover. To her
interest she found it to be the crude drawing of Kon Klayu which she
had hastily thrust back that afternoon at Katleean when the
quill-filled Kobuk had come cowering to her feet in the store.
"Shane," she called, waving it in front of her, "here's a little map of
Kon Klayu. Maybe you might find out about the cabin from this."
Boreland strode over to her and glanced at the paper. Then he took it
in his own hands and scanned it more closely, looking up at the
landscape, the sea, and the shoals off which they were camped.
Suddenly his hand fell to his side, and with a great oath he began to
pace up and down the sand.
The others, dismayed, gathered about him.
"Why, Shane! What is the matter?" cried Ellen.
"Matter!" Anger flared in his brown eyes and his hand closed on the
map as if it had been the throat of an enemy. "Ellen, Silvertip lied!
That pale-eyed son of a sea-cook has landed us on the wrong side of the
Island. He was too much of a coward to take the _Hoonah_ around the
shoals. Look at this, Kayak--" He smoothed out the paper so that his
partner could see the lines. "According to this, the cabin is all of
three miles from here on the other side."
Kayak Bill took the map in his hands and held it for a long moment
before his near-sighted eyes.
"By . . . hell!" The words came slowly in a sort of whispered shout.
Then as if unable to declare himself in the presence of the women,
Kayak, with a suspicion of haste in his going, sauntered off to the far
side of a sand-dune, where he sat down and in the manner of the true
Alaskan, drew heavily on his stock of profanity to express his opinion
of all Swedes, Silvertip in particular, the country, and the blind
Providence that could create an island without a harbor.
The situation forced upon the party was a serious one. It involved
transferring the entire outfit three miles to the cabin--if there was
one--over the soft beach sand that made their only means of
transportation, a wheelbarrow, utterly useless. There were but a few
days during the year when a small boat, such as the whale-boat, could
safely circumnavigate the shoals at the north end and the reef-sown
waters about the Island. Since this means could not be relied upon,
the two men were confronted with the necessity of packing on their
backs to the cabin every pound of provisions; and with the equinoctial
storms close at hand, every day counted.
Boreland bit his lip in the effort to control the anger that burned
within him as he realized that a month or six weeks must be spent in
transferring the provisions. But there was no time to lose in cursing
the absent Silvertip; immediate action counted and he was never one to
let misfortune weigh long upon him.
Noting the worried look on Ellen's face he crossed over to where she
sat upon the opened box of books, and put his arms about her.
"Never mind, little fellow. We'll come out all right. The darkest
hour always comes before the dawn," he said, laying his rough cheek
against her hair.
Despite her anxiety, a smile stirred the corner of Ellen's mouth as she
heard this familiar bit of sentimental philosophy. During the ten
years of her married life Shane had always been ready with these words,
no matter what crushing calamity came upon them. She patted his hand
as she would have patted that of a child.
Loll, with his fingers under Kobuk's collar, had been looking on, his
little face unconsciously assuming the seriousness of those about him.
He turned now to greet Kayak Bill, who, apparently calmed and
refreshed, was wading out of the rice-grass. The old man's sombrero
was cocked at a militant angle; his long raw-hide laces snaked along
behind his boots, and clouds of tobacco smoke enveloped him.
"Well," he said gently, "I reckon there ain't no useless good
vocabulatin' about that varmint, Silvertip. I should a-known better'n
to trust a man o' his moth-eaten morals, anyhow."
Ellen stooped down to pick up the map which had fallen unheeded to the
sand. For a moment she traced the beachline with her forefinger,
reading the penciled names from the paper. "Sunset Point. Skeleton
Rib. . . . Well, at least we know where to look for the cabin, Shane."
She looked up decisively. "Let's find it before anything else happens
to us."
Ten minutes later the two men had disappeared behind the western
sand-dunes, and as if to assure them of his confidence in the future,
Boreland's voice, raised: a quavering Irish melody floated back to the
camp where Ellen and Jean were spreading the blankets upon the sand.
They were weary from their night's work. With Kobuk on guard they
curled up beside Lollie, and lulled by the far-away calls of the gulls
and the ceaseless chant of the sea, were soon fast asleep. . . .
The hoo-hooing of Boreland and Kayak Bill two hours later awakened the
sleepers before the men reached camp.
"Everything is lovely and the goose hangs high!" Boreland cheerily
answered their questions. "We found the cabin all right and tonight we
all sleep in our own little wickie!"
The pale-green combers that were breaking for miles out on the shoals,
made it impossible to think of using the whale-boat. Therefore,
immediately after lunch, the party started on the three-mile walk, each
one carrying a pack. Jean, with her violin and a scarlet blanket
strapped across her strong young shoulders, stopped in the trail again
and again to laugh at her smaller sister, nearly obliterated under two
feather pillows. Loll, important as the head packer of a Government
party, carried a pot of cold beans in his hand, and encouraged Kobuk,
whose pack-saddle was filled with necessary odds and ends for the
night's camp. The sheet-iron stove, with food and cooking utensils
inside, made a noisy, rattling pack on Boreland's back, leaving his
hands free for his shot-gun which he carried for the ducks that were
flying south. Kayak Bill shouldered a roll of blankets with an ease
which many a younger man might have envied. He was balancing the broom
across his palm when his eye fell on the pigeon. He picked up the cage
with his free hand.
