THE MYSTERIOUS PRESENCE
The loss of the whale-boat was a calamity staggering in its magnitude.
It meant that every pound of provisions left at the West Camp must be
packed on the backs of the men to the cabin. Not only that, but they
were now without any means whatever of leaving the Island. Nothing but
the direst necessity could have forced Boreland to seek the mainland in
the frail craft, but, remembering that the Indians of the coast had
been known to journey the hundreds of miles from Sitka to Kodiak in
open canoes, there had been a certain feeling of assurance in the
thought that with the whale-boat there was at least a chance of
bringing help to the Island should it be necessary.
Boreland was the first to recover from the blow. The morning following
the loss the three men were discussing it.
"Well, these post mortems get us nowhere," he said at last as he rose
and prepared to stow the provisions away in the loft. "We'll tackle
the job on hand now. After all, Kilbuck will be here with the _Hoonah_
soon, and we can get another boat from him."
All that afternoon while the gale tore at the corners of the little
cabin and the sea beat with increasing violence on the beach and reefs,
the men worked with hammer and saw, putting up shelves, making a table
and a bedstead, and erecting two bunks for Jean and Lollie, one above
the other in the adjoining room. Because he would so soon be leaving,
Kayak Bill decided to pitch his tent again in the lee of the house as
soon as the storm permitted, and occupy it until the _Hoonah_ came.
The storm lasted three days. The second day the roof began to leak.
The third day the rickety little porch blew down on one end and much of
the chinking came out from between the logs of the cabin.
When, on the fourth morning, the wind died away and the sun burst out
brilliantly upon a tumbling, muddy sea and rain-drenched landscape,
Boreland's first thought was of repairing the house.
"We're in a devil of a stew here," he exclaimed after breakfast.
"We'll have to get this place fixed up right now. Still, some of us
ought to go down to the West Camp and take a look at the cache.
Luckily there are no animals on the island, so we have nothing to fear
from that source."
"Why can't Loll and I go down to the camp, Shane?" broke in Jean.
"Then all you men can get busy on the house. The poor, little old
thing looks as if it had a black eye, with the porch battered down over
the door."
Boreland was at first not in favor of the idea, doubting that it was
safe for them to go alone. At last, however, he consented.
"Keep to the upper beach line," he cautioned, as the two started out,
"and remember, if the sea is breaking near the bluff when you come
home, wait on the other side until the tide drops before you attempt to
cross."
After the long confinement in the crowded cabin Jean was as delighted
as her capering little nephew to feel again the freedom of the beach.
In spite of all the hardships--perhaps because of them--she was growing
to love the sands of Kon Klayu, and to look upon this incalculable
ocean as a sort of fairy god-mother, who, with every tide, brought up
something different to lay at her feet. She never started out for a
walk along the sea without experiencing that delightful, childish sense
of expectancy which is so keenly a part of the life of Alaska.
While Kobuk trotted on ahead she and Loll, remembering the talk of
beach mining to which they had so often listened, scanned the way for
ruby sand, the carrier of gold. But this morning the beach was untidy
with great masses of fresh kelp and seaweeds from the deep, torn by the
storm and scattered everywhere.
"Oh, look, Jean! The gulls have found something!" Loll's finger,
pointing ahead indicated a cloud of screaming, white-breasted birds
that were rising and falling on slate-tipped wings over some object
below them. "Let's hurry and see what it is."
But Kobuk was before them. Dashing on ahead he plunged into the melee,
frightening the gulls from their find so that they flew shrieking into
the air as the girl and her little companion ran up to discover the
remains of a large fish on the sand. It was a halibut nearly six feet
long. With the exception of the bones but a small portion and the head
remained, for the birds had been gorging on it for some time. The
flesh, however, looked fresh and firm and white.
