MAROONED
Six hours later Kon Klayu was cowering in the blasts of the most
terrific storm yet experienced by the adventurers. The fearful
velocity of the wind and rain made it impossible for Kayak Bill to keep
his tent erected, and in the middle of the night he was forced to move
his bedding into Jean's and Lollie's room, where the sisters helped him
screen himself off by tacking up a tarpaulin.
After Jean had slipped back into her bunk she was surprised to hear her
sister discussing, almost wildly she thought, the possibility of a
bird's flying against such a gale; and after everyone else had settled
down again for the night she could hear Ellen pacing the floor of the
living-room. Poor Ellen, thought the girl, she was all unstrung over
Shane's accident and frightened at the thought of blood poisoning.
But Shane was feeling much better next morning, though he kept to his
bed all day and for several days after. He was unusually silent,
realizing, perhaps for the first time, the gravity of the situation,
for the storm did not blow itself out in three or six days, as storms
had always done before. It lasted twelve days and increased in
violence until near the end.
During this great gale Jean sought her bunk early each evening and lay
there between sleep and wakefulness listening to the wind and sea. She
was thankful that this was not a snow storm, since snowfall on Kon
Klayu did not come until later, owing to the proximity of the Japan
Current, but she found herself concerned for Harlan alone in his Hut on
the other side of the Island. When it became apparent that Shane's cut
was healing as it should, the girl found her thoughts lingering on
Gregg. She missed him more than she cared to admit, even to herself.
Before Shane's accident with the shotgun it had fallen to Gregg's lot
to hunt the ducks and geese which were by now an important part of
their food. There was little ammunition and every shot must be made to
tell. With the make-shift shotgun it was impossible to hit anything on
the wing, and though it was evident that Harlan's sporting instincts
revolted against slipping up and pot-shooting birds on the water, the
scarcity of shells compelled him to do it. Kayak Bill flatly refused
to handle anything but his .45, confessing to a casual scorn for what
he termed a "shootin' iron that spewed its durned in'ards all over the
range." In the growing anxiety over the non-arrival of the _Hoonah_,
Ellen had relaxed somewhat, her vigilant attitude toward Harlan, and so
Jean had come to join the young man on his hunting expeditions.
Recalling them now she glowed at the memory of those past October
mornings, when, leaving the rest of the family sleeping she had slipped
out of the cabin and met the waiting hunter. She had grown to love the
hunt--the early sun sparkling on the yellow of frost-coated grass, the
green of the ocean, the tonic of the sea air, and the swift,
never-to-be-forgotten creak-creak-creak of flying wings close overhead.
There was a thrill in the cautious creeping toward the lake wreathed in
the gossamer mists of the autumn morning, and the wriggling through the
stiffened yellow grass, and a pang of delighted wonder at coming so
close to the wild, winged things, squattering and making soft
duck-chatterings in the shadow of the reeds.
But duck-hunting days were over now, she reminded herself regretfully.
The shotgun was useless.
Shane's wound continued to heal without complications, but still after
everyone else had long been in bed, Jean could hear Ellen pacing the
floor nearly every night. This increased the uneasiness that had been
growing upon the girl. She wished Ellen would confide more in her.
She was finding it very hard for her to understand her sister these
days. Ellen had not been herself for weeks. The girl recalled her
curious and changeable attitude toward the pigeon the White Chief had
given Loll. From at first ignoring it, Ellen had suddenly begun to
manifest a lively interest in its welfare. The best of the rolled oats
went to feed it. Owing to the occasional frosts Ellen had moved the
cage into the shed and she herself had solicitously covered it nightly
with an old blanket. Sometimes she had stood for ten minutes at a time
looking in at the smoke-grey bird.
One incident stood out clearly in Jean's mind. She had come upon Ellen
musing thus beside the cage. Her sister had just washed her hair and
it hung about her shoulders in lovely, golden-brown profusion. There
was a look on her face--Jean, thinking of it, shook her head to banish
the memory of that look. Presently Ellen had reached up and with a
trembling hand gathered together the short tresses that marked the
place where she had--foolishly, Jean thought--cut off the lock of hair
in Katleean. Ellen's fingers slipped over the severed ends, then
flattened themselves forcibly over the latch on the pigeon's cage.
"No! No!" Passionately the words had escaped her as she turned her
back on the cage. Meeting Jean's questioning eyes she had flushed and
gone on into the house without speaking.
Always, at night, as Jean lay thinking, this incident drifted with
curious insistency through her mind.
As the storm continued through dreary days, blowing always from the
southwest, the strange, reverberating roll from the south cliffs came
more loudly than ever before. Listening to it sometimes, Jean would
shiver at the hint of the supernatural in its cadence.
The continual thundering of the surf on the beach and the trembling of
the cabin in the rainy blasts of the gale finally began to tell on the
nerves of those confined in such small quarters. Gradually the talk at
the table grew less. Even Kayak Bill ceased his monologues. He and
Shane smoked more than ever and buried themselves in the reading of the
old magazines and papers. Ellen seemed more affected than any of them.
