THE GIANT BALLS OF STONE
It was not yet five o'clock the following morning when Loll, from his
blankets on the floor of the cabin living-room, raised his tousled head
and looked cautiously about him. His big, grey eyes were alive with
eagerness and expectation. The strangeness of his surroundings
thrilled him with possibilities. Through the window the sun-flooded
world called him to adventure.
Again he glanced speculatively at the sleeping forms round him and then
eased warily out of bed.
With a pudgy finger on his lips and long steps of a stealthiness so
exaggerated that his balance was threatened at every move, he tip-toed
to the corner where his shoes lay, and without stopping for any further
addition to his toilet, slipped out the door in his nightgown.
He avoided the blanket-cocooned figures of Kayak Bill and Harlan on the
porch, and continued a short distance down the path to the chopping
block where he sat down to pull the shoes on his little bare feet.
Kobuk, returning from some early morning adventure on the beach, espied
him, and with a red-mouthed huskie smile, came bounding up the trail,
wriggling an extravagant and clumsy welcome. With loud whispers hissed
through fiercely protruding lips, Loll tried to shoo him away, but the
dog only whirled about, thumping him with a joyously wagging tail and
poking a cold damp nose down the neck of his nightgown.
After fastening the top button of his shoes the boy stood up and looked
about him. The wonderful sunniness of the world thrilled him. From
the blue sky soaring gulls called to one another, and the sunlight
poured down on the silver-green ocean and the little lake to the south.
Faint breaths of air stirred the scent of green things, and everywhere
was that exhilarating freshness of late summer that has in it the hint
of autumn frosts.
The youngster waved his arms and danced from sheer joy in living, and
with Kobuk at his heels, ran down off the trail through the damp grass
toward the lake.
About a hundred yards from the cabin, hidden in a clump of alder
bushes, he came upon a low hut built of drift logs. Half the roof was
gone and pieces of decaying seal-hide and a ragged red shawl embedded
in the dirt floor hinted of the visits of long-ago Indian otter-hunters.
Interested in his discovery, the little fellow was peering cautiously
in, when, with a sudden bound, Kobuk dashed by him nearly knocking him
over. There was a whirr of wings overhead, sounds of bird alarm, and
half a dozen swallows circled wildly about the frantic Kobuk before
finding a place of escape through the hole in the roof.
"Gosh, Kobuk, I was pretty near scared," admitted the youthful
explorer, looking up at the rafters under which several nests made
clay-grey splotches.
Swallowing hard a time or two he buttoned up the neck of his nightgown.
Outside the hut again he slanted a discreet glance back in the
direction of the cabin to assure himself that everyone still slept, and
then with a whispered whoop of invitation to the dog, skipped down
toward the beach.
The cabin stood well back on the bank off the center of a small
crescent cove, flanked on the north by the bluff around which the party
had come the day before. Toward the south the beach curved to what was
marked "Sunset Point" on Add-'em-up's map. Loll tucked his nightgown
up under his arm and headed for that unexplored territory, talking to
Kobuk as he skipped along.
The tide was falling and screaming gulls rose and fell over the rocks
feeding on the shellfish among the seaweed. Far out on the water great
flocks of black sea-parrots floated, and overhead these stocky little
birds flew in hundreds, their huge, crimson beaks thrust determinedly
out before them, their round, white-ringed eyes showing plainly, and
their wings, seemingly too small for their pudgy bodies, beating the
air in a hurried manner, as they attended strictly to the business of
feeding their young. Unlike the lazy gulls they took no time to loiter
along the way.
The boy, looking up at the busy black workers, little dreamed of the
vital and spectacular part both he and they were to play later in the
struggle for existence on the Island of Kon Klayu.
The weed-covered boulders of Sunset Point drew him, but though he felt
strongly the fascination of the ocean bed now becoming uncovered by the
tide, for some indefinable childish reason he hesitated to go down
among the rocks in his nightgown. So, whistling with moist
tunelessness, he rounded the Point, Kobuk trotting on ahead.
Here the character of the beach changed, and the high-tide line, where
the rice-grass began, was piled with a criss-cross confusion of
bleached drift-logs thrown up by the mighty surf of storms. Mounds of
old kelp lay drying in the sun, and the unforgettable odor of decaying
sea-things mingled with the freshness of the morning.
Absorbed in the delights of discovery, Lollie poked about in the
tangled masses finding strange, beautiful shells and sea-flowers
fragile and delicately colored as the heart of a rose. He gathered his
nightgown up into a pocket in front of him in which to carry home some
of the damp and none too fresh treasures of the beach.
Sea figs in tan and orange and vermilion made splashes of color among
the wet piles of shiny brown kelp brought up by the last tide, and
small dead starfish turned pale stomachs to the sun. Grotesque,
bulging seaweeds stirred him to laughter, and after untangling one--a
head-like growth that seemed to grin sociably at him from a tail twenty
feet long, he tied the thin end about his waist. The bulb wriggled
along behind him on the sand, alternately piquing and repelling the
curiosity of the sniffing Kobuk.