Jean regarded it thoughtfully. "If we had nothing else to eat, Lollie,
we _might_ eat a fish like this--that is if we got it before the gulls
had been at it." In an emergency even a great storm might be made to
serve, since its very violence flung up from the deep such fare as
this. At any rate, the gulls appreciated it, for even as Loll and Jean
stood there, the birds had flown back, settling upon their find, their
strong, lemon-colored, crimson-splotched beaks tearing greedily at the
flesh. In their eagerness they flew thrillingly close, cold,
gold-ringed eyes staring fiercely into the faces of the two, powerful
wings fanning their cheeks. Loll, seeing Jean shrink away from an
overly bold bird, took her hand and tugged her away from the
discordantly screaming mass.
"Gosh, Jean, if those fellows were very hungry and I was alone, I bet
they'd take a peck at _me_!"
Recalling a day at Katleean, when she had stood by a creek watching the
salmon struggle up through the shallow water, while screeching gulls
swooped exultantly down on the helpless creatures and gouged the eyes
out of the living fish, Jean shuddered and quickened her steps.
They approached the tent cache at the West Camp. It appeared intact.
The wind, being from the southwest had struck with full force on the
opposite end of the Island. Jean untied the flap of the tent and went
inside. The provisions were piled up nearly to the ridgepole at the
back. Lollie, poking about, came upon a piece of rope, which, boylike,
he took outside and wound about his waist. Jean heard him stumbling
over the guy-ropes at the side. Then from the back came his call:
"Jean! Come here!"
The girl ran out and joined him. He was pointing to the back of the
tent. The pegs which had fastened it to the earth were uprooted. The
canvas swung free. But what filled her with momentary conjecture was
that which lay at her feet. A sack of flour evidently had been dragged
out from under the wall of the tent and ripped open, for the sand was
whitened with the doughy mixture resulting from the rain.
At this moment it did not occur to the girl to be frightened. There
were no tracks in the sand other than hers and Loll's. Evidently, she
thought, in the haste to load the boat before the storm, the men had
dropped the sack and it had burst open.
"But how careless of them, Loll, not to peg the tent down again," she
said. Loll, however, was already headed for the first camp-site made
when landing on the northeast side of the Island. Her call brought his
eager answer:
"Aw, come on, Jean, I want to see how drowned we'd be if we'd stayed
there during the storm."
Smiling to herself at the boy's love of dwelling on their narrow
escapes from death, real and imaginary, the girl turned and picking up
a stone drove in a few of the tent-pegs before she followed him.
On each side of the trail great patches of rice-grass had been
flattened from the force of the wind and rain, and the air was filled
with the sweet smell of vegetation drying in the sun. As she
approached the other side, the blue sky curved down to meet the ocean
on a far straight line. The yellow-green of the sea was set off by
astonishing areas of clearest cobalt blue, and the flying spray from
combers breaking for miles out on the North Shoals, caught the sunlight
in a glory of rainbow mist.
"See, I told you, Jean," Loll nodded sagely and pointed ahead as she
overtook him.
A hundred feet above the place where the first camp had been the
rice-grass had been torn out by the roots and whitened drift-logs and
kelp were massed there confusedly.
In silence the girl stood looking at the spot. Emotions of fear,
thankfulness and something of reverence swept her. Lollie, looking
down over the freckles on his nose, vested the lower part of his face
in his hand in a manner reminiscent of Kayak Bill.
"Escaped, by hell, by the skin of our teeth!" he gloated.
The tide had been coming in fast during the past half hour. Jean,
noting it, suddenly turned back, and with uneasy haste began the
homeward journey.
Opposite the little lake where Boreland had shot the first ducks, Loll
insisted on running up to the beach line to look over and see whether
there were any more birds feeding there. Jean, waiting for him,
watched him make his way through the short grass to the narrow, sandy
lake-shore, and then stoop to look at something. . . . All at once he
raised his head, and with a strange, blanched look on his little face,
glanced quickly, fearfully behind him into the tall alder thicket
toward the hill. Then, wide-eyed, he sprang toward her without a sound.
"Wha--what is it, Loll?" she gasped.
The boy's eyes shone with excitement. "It--it--it was a wild beast's
tracks, Jean. This long--" He measured off about twelve inches between
his trembling hands--"and it had claws--big ones that digged deep into
the sand!"