"Beats all get-out what women will get a man into."
A quizzical smile crinkled the corners of his eyes as he "hefted" his
burdens. "Here's an old sourdough like me hittin' the trail with a
broom in one fist and--by he--hen, a dicky-bird in the other!"
Occasionally it appeared to dawn on Kayak that his expletives were not
exactly suited to the ears of women and children and he seemed to be
doing his best to modify them.
Boreland, whistling, led the way. Despite the discouraging events of
the night and morning it was a cheerful little party that started out
for the cabin. It is only in civilization that trouble and calamity
eat into the heart. The wonder of the wilderness lies in that sense of
adventure just ahead, which brings forgetfulness of the hardships left
behind.
Shane and Kayak tramped down a trail across the sand-dunes, through
patches of purple wild peas, and tall rice-grass whose silver-green
heads nodded heavily against the travelers as they passed. Wind,
spiced with sea-weed and flowers blew across their faces. They came
out on the west side of Kon Klayu in a field of blossoming lupine that
sloped gently downward to the sands, and beyond, the sea dashed in
foam-shot emerald against a ragged reef.
Loll's flower-loving soul looked out of his eyes an instant; then with
a shout he abandoned Kobuk and the bean-pot for the moment, and
scattering the red-vested bumble-bees that were avidly working for
honey in the lupine flowers he began gathering a bouquet for his mother.
The warm August sun coaxed tiny whiffs of vapor from the long grey
beach that curved southward toward a distant bluff. Sky and water met
far out on the rim of the world.
Scampering ahead along the wave-washed margin, Loll excited Kobuk to
laughter-provoking antics, as the dog, trying to play with him, swung
along with his ungainly pack. The boy made frequent dashes up to the
high-tide line, where Indian celery lifted creamy, umbrella-like
blooms. From the beach-line the vivid green of the tundra, patterned
with daisies, stretched away to meet the alder trees growing thickly
where the land gradually rose toward the center of the island. A small
lake here and there reflected the sky.
It was in one of these lakes close to the beach that a flock of
mallards alighted, passing so near that the travelers could see the
iridescent green of the drakes' heads catching the sun. Boreland
slipped off his pack and creeping toward the lake, disappeared in the
Indian celery.
There was a moment of breathless waiting; a loud report: and a
squattering and whirring as the flock flew away toward the hill. Then
Boreland, wet to the knees but grinning, appeared holding aloft three
birds. . . .
The tide had been coming in for some time, assaulting the shore with
ever nearing combers. As the party neared the bluff round which they
must pass, the wash of extra large breakers licked the base and in the
wake of each receding wave the wet sand mirrored the steep, rocky wall
above it. At such times it was necessary to wait until a wave had run
out before they could hurry to a place of safety farther on.
"I ain't no nature for this place a-tall," said Kayak Bill, when they
had safely dashed over the two hundred feet of this sort of going.
"There'd be hell a-poppin' if a fella'd get caught there in a high
tide."
"The cabin lies just beyond," Boreland announced.
The bluff sloped down to a tall bank topped with green, having a beach
below it.
Following the sands for a short distance, they turned into what had
once been a trail. The party halted looking upward to the place that
was to be their home.
A mere thread of a footpath, almost blotted out by tall grasses, led
gently up the slope for sixty yards to where, above a natural hedge of
celery blooms, a little cabin of weather-beaten drift-logs cuddled at
the foot of a steep, green hill. A porch jutted out in front,
spindling uprights supporting the slanting roof. To the right, farther
down and half hidden in the grass, lay the remains of a board shack
which had fallen in. There was a sound of trickling water in some
hidden place. The sun fell warmly in this sheltered nook, bringing out
the scent of green things; and over all was that melancholy stillness
which envelopes human dwellings long deserted.
The boom of breakers far out on the reefs was hushed to a soothing hum,
and faintly, from the reedy little lake farther down on the southward
slope came the quacking of wild ducks. To the north and south and west
lay the open sea, and as far as the eye could reach was no sight of
land.
Jean broke her wide-eyed silence with a whisper:
"It's under a spell, Ellen, sure as you live." . . . She continued
aloud: "Look at that quaint old latch on the door--made of a piece of
drift-wood. And see the-- Oh! _Shane_!" Incredulity and fear
shrilled in her voice--"Shane! Why, it's _moving_!" She grasped her
brother-in-law's arm as she pointed to the door of the cabin.
It was true. The door was opening slowly, jerkily, in a way that
hinted of fearsome, because unknown things. The next instant there
stepped out of the opening a tall, shock-haired young man, naked,
except for some tatters of an undershirt and a piece of old canvas
wound about his hips after the fashion of a South Sea _pareu_.