Another point ahead lured him on. Clouds of sand fleas rose in
rustling hops as he ran along. Here and there monster jelly-fish
glistened in the sun. With his mouth in a continual O of admiration
and wonder, the little fellow squatted repeatedly to gaze at the
exquisite geometrical designs in their crystal depths; but after one or
two half-hearted attempts to pry them apart to see how they were made
he contented himself with adding one to his already overburdened
nightgown. Even in the thrill of discovery he had an instinctive
antipathy against marring a beautiful thing.
Kobuk, running on ahead, had found something which interested him. He
stood looking back, woofing impatiently as if urging the boy to hasten
and see what it was. As Loll came nearer he shouted in astonishment,
increasing his gait with difficulty because of the impeding pocket in
front of him. What he saw was a head of some great sea monster,
perhaps twelve feet long. The dark skin was streaked with dull red and
purple, and where the head had been severed from the body, the sea had
whitened it to sand-encrusted tatters. The huge mouth lay open and
twisted, and from the lower jaw protruded two rounded tusks, nearly a
foot long.
There was a contemplative moment while Loll's eyes opened wide.
"Golly, Kobuk--" reverent awe was in his tones--"I bet-cha that's the
whale that swallowed old Jonah!"
There was a singular fascination about the battered remnant, far gone
in decay, but the stench from it finally proved so overpowering that,
despite his intense desire to linger near his discovery, Loll was
obliged to move on.
He turned to the upper beachline for further explorations. Across a
narrow strip of tundra-like land lay the small lake visible from the
cabin porch. On the edge of the rice-grass he stumbled against a
boulder that was as remarkably round as if it had been shaped by human
hands. He stopped in delight at the great stone ball and tried to move
it with his one free hand. Farther on he saw more of the curious
spheres. Some were two feet and more in diameter.
"Maybe--giants played ball with 'em once!" he whispered to himself,
with a cautious glance about him.
He headed for the tundra and was startled by coming suddenly upon the
skeleton of a whale whitening in the sand where an extra high tide had
thrown the creature long ago. Purple wild peas and blue beach
forget-me-nots blossomed between the monster ribs, and the huge
vertebrae, scattered here and there, were half hidden by the grass. It
was from this relic, no doubt, that the Point opposite derived its
name--Skeleton Rib.
Afterward Louie's father utilized several of these vertebrae for
stools, but seeing them for the first time, the little fellow looked
down at them respectfully, hushed into silence by vague, sea-born
feelings. Far down the beach to the southward rose the cliff's where
thousands of sea-birds swarmed in the sunshine. Their screaming,
softened by the distance, came to his ears with an eerie wildness. All
at once he felt very small and alone among alien creatures. Kobuk had
turned back without him and was bounding out of sight around Skeleton
Rib. The giant balls of stone suddenly took on fearsome suggestions
from the realms of fairy tales.
The dog had disappeared now. The plaint of a high-flying gull drifted
down to the boy. A breath of wind whispered in the grass about the
whitening bones. . . . Suddenly he was flooded with a very panic of
loneliness. Grasping the folds of the nightgown more tightly before
him he set out as fast as his little bare legs would carry him towards
home, the trailing kelp attached to his waist bounding wildly along
behind him. . . .
It was thus that Ellen, white-faced with anxiety, met her returning son
as he rounded Sunset Point. She clasped him frantically to her to
assure herself that he was indeed safe and sound, and then held him off
at arm's length, surveying the havoc to his nightgown, and preparing
for the admonishing that was due. But Loll had already learned to
divert many a mild scolding by the relation of some startling
discovery. He launched forth now on the subject of the whale's head
and the stone balls that giants must have played with, giving
embellishments so amazing that his eyes stood out in growing
astonishment as he talked.
Out-maneuvered, Ellen led him to breakfast where he took his place
still holding forth on the wonders of his adventures. Kayak Bill
regarded him with an appreciative eye. Finally he drawled:
"Son, you sure do vocabulate most as well as a sourdough!" [1] He
paused to take a long, slow swoop of coffee and wipe his mouth with his
red bandana. "The whale's head that et Jonah ain't so bad--but them
giant hand balls o' stone sounds phoney. . . . You know there seems to
be somethin' about this durned country that just nache'ly makes white
men--not lie exactly--but sort o' put trimmin's on the truth. . . . I
recollect a couple o' yars back when I'm hibernatin' one winter up on
the Kuskokwim River with a bunch o' white trappers and prospectors."