"But there are no beasts on the Island, Loll! You must be mistaken!"
"No, no!" Loll's face quivered in his anxiety to convince her of the
truth of his statements. Knowing the youngster's unconscious tendency
toward exaggeration, she was doubtful. There could be no animal on the
Island. But . . . to make sure . . . she herself would go back to see.
She looked about for Kobuk, but the dog had gone on toward the bluff.
Impressing on Loll the necessity of remaining where he was until she
should come back she turned toward the lake again, running.
As she drew near the margin, unreasoning terror of the unknown began to
take possession of her. Every pile of driftwood, every alder bush
became alive with sinister possibilities. She drove herself forward.
She could see the stretch of sand where Loll had stood. She could see
that there were marks of some kind upon it. Trembling, fearful, her
heart beating like a hammer in her breast, she pressed forward and
looked closely at the marks. . . . Loll was right. Here on Kon Klayu
were monster tracks of--what she did not know.
She wheeled swiftly and ran back to where the boy waited. Without a
word she snatched his hand and fled with him down the beach toward the
bluff and home.
Kobuk, far in advance, was picking his way along the bluff, and now as
they ran Jean became aware that a new danger threatened them. The tide
had come in so far that even from a distance she could see the foam of
spent breakers washing up against the rocky wall ahead. Boreland had
said to wait until the tide fell, before attempting to pass the bluff,
but with the new, strange terror behind them, she had no thought of
obeying. The sea, roaring almost at her feet, seemed kinder and more
to be trusted than the unknown beast lurking in the alders, or perhaps
slinking along, even now, above the beach line, watching, waiting to
spring out at them any moment.
Arrived at the bluff she saw, with dismay, that all along, the
back-wash of breakers licked the base. She stopped, tightening her
hold on Loll's hand. She looked a long moment at the huge rollers of
the incoming tide that crashed so close to her, and then back from
whence she had come.
Loll raised his sober little face to the sky.
"God," he said, conversationally, "I guess _you'll_ have to take a
hand."
Jean slipped the rope from about his waist. She tied one end to him
and the other about her own body in clumsy, womanish knots.
"Lollie,"--despite her efforts her voice quavered--"we're going to run
for it. Cling tightly to my hand, dear."
At that moment a wave receded. They ran dizzily forward in the
shifting, wet gravel of the beach. When the next incoming comber was
beginning to curl down from the top, Jean dashed to the bluff.
Shielding the little fellow below her, she clung to the uneven shale of
its base, presenting her back to the billow that crashed with a
deafening roar just behind her.
Swift, terrifying, the wash of the breaker boiled and foamed about
their feet, to their ankles, to their knees. It made Jean's head swim.
It paralyzed her power of thought, leaving her with only the instinct
to cling. She had to wait while two more breakers rolled in and broke
before she saw a chance to stagger to the next point of safety. It
seemed to her that hours passed thus while she and Loll struggled, wet
and battered, onward.
They had gone but two-thirds of the way when, glancing at the incoming
wave to calculate how far they might run, she became aware of a
mountainous unbroken roller immediately behind it--a watery monster
that humped its back into a ragged, dancing crest high above her head.
It advanced in eager, liquid blackness. She knew it must break nearly
against the bluff where they stood.
Her desperate eyes espied a rough ledge just above her. With the
strength born of despair she caught up her nephew and tossed him to
safety. Frantically she herself tried to climb the bluff. . . . She
thought she heard a man's voice shouting to her. . . . There was a
moment when Loll's white face looked down at her through a haze. . . .
A moment when his little hands moved swiftly taking a turn with the
rope about a ragged, upstanding piece of rock. Then a boiling, roaring
sound filled her ears. . . . An avalanche of dark water crashed down
upon her, freezing her, smothering her, crushing her. She felt her
body thrown high against the stony wall. . . .
As she was whirled, choking, into darkness and oblivion there flashed
through her mind the thought:
"This, then, is how it feels to die."