Her face had become drawn and haggard. She was so inattentive to
Loll's questions when the daily lessons were in progress that the
little boy grew impatient and asked Jean to help him instead. Then,
too, Ellen's strange solicitude for the pigeon increased until it was
with difficulty that Shane could prevent her bringing the bird into the
cabin during the gale.
One night Jean woke from a troubled doze. Everywhere was a strange,
arresting stillness. She realized in a moment that the wind had gone
down. The roar of the breakers which had been so loud and constant,
now sounded muffled. Her first feeling was one of intense happiness
and relief. The storm was over at last--the longest storm she had ever
known. Surely, now, she thought, the _Hoonah_ would come.
Though she knew it must be after midnight there was a murmur of voices
in the living-room. A chair scraped along the floor. Then came Kayak
Bill's tones, distinctly and with a gravity that sent a chill through
her. He was evidently concluding some argument.
"But I'm a-tellin' you, Boreland, that there's nary a Injine or a white
on the Alasky coast that'll venture nigh the Island o' Kon Klayu after
November first----"
"Great God, Kayak!" Boreland's protest cut him short. "Kilbuck
_knows_ we haven't enough grub for the winter! He wouldn't leave us
here to starve, especially two women and a child, after he has put us
here himself! He's _promised_ to bring us provisions! Given us his
word! To go back on it would be a violation of the law of the cache!
Why, the man has my schooner, and he hasn't paid for her yet! No, no,
Kayak. Kilbuck will come. . . . By God, he's _got_ to come!"
There was slow finality in Kayak Bill's answer.
"Boreland, he's waited too long. He _can't_ come. It's the thirteenth
o' November. No one can come to Kon Klayu now till the breakup o' the
winter. . . . The White Chief's staked the cards on us, son. We're up
against it."
PART III
CHAPTER XXV
ON RATIONS
After the great November storm was over, Ellen realized that her
problem--for the present--had been taken out of her hands. Even if the
pigeon were sent now, the White Chief would not risk bringing a
schooner to the Island of Kon Klayu; there was no boat built that could
make a landing on its reef-guarded shores during the winter season. It
was too late. They were marooned until spring at least. She would
keep the bird until then. Further than that she refused to think.
As she accepted the inevitable she felt a sense of peace settle upon
her, and with it came new strength. As Kayak had said they were up
against it, and knowing now what she had to fight, she was ready.
Her mind turned at once to the pitifully meager supply of provisions.
With all the shrewdness of a general preparing to withstand an
indeterminate siege, she planned her rations so that they might last
the longest period of time. If the party could exist until spring, a
cannery boat, a whaler, a ship of adventure, might call in and get
them, even though the White Chief did not come. Ellen made a mental
vow that they would live until spring.
On the fourteenth of November she made the entry in her log:
We have the following provisions on hand:
Flour--damaged--enough for eight months
Bacon, 1 slab
Dried onions, 1 pound
Beans, enough for five months if we have them once a week
Rice--damaged--for five months, once a week
Lemon Extract, 1 bottle
Salt and Pepper
Worcestershire sauce, 1 bottle
Dried bear meat
Bear fat, rancid
Rolled oats--mouldy--four months
Tea and Coffee
Three boxes candles
Two jars canned plums from mother's
That afternoon, on a pretense of his looking for pay-sand, she sent
Loll down on the beach, and, calling the others together, summed up the
problem that confronted them. She read her list of provisions and set
forth her plan of rations. In conclusion she urged that each one take
a turn hunting for sea-food on the rocks and stranded fish on the
beach. If they could supplement their ration thus, they might, by
confining themselves strictly to it, exist until some boat came in the
spring. Harlan, she decided, must take his meals at the cabin.
"Jean and I will begin gathering shellfish tomorrow, while you men
start to lay in a supply of firewood for the winter months," she
finished. Even Shane agreed that existence, now, instead of gold, was
their main concern on the Island of Kon Klayu, although his was the
logic which still insisted that their desertion by Kilbuck could not be
true simply because it seemed so intolerable.
Strange to say, after this frank facing of their difficulties every one
of the party felt more cheerful. There came a letting down of the
tension, a relaxation of the nerves, which had made their storm-bound
days so trying.
The following morning found Ellen and her sister in hip rubber boots
belonging to their men, headed for Sunset Point. They were equipped
with pails and case knives.
The sun shone bright although there was little warmth in it. The air
was sharp and exhilarating and wonderfully pure after the great wind.
The thunder of surf on a hundred reefs spoke of the storm of yesterday.
They soon found themselves down among the great boulders amid tangles
of brown seaweed, where the shallow pools left by the outgoing tide
were alive with strange and interesting sea life. Here, more than in
any other place on Kon Klayu they were conscious of the air, the sound,
the whole enchanting spell of the sea. The bottoms of tiny sea-pools
were dotted with red and yellow starfish. Entrancing rose and purple
sea-anemones blossomed like thistles on the water-covered stones but at
a touch, a sound, folded their delicate beauties into tight buttons
hardly to be distinguished from the base to which they clung. Comical,
tiny iridescent fish, with eyes of bulging astonishment, and thorns on
their backs, darted about the women's feet and went into hiding under
floating russet seaweed. The big boots lumbering into the shallow
water caused sea-eggs of green and lavender to move solemnly on the
bottom with raylike prickles erect.