With his spoon, Kayak scraped the bottom of his empty coffee-cup to get
every unmelted grain of sugar that lay there. "The next summer, I'm a
son-of-a-gun, if them Injines up there ain't callin' that place by an
Injine name that means 'The Valley o' Lies'. . . . I've sort o' got it
figgered out like this: This doggoned Alasky land, bein' so big and
magnificent like, a man just feels plumb ashamed to tell of some little
meachin' thing a-happenin' in it--he feels downright obliged to fix
things up so's they'll match the mountains and the rest o' it."
And drawing his corn-cob from the pocket of his hair-seal waistcoat,
Kayak Bill shuffled off into the cabin to light it from a splinter
thrust into the round draft hole of the Yukon stove, while Boreland and
Harlan made ready to leave for the provision camp at the North end.
For five days after landing the weather continued clear, although the
sea never became sufficiently smooth for a trip with the whale-boat.
Each day the men of the party went down to the first camp to pack
provisions across the Island to what they called the West Camp, the
place from which they expected to load them into the whale-boat and
take them by water to the cabin. When the entire outfit had been
packed across, the whale-boat was also skidded over on small drift
logs. By this means they avoided the long shoals which ran so far out
into the sea.
"Now for a few days of smooth water," said Boreland, when the job was
completed, "and we'll be able to take everything down to the cabin by
boat. We must have this grub under cover before the autumn storms set
in. The rougher the sea, the better chance for gold, so
Silvertip--damn his cowardly hide--told me. Kilbuck said old
Add-'em-up used to send his squaw out patrolling the beach after each
storm, and she usually found patches of black or ruby sand which
carried considerable gold. . . . It seems reasonable enough, Kayak,
for it's the same with all placer diggings along the sea."
The three men seated themselves on the upturned boat to eat their
lunch. Boreland, whose mind was ever dwelling on the time when he
should be free to begin his search for the gold of Kon Klayu, talked
on. Harlan listened in silence to the other's eager plans.
"But of course it's the _source_ of the gold we want! Silvertip thinks
it is thrown up out of the sea by the action of the waves. Kilbuck
imagines it is washed down from the banks, although all the prospecting
done by the fox-farmers revealed nothing. But--gold is where you find
it, and I mean to leave no stone unturned while I'm here. . . .
Speaking of stones," he went on after a moment's silence, "Loll was
right about his giant balls of stone. Have either of you noticed here
and there along the beach, especially toward the south, small,
perfectly round boulders? By thunder, they look exactly like cannon
balls!"
Harlan, though he had at first attended the others' speeches had
gradually become immersed in his own thoughts. Each day, while his
muscles ached and the desire for stinging liquor flamed like fire in
his veins, he had worked with Boreland and Kayak Bill at the North end
of the Island packing provisions across on his back. Though he still
ate his meals with the Borelands at the cabin, almost immediately after
supper he took the mile and a half trail across the Island to the hut,
which he had found on his landing. Intuitively, he knew Ellen
Boreland's opinion of him. He smiled sometimes at the grim humor of
the situation: He, who had tried to get away from the society of women
found himself now on the mercy and generosity of a woman who did not
like him. He was dependent on her, by Jove, for every stitch of
clothing on him, for even the soap that he used--for his very
toothbrush. Soon, he knew, she would be giving him provisions so that
he might cook his own meals on the other side of the Island. She
didn't want him around her, or her sister. It piqued him to be felt
unwanted--aroused in him a desire to show her----
His innate honesty compelled him to admit that Ellen knew him in no
hero's light. Still he could not help a feeling of bitterness at the
relieved look that came, unconsciously, to her face each evening when
he turned, reluctantly, from the homelike group on the cabin porch, to
take the lonely little zig-zag trail up the hillside.
His mind went back now to a scene of the evening before. After supper
just as he was preparing to leave. Jean had taken her violin from its
case.
"I'm going to play, tonight, Mr. Harlan. Are you too tired to stay a
while?" she asked, looking at him with friendly eyes.
Too quickly Ellen had interrupted:
"No, no, Jean. Don't keep this poor, tired fellow from his bed. I'm
sure he wants to go to sleep as soon as possible. And here, Mr.
Harlan,"--she advanced toward him thrusting into his arms a blanket and
a pillow,--"I found this extra bedding for your bunk today. . . .
There now, tuck it under your arm, like this. . . . Good-night. . . .
Sleep well. . . . _Good-night_." Her voice was kind as she smiled up
into his face, but there was no mistaking her meaning. With shame and
resentment in his heart he had turned up the hillside trail.
On the brow of the hill he had stopped and flung the bedding angrily on
the ground, himself upon it. Was he a criminal that he should be
debarred from an hour's pleasure in the society of the only other human
beings on this Island? Suddenly he felt that he hated Ellen Boreland.