"We'll try the sea-eggs later on," Ellen said, as she watched them.
"Senott told me at Katleean that all natives eat them."
The boulders were encrusted with great, grey, open-mouthed barnacles.
Periwinkles, like tiny purple snails, clustered on the weeds. These
were so numerous that the sisters could not step without crushing them.
The crunching sound at first filled Ellen with repugnance for her task,
but necessity forced her on and before she had filled her pail with
them she had become accustomed to it.
As they moved farther out to where the waves of the ebb tide were
creaming against the rocks, the dark seamed sides were painted a
delicate sea-pink by a lichen-like growth. Above their heads these
boulders rose and all about them was the soft, seeping sound that sea
things make when the tide is low.
Kayak Bill had often described what he called a "gumboot," remarking
that the name was bestowed locally because of the toughness of this
aquatic animal when cooked. From the old man's description Ellen had
thought they might be limpets. Since there were no clams on the beach
of Kon Klayu she had concluded to try them.
Now, suddenly, she came upon them, their cone-shaped shells adhering to
the rocks. When she and Jean tried to pick the small creatures from
their abiding places, the least touch or sound caused them to tighten
to the boulders. It was impossible then to dislodge them without
smashing the shell.
"We'll have to sneak up on them, El," whispered Jean, suiting her
actions to her words, and with a sudden, swift movement sweeping half a
dozen from their support. It was then that the sisters began to
experience the thrill of anticipation, the fascination of uncertainty,
that comes to those forced to hunt their food in wild places.
The tide came in flooding the pools in which they were standing and
warning them that it was time to leave. With full pails they hastened
to the cabin eager to try their new food.
Periwinkles, boiled, had not an unpleasant taste, but because of their
likeness to worms, neither of the women could eat them. It fell to
little Loll to extract them from their small shells by means of a pin.
This was a slow process and after the novelty wore off, the youngster
gave utterance to loud lamentations over Kayak Bill's fondness for
periwinkles.
The "gumboots" were also boiled, and found to be as rubbery as the name
implied. Chopping them fine Ellen made a hash of bread crumbs and
fried the mixture in bear fat. Afterward she sometimes added a small
bit of chopped bacon, considered a rare treat since the bacon was
hoarded for flavoring beans which they were permitted but once a week.
In putting her family on rations Ellen noticed that each one's appetite
increased tremendously. Only by exercising the most rigid self-control
could she keep herself to the portions she had allotted. The sight of
Lollie scraping his plate for the last morsel of food and then looking
up at her expectantly, was the hardest thing she had to bear. She soon
began, surreptitiously, to put aside a portion of her daily share for
him.
For a time food was the all-absorbing topic of conversation. The men
found a certain grim amusement in sitting about the table talking of
the kind of "grub" they would order if they were in the States. They
could go into such detail as to taste and smell of certain appetizing
dishes eaten in the past that often Jean laughingly stopped them.
"By Jove!" Harlan would say. "I know a little place in San Francisco
where you can get a beefsteak Bordelaise that would _actually_ . . ."
"Um-m, yes," Shane would follow, "and don't you remember that little
Italian dump on Columbus where they serve spaghetti with a gooey stuff
filled with chicken livers and mushrooms--Oh . . . man!"
"One time up on the Kuskokwim I snared me a cut-throat," Kayak Bill
would drawl, and then, with an angler's delight, proceed to describe
every wiggle of that super-fish until he landed it, and every phase of
camp-fire cooking, until, crisp and bacon-garnished, he ate it from the
frying-pan.
Jean's longing for fruit, especially bananas, was so intense that she
used to wake up at night thinking about them. She dreamed of bananas
smothered in cream. When she closed her eyes sometimes during the day,
bunches of the yellow fruit dangled enticingly in her mental vision.
She tried to re-read _Pickwick Papers_. The hungry Fat Boy at first
appealed to her, but Dickens' masterly descriptions of the nourishing
food of old England filled her with such a hunger that she put the book
aside.
December proved to be a month of snow and blizzards, but despite the
faithful patrolling of the beach nothing in the way of pay-sand came to
light. Whenever the weather permitted everyone sought shellfish among
the rocks, as it had become necessary to gather a quantity sufficient
to last during storms. The prickly sea-eggs were now added to the
fare. Often however, when the wet snow was hurled unceasingly against
the windows for days, the supply of sea-food gave out. Then, for
hours, there was hunger in the little cabin on Kon Klayu.
Jean noticed that her nephew, in some manner, had come to know that it
distressed his mother to speak of being hungry after he had eaten what
she had to give him. It was seldom now that he mentioned it. His
little mind appeared to be taken up with speculations as to Christmas.
Jean had often listened to Kayak Bill prefacing his tales with: "I'm
a-tellin' o' you, you never can tell a speck about a man till you
'cabin' with him a-durin' o' one winter." She was beginning to
understand what the old man meant by it now. She was growing to
appreciate Shane's irrepressible Irish cheerfulness that always rose
above hunger, accident and the nerve-trying confinement of the cabin in
stormy weather. Because of him the storm-bound hours, despite the food
situation, were for the most part, times of story telling and exchange
of reminiscences. For Shane, with a strange faith, still clung to the
thought that the White Chief might bring the _Hoonah_ to the Island
before the end of the year.
As Christmas drew nearer, however, with one storm succeeding another, a
change came over him. He began to sit beside the table in silence, his
head in his hands, his brown eyes looking off into space.
One night when the house trembled in the grip of a blizzard and the
unexplained reverberating sound from the south cliffs came louder than
usual, he sat thus while Kayak Bill played a game of solitaire on the
opposite side of the table. Lollie had established himself in his
mother's bed. While he turned the pages of a fairy tale book, he
pointed out the pictures to Jean. That day there had been no shellfish
to supplement the scanty allowance of food and the little fellow
lingered hungrily on the colored pictures depicting bountiful tables of
feasting kings; jolly fat cooks basting roasting ducks in the kitchens
of queens; little Jack Horner pulled a ripe plum from a pie. Finally
he turned a page which disclosed the Queen of Hearts holding out a pan
of delicious, browny-crusted tarts. The crimson jelly at the centers
seemed almost to quiver.
"Oh, mother, mother, I'm _so hungry_!" he burst out.
Ellen laid aside her sewing and going to the cupboard brought out a
tiny dish of rice and gave it to him. Jean saw Boreland's eyes follow
the movements of his wife. She wondered if he, like herself, suspected
that the dish contained over half Ellen's portion for that day. There
was a tenseness about his jaw, a smouldering light in his eye that sent
a queer chill over the girl. A few minutes later he rose and climbed
up into the loft. When he descended he held a revolver in his hand.
The weapon was one he had carried since boyhood. Its history belonged
to an oldtime Indian scout, a friend of Boreland's father. On its
handle were three notches. The last time the girl had heard the story
of those three notches was at Katleean when Shane, pointing them out to
the White Chief, had told him that each one stood for a man who
deserved and met death at the hand that held the gun.
She grew inattentive to the questions of Loll as she watched her
brother-in-law at the table oiling and polishing the old revolver. He
spent much time at his task and when it was finished sat thoughtfully,
his thin fingers slowly passing over the notches as if he were counting
them for the first time. After some minutes he leaned across to Kayak
Bill.
"Kayak," he said so softly that the girl could scarcely hear, "_if_ I
get back to Katleean in the spring--_there will be four--_" He tapped
the notched handle of the revolver significantly.
A sudden chill of foreboding, doubly terrible because at first so vague
and incomprehensible, swept her. She saw Kayak's eyes looking into
Boreland's. They were tense, half-closed and glittered coldly, not at
Shane, but at some vision induced by Shane's words. Then the old man
nodded twice, slowly, approvingly, decisively. . . .
As the days of December went by everyone on the Island, with the
exception of Loll, asserted often that of course there could be no
Christmas. Despite this, however, as the date drew near the holiday
spirit hovered persistently over the camp. Mysterious things were
going on. Kayak Bill withdrew himself behind his curtain very early
each day, and tantalizing sounds of whittling came from his corner;
while Boreland and Harlan shut themselves up for hours in the shed.
The day before Christmas came white and still with great soft
snowflakes falling until noon.
"Santa Claus weather! Santa Claus weather!" sang Lollie dancing up and
down before the window. "He'll surely come now--if there is one," he
added for Jean's benefit. The girl had tried to explain the spirit of
Christmas to the youngster, but he still clung to his early conception
of the good old saint.
There was a party that night on Kon Klayu. Jean had never admired her
sister more than when she saw Ellen rise above the haunting fear of
starvation and with the few pitiful things at her command create the
cheer of Christmas Eve. And there was no lack of presents--home-made
gifts that had cost their donors much thought and hours of
labor--gifts, some of them smile-provoking, but bringing with them a
sense of warmer friendliness, a touch of tenderness which enhances the
spirit of fellowship that comes to those who share the hazards and
adventures of the North.
Loll, with one lump of hoarded sugar, two full-rigged schooners, an
Indian war canoe and a new blouse sewed by Ellen's fingers, was
supremely happy. For the men were mittens made of a blanket, scarves
knitted from the unraveled yarn of two old sweaters, and--even on Kon
Klayu the male members could not escape the inevitable Christmas
neck-tie, for Ellen had produced from the bottom of her trunk three
brand new ones purchased for Shane before she sailed from the States.
Kayak Bill looked his over a few minutes and then disappeared behind
his tarpaulin-screen in the next room. When he emerged it was with one
hand holding aside his bushy beard. The new neck-tie, impaled with a
large nugget pin, hung low on his blue flannel shirt.
"I ain't wore one o' these dude halters for ten yars, Lady," he
drawled, hitching his shoulders with an air of being pleased with
himself, "but I ain't forgot how they goes."
There were two beautiful caps for Ellen and Jean made of the iridescent
necks of mallard drakes, carefully prepared and sewed by Kayak; a
dust-pan made of a kerosene can; a calendar ruled off on the letter
paper of the defunct life insurance company, and to their genuine
delight, two paper knives carved from the tusks taken from the sea
monster's head which Lollie had discovered. Adorned with the
emblematic figures of the Thunderbird and the Wolf they were, in their
way, works of art, and Ellen, reading the penciled greeting on the
paper attached to her gift, could not keep the look of surprise from
her face as she thanked Harlan for it. It occurred to her that this
young man was continually and agreeably surprising her lately.