He hated all women. He hated all the world. The longing for strong
liquor swept him, shaking him like a leaf. He could feel his chin
under his soft young beard quiver. He despised himself for a weakling
and a fool. He tightened the clasped hold of his arms about his knees
and dropped his head upon them. The thought that had been tormenting
him since the first day he began transferring the provisions, came back
now with an added urge. At the West Camp were flour, sugar, cornmeal
and dried fruit. With those ingredients he could make himself the
stuff that his system craved--make it as the Indians made it, with two
kerosene cans and a long piece of hollow kelp. In his hut on the other
side of the Island he could, undetected, heat the fermented mash in a
can, attach the piece of kelp to the top and immerse it in cold water
until the condensed steam came out at the other end in the form of
Thlinget _hoochinoo_.
As he huddled there on the brow of the hill he had cradled the thought
in his mind, planning in detail each step of the distilling. With
provisions so low it would be impossible to take enough from the cache
to make any quantity--but he might make sufficient to ease, just once,
the intolerable thirst that possessed him. It might be six weeks
before the _Hoonah_ returned--six weeks of torment and loneliness.
Another thing had been troubling him of late. His thoughts had been
returning to stories he had heard of Add-'em-up Sam who had died of
delirium tremens at Katleean. Silvertip, when in liquor, was fond of
detailing the last, violent days of the old bookkeeper. . . .
Sometimes, Harlan fancied, he too was beginning to see those fearful
shadowy images that dance on the borderland of insanity. How else
could he account for that spectre of the tundra which he saw,
sometimes, as he went home in the dusk--that dark, almost imperceptible
figure far off toward the south cliffs where the lone tree of Kon Klayu
stood on the brow of the hill? Was he too going the way of Add-'em-up
Sam?
As he sat there he had cursed himself for ever leaving the _Hoonah_ and
risking his life to help a woman whose kind, polite aloofness irritated
his drink-shattered nerves as an open declaration of hostility could
not have done--a woman to whom he was merely a foolish young man who
had chosen to get himself marooned, and whose presence forced her to
calculate more closely the alarmingly depleted store of provisions left
after the wetting of the tide.
Suddenly, in the midst of his bitter reverie, he raised his face from
his clasped arms. Up from the cabin below floated the faint, pure
harmony of violin strings. So exquisite, so lovely sounded the notes
in the wide, wild loneliness of the evening, that Harlan sat for a
moment with suspended breath. Gradually, under the spell of the music,
he became aware of the beauty of the world about him. The after-sunset
sky was a vast expanse of tender rose and blue deepening into violet on
the long encircling horizon line. Below lay the wine-dark sea fringing
with pale foam the sands of Kon Klayu. The noise of breakers on
distant reefs was like the wind in the eucalyptus trees of his
California home. . . . A flood of homesickness dissolved the
resentment in his heart. . . . Gradually the old fears and haunting
troubles faded from his lean young face. The low, vibrant tones of
Jean's violin brought him comfort. The soft, rippling notes breathed
him confidence, and the silvery chords lured him into the promises of
the future. He felt equal to noble and heroic deeds--to fighting and
conquering. From a sense of being outcast and alone, he felt a sudden
warming kinship with all the world. With his heart expanding he came
to his feet, the better to catch the harmony.
The time and air had changed into something vaguely familiar. . . .
With a glow of pleasure he recognized it,--the lament of the funeral
canoes at Katleean, but with something else added, something that made
him feel the mystery and the weirdness and the elemental call of the
North. It was almost as if she played to him comforting him with
promises of this clean, new land of beginnings.
Abruptly, he remembered, the music had broken off. There was a
moment's silence. And then there had drifted up to him Jean's
invariable good-night to the deepening twilight. Sweet and clear from
a long-drawn singing bow it came--a commingling of love and peace and
beauty he had once heard a great contralto sing:
"In the West
Sable night lulls the day on her breast.
Sweet, good-night! . . ."
He had longed to throw back his head and sing these words to Jean's
music, but he had shaken himself. No. That was a song for a lover. . .
"Son, are you plumb dead to the world?" Kayak Bill's words roused
Harlan from his dreaming. He sprang up and began stacking provisions
inside the tent. He realized as he worked, that today no tempting
thought had come to him of secretly distilling hootch from stores he
might take from this camp. The enormity of such an action struck him
for the first time. This food meant life on Kon Klayu--and there was
little of it. . . .
A few hours later headed down the long stretch of beach toward the
cabin, he squared his shoulders under the heavy pack he bore and joined
in with the voices of Kayak Bill and Boreland who, with lusty
incongruity were singing the whaling song of the trading-post:
"Up into the Polar seas
Where ice is delivered free,
And a man don't have to hustle
Like a blooming honey-bee!"
Work was hard in this country of the last frontier, but men had more
time, more inclination to sing, he thought.
As he swung along the hard sand, in his heart was a sense of
expectancy--for what he did not know.
[1] Old-time Alaskan.