After the distribution of the gifts, and the old-time stories told in
the candlelight, Jean, by the magic of her violin coaxed them all into
singing the Yuletide songs fraught with memories of the homeland;--all
that is with the exception of Kayak Bill. The old man, his high
forehead shining from his recent ablutions, his bushy beard hiding his
new tie, sat silent, even wistful, stroking the home-made gifts that
lay upon his knees. Jean as she played, wondered what long-ago
memories were misting his hazel eyes.
When the singing came to an end, little Loll, without an invitation,
rose and announced:
"_Now_, I'm going to speak my piece."
He walked to the middle of the room and made a low, circular bow. In
the effort to recall that "piece" he had spoken the year previous in
Sunday-school, his brow puckered and his grey eyes took on a look of
intense thought. His emphasis fell in strange places:
"'Twas _the_ night before Christmas
An' all _through_ the house
Not-ta creature . . . was . . . Was _stirring_
_Not_-teven a mouse . . . not-_teven_ a mouse . . .
Not-teven a _mouse_!"
All efforts to remember further having proved vain, Lollie, far from
being embarrassed, bowed low again with the poise of one who has
recited brilliantly, and took his seat amid the applause. . . .
Harlan rose at last to say goodnight. From Loll's bunk, where she was
helping the sleepy boy to bed, Ellen called after him her Christmas
wishes. Jean slipped into her coat and followed the young man out to
the porch.
The night had turned wondrously clear, but it did not seem cold to the
two who stood silently looking out on its beauty.
"Never was there such a night for Christmas carols, Gregg," said the
girl after some minutes had gone by. "Wait."
She darted into the cabin and returned almost immediately with her
violin tucked beneath her coat.
"I may never have a chance like this again. . . . I'm going up as far
as the Lookout with you. Come."
They climbed up through the white, star-lit silence to the top of the
hill. From the height they looked down through the weird half-light
reflected from the snow. The formless waters kissed the ermine-wrapped
shores of the Island. The sweet, hoarse voice of the sea had in it the
cadence of happy child calls. There was an effect of illimitable
space, of wonderful freedom. Up from the north into the night-blue
bowl of the sky mystic lights unfurled themselves in pulsing, wreathing
chiffon-like streamers of changing rose and violet, green and amber,
red and gold--unfurled . . . trembled . . . rippled into opal splendor,
and then swiftly and softly swept across the heavens and entangled
themselves in the calm, friendly stars that looked down on Kon Klayu.
Jean caught her breath.
"The Christmas lights of God," she whispered. "I have never been so
near to Him before." She lifted her violin to her shoulder and began
the opening bars of _Holy Night_. Gregg's voice joined the instrument,
reverent, worshipful.
As she played there beside him the girl knew that they were sharing
something never to be forgotten by either--the magic of a moment of
perfect accord, a moment of beauty that transcended earthly things and
left them but two souls worshipping together beneath the softened glory
of the Northern Lights.
CHAPTER XXVI
WINTER DAYS
It had taken Gregg Harlan some time to realize fully that mere
existence on Kon Klayu was an all-absorbing problem! but when he did so
the primitiveness of it stimulated, intoxicated him, not as liquor had
once done, but with a freshness that cleared his brain and sent his
blood racing through his veins. Every cell in his body tingled with
life. He felt this exhilaration in his swinging stride, his up-lifting
chin. By Christmas he was no more tormented by a craving for liquor.
On the contrary he was nauseated at the memory of his stupid, sodden
days at Katleean. Alaska, the Great Country, which either makes or
breaks, had challenged him to prove himself a man--and he had accepted
the challenge. Kon Klayu, Island of mystery and beauty had laid its
charm upon him, for despite the hardships it was a place where romance
and adventure were the realities of life.
For the first time in his twenty-five years he felt the spur of
responsibility. He was filled with a desire to fight, to conquer, to
do something to try his new strength and to earn favor in the eyes of
Jean--and Ellen. He grinned boyishly to himself, sometimes, when this
mighty urge to noble deeds resolved itself into the accomplishing of
prosaic tasks such as getting in firewood and hunting shellfish.
In the matter of clothes, Boreland and Kayak were the only ones who
were in any way prepared for the cold weather. Ellen had cut up a
scarlet blanket to make Harlan and Loll winter coats. Jean had
fashioned for herself an attractive mackinaw from a small white
blanket, and the young man was not blind to the picture she made,
red-cheeked, laughing, trotting along beside him on the beach as they
looked for sea food.
One windy day Kayak Bill came in from the beach without his cherished
sombrero.
"The gol durned breeze snatched it often my haid, and lit out with it
for foreign parts," he drawled sadly as he smoothed down his wildly
blown locks. Despite Ellen's anxious protests he went bareheaded after
that, although he wound his scarf about his ears on extra cold days.
His hair continued to grow unchecked also, for after watching Ellen
earnestly manipulating an inverted bowl and a pair of scissors while
she trimmed her protesting husband's hair, Kayak spoke with slow
conviction:
"I hearn tell o' lady barbers down in the States, but I ain't no nature
for 'em a-fussin' round my noggin. My kin folks drug me to the
Methydist meetin' house once a-fore I stampeded from Texas, and the
sarmon teched on a long-haired pugilist, Samson, what was trimmed by a
lady barber by the name o' Dahlia." . . .
For some time Kayak and Boreland had been trying, as they put it, to
"taper off" on their tobacco. Harlan, when he found that the _Hoonah_
was not coming, had given up smoking so that the older men might longer
enjoy what tobacco was left. After days of silent, mental wrestling
with his desire, he reached the stage where he had successfully downed
the craving, and he watched with grim amusement, and no little
sympathy, his partners' vain efforts to limit themselves to one pipe
after each meal.
There finally came a day when Kayak and Shane sat at the supper table
lighting their farewell pipes.
"Goo' bye, lovely Lady Nicotine!" Airily Boreland waved a hand through
the smoke. "I bid thee farewell without fear and without regret! . . .
As a matter of fact, Bill, I've intended to quit right along, and this
makes it easy. Filthy habit, anyway, and I don't want to set a bad
example for Loll."
It was from Jean that Harlan learned the details of the following
dismal day. It was so stormy that the men could not go out to work.
After breakfast Shane and Kayak had risen from the table and, pipes in
hand, instinctively sought the tobacco-box in the corner. Their
fingers met on the bare tin bottom. With blank looks they faced each
other.
"Hell, Kayak, I'd forgotten!" Boreland grinned sheepishly. "Now
begins the battle of Nicotine! Buck up, pard!" He forced a
cheerfulness into his tones as he slapped Kayak's shoulder.
Kayak Bill looked down at the empty pipe cupped lovingly in his hand.
With a sound between a grunt and a groan he put it back into his pocket
and dawdled dispiritedly off into the other room to his bunk behind the
tarpaulin.
Shane thrust both hands deep into the pockets of his overalls and
shifted his weight alternately from heel to toe. . . . Crossing over
to the stove where his wife stood he bent upon her a wistful,
little-lost-dog expression, so ridiculous in a man of his size that
Ellen burst into laughter.
"Poor--little--thing!" she sympathized, patting his cheek. "It's lost
its pacifier, it has!"
With a sickly grin Shane turned to the window and dully watched the
slanting sleet blown by the gale. . . . Kayak's puffing snore came
presently from the other room. Boreland wheeled about, glaring.
"By thunder! to think that old cuss can _sleep_ at a time like
this! . . . The man must have a heart of stone! For two cents I'd go
in there and . . ."
He paced the floor, his hands fidgeting.
"Are you _sure_, El, you didn't save out a box of tobacco on us, just
to give us a bit of a surprise now," he asked hopefully for the third
time that morning.
In the days that followed Harlan could not make up his mind who
suffered most during the "battle of Nicotine"--Shane or Kayak Bill, or
Ellen. He grew to feel a bit sorry for Ellen. He found himself
gradually assuming the duties neglected by the other two men during
their period of misery. Boreland lost much of his good-natured
cheerfulness. He was inclined to view the food situation with
increased alarm. He often spoke sharply to Lollie, and sometimes to
his wife. But invariably after an irritable outburst he sought to make
up to the boy with some home-made toy, or a new story of adventure.
With Ellen his method of apology was different. He would put his arm
across her shoulders and look down at her whimsically.
"I swan to goodness, little fellow, if I wasn't an angel I couldn't
live with you at all, at all, you're that peevish since I've stopped
smoking." Then with his most wistful Irish look he would add, "Be
patient with me El. I'm having a hell of a time."
As Harlan watched the struggles of his partners he grew to have a
better opinion of his own power of self-control. Jean was responsible
for this in a way. Sometimes on stormy days when it was impossible to
go outside, the patience of the whole family would be sorely tried by
the actions of the older men. They would research every nook and
corner of the cabin, go into the pockets of every garment and even rip
linings in their efforts to find some over-looked bit of tobacco.
After just so much of this, Jean would turn on them scornfully and
compare their childish actions with those of Harlan when he was
undergoing the same deprivation. Undoubtedly this holding him up as a
good example had the opposite effect to that hoped for by Jean, but it
nevertheless caused a warm glow to encircle his heart.
One day Boreland made a great discovery: By pulverizing the old
nicotine-laden pipes, of which there were over half a dozen, he found
that the resultant mixture could be smoked. He and his partner in
disgrace did no work that day. In disgust Ellen banished them to the
woodshed to do their smoking. From this place of refuge Kayak Bill's
drawling tones of immense satisfaction floated out at intervals:
"Honest to grandma, Shane, I'm a-feelin' like a new man."
By the time the corncobs had all been pulverized and consumed, and but
one cannabalistic pipe, itself pared down until it held but a
thimbleful, was left between them, all the other members of the party
had arrayed themselves against the sufferers. By persisting even
though sickness was often the penalty for smoking an extra strong
pulverized pipe, they had forfeited the sympathy of all hands. Matters
came to a crisis one afternoon, when Boreland, taking a candle, crawled
up into the loft to make one more search among the provisions.
Suddenly there was heard a great commotion overhead--a beating and a
floundering about.
"Hey! Get some water up here--quick!" came Shane's alarmed shout.
"I've set the bloody place afire!"
Half an hour later the fire was out, thanks to the efforts of the
bucket brigade which rushed water from the spring, but in the roof was
a gapping hole, and much of the outfit stowed away in the loft was wet
again.
Boreland came slowly down from above. He was besmudged, apologetic and
sheepish. Ellen was waiting for him. She looked him over from head to
foot, her blue eyes snapping, scorn and supreme disgust radiating from
her. Next she turned to Kayak Bill and took him in with the same look.
"Now, men, listen to me," she said sternly, as they both started to
slip toward the door. "I've reached the limit of my endurance." She
emphasized her next remarks with a decisive finger. "The _very next
one_ of you who mentions tobacco inside this cabin will be banished to
the smoke-house to live by himself. I mean every word I say!" With
hang-dog looks the culprits turned away and disappeared through the
door. Ellen, with business-like brevity, climbed up into the loft to
investigate. Harlan followed.
He found a roll of tar paper with which to mend the hole in the roof
and helped Ellen shift the dunnage bags which had been wetted by the
water. They worked in silence for some time.
Suddenly Ellen stopped in her operations. She rested her palms on the
floor and looked up at Harlan. In the candle-lit gloom of the loft he
could see that her eyes were twinkling. A new friendliness was in the
ingenuous smile she gave him.
"Gregg," she said in a tone that finally admitted him to her
friendship, "remember--there isn't a man living who cannot be benefited
by having a good, sound scolding once in a while." . . .
And so the days passed until the end of January. They were stormy ones
for the most part, yet no ruby sand showed on the beach of Kon Klayu.
One clear, cold morning Harlan and Jean were gathering shellfish among
the boulders on Sunset Point. The air was strangely still and under
the pale sunshine the sapphire waters were tinged with rose and
lavender. They had long been accustomed to those tricks played with
sea and clouds by the magician Mirage, and today the crest of each
billow was magnified until, on the horizon the points seemed to leap up
into the sky. Above a lucid space in the southwest a mass of silver
and amethyst tinted clouds moved slowly and spread out like a platform.
They sat on a flat boulder to watch the changing beauty of the colors.
Their daily forays for shellfish had deepened their love of the
sea--its ways of mystery that were ever bringing to their attention
some new loveliness of form and tint. Now, before their incredulous
eyes there appeared rising from the cloud bank the illusion of
graciously rounded domes, spires, minarets, and the next instant they
were gazing on a city of enchantment softly reflected in a pearly
sea--a silvery city of fantasy like an exquisite shadowy drawing of
some foreign land. . . . They sat silent, entranced. How long the
vision lingered neither of them knew. . . . Then a breeze fanned their
faces and in a twinkling the city of dreams vanished.
They raced back to the cabin with their news but found the others on
the porch. They too had witnessed the phenomenon. Kayak Bill alone
showed no surprise.
"That's what sourdoughs up here calls 'The Silent City,'" he drawled.
"Alasky folks have been seein' it for yars. One time I saw it above
Muir glacier, and one time when I was a-crusin' in the Bering Sea.
Sailors calls it a mirrage. If I don't miss my guess, there'll be hell
a-poppin' in the way of a storm purty soon."
Kayak was right. Within twenty-tour hours the worst southwest gale
experienced racked the Island. The strange reverberating roll from the
south Cliffs beat with weird insistence on their ears for three long
days and nights. When the weather cleared the immediate need for
shellfish sent Jean and Harlan out among the rocks again.
They were coming home from Skeleton Rib with their pails full of
"gumboots," making a desultory search for pay-sand, which no one had
seen for weeks. They left the beach and turned toward the little lake
visible from the cabin porch. The storm had shifted the cannon-ball
shaped boulders which characterized that part of the shore, stripped
the tundra of every sign of vegetation, and exposed the brown turf
beneath. Gregg in restoring his knife to his pocket, dropped it. As
he stooped to pick it up a look of astonishment crossed his face. He
sank on his knees and eagerly scanned the brown surface beneath.
"Jean!" There was excitement in his voice as he beckoned her. "Look!"
The girl rushed to his side. She bent to look and caught her breath.
The dark surface of the turf was flecked with glittering colors of gold.
CHAPTER XXVII
SPRING
Once again gold cast its magic spell over the Island of Kon Klayu. The
daily food hunting was alternated with preparations for mining the
gold-bearing turf--the top of which had caught, like the nap of a
blanket, the flakes of yellow metal washed up by the storms of years.
Though the men knew they had not yet found the source of the Island
gold, they were confident there was a small fortune in sight.
In his enthusiasm Boreland put behind him for a time the growing hatred
for the White Chief of Katleean that was slowly eating into his heart,
and with Kayak Bill and Harlan went about the "dead work" that preceded
the actual mining. There were puddling-boxes and sluices to be built
at the edge of the little lake off Skeleton Rib, and the top of the
gold-carrying turf was to be cut up into squares and piled like
cordwood until they were ready to shred it and run it through the
sluices.
While the work went on everyone kept a sharp lookout for cannery ships
going west, for along the Alaskan coast the first sign of spring is the
coming of the fishing fleet from the States.
"Of course February is a month too early," said Harlan one evening as
they sat about the supper table discussing the possibilities of rescue,
"but we ought to have some way of attracting attention. We might put
up a flag-pole on the Lookout, but--" he shrugged his shoulders, "we
have no flag."
"If you men get the pole up, I'll see that you have a flag," Ellen
promised.
No one had been well supplied with clothes in the beginning of the
Island adventure, and gradually Ellen had used every available piece of
cloth to eke out the worn and patched garments, which despite all her
efforts, turned her family into tatterdemalions. But she took what was
left to put together her flag: some flour sacks, an old blue shirt of
Shane's and a red blanket that could hardly be spared. The men hunted
for days among the drift of the beach before finding a log the proper
length and shape for their purpose, but at the end of a week the pole
was in place.
The hoisting of the flag for the first time was made an event which
demanded the presence of every member of the party on the Lookout.
Sudden, poignant emotion stirred the six tattered figures that stood
about the pole as the crude banner unfurled its stars and stripes to
the strong breeze. Home-made and heavy it was, but it fluttered above
them, the emblem that has ever stood for hope, for freedom, for
justice, and there was that in the sight of the flag which caused the
men to stand with bared heads, while Ellen and Jean viewed it through a
mist of tears.
"Oh, surely, _surely_ now, some ship will sight it and come in!"
proclaimed Jean, as she turned to scan the sea, her face alight with
the faith inspired by the faded colors.
It was the latter part of March before the smoke of the first cannery
boat was seen moving slowly to the westward. Though the vessel was so
far away the watchers knew their low Island could hardly be seen from
its deck, the mere fact that ships were beginning to navigate the
northern sea promised well, and the flag was kept flying from the
Lookout day and night, its stars turned down as a sign of distress.
It was decided that Jean and Harlan should attend to the evening signal
fires. There was little darkness in the nights, for already the long
Alaska daylight had set in, but by placing half-dry seaweed on the
driftwood flame a great smoke resulted that, it was hoped, might be
seen by passing vessels.
It was good to sit about the fire looking down on the sea while the
dusk crept in, and now that Ellen had, to some extent, modified her
opinions regarding Harlan, there was nothing to hinder the growing of a
delightful, outdoor companionship that made the hours pass with
miraculous rapidity for the two young fire tenders. Past hardships and
hunger were forgotten up there on the Lookout. The evenings became
hours of confidences when they discussed their plans, their dreams,
their budding philosophies of life. They came to know each other's
moods and each other's thoughts and that magic of shared adventures
which can be more binding than love.
One night Gregg told her of his early ambition to be a mining engineer,
his year at a mid-western school of mines, where his studies were
terminated, he admitted with entire frankness, by a request to leave.
He told her also of his return home to San Francisco, and the
subsequent years of aimless drifting which ended in the final break
with his father.
"I can see now," he concluded, "that poor old dad had good reason for
disappointment. As a last resort he sent me to Katleean hoping that
I'd get some sense jolted into me--but--well, I didn't, Jean,
until . . . until the _Hoonah_ put into the bay. I've been wondering
what he is thinking now. . . . He hasn't had a word from me since
August, although, of course, he hears from Katleean--" He checked
himself, pausing a moment as if he were on the point of telling her
something else. Then: "Dad is--he's interested in the Alaska Fur
Trading Company, you know."
But Jean's mind was already intent on the young man's future.
"Now you _are_ going to wake up and do something, though," she declared
with a decisive movement of her little head. "I don't care much for
what you've told me of your past, Gregg," she admitted frankly, "but--"
she waved her hand with a gesture of dismissal--"up here it isn't
yesterday that counts, it's today and tomorrow. This is a wonderful
new land to begin in----"
"And you just watch me do it, Jean!" he interrupted her
enthusiastically. As if he already felt the need of action he rose
from the ground and thrusting his hands in his pockets, began walking
up and down before her. "I've done a lot of thinking over there in my
little Hut--a _lot_ of it, and I know this country has gotten a hold on
me, some way. It's mine from now on. There's something about it that
makes me feel alive. I want to get out and hustle like the
dev--dickens. Honestly, if it wasn't for you and Ellen and Loll, I
could be glad we have been put up against it here on Kon Klayu! I've
actually enjoyed the fighting for food and warmth and shelter! . . .
We'll all have a good stake when we leave here, Jean, but already I'm
planning to come back. I have a few ideas about mining that I'd like
to try out."
The girl looked up at him, her eyes glowing with interest. Encouraged,
he took his place once more by the signal fire and began in detail his
plans for the further prospecting and development of the Island.
But not all their hours on the Lookout were spent in the discussion of
mining. They seemed to have the whole world to themselves up there--an
enchanted world, cool, redolent of hidden sprouting green things and
the smell of driftwood smoke; a world tinctured with a sheer beauty
that neither of them had ever known before. They had reached the stage
in their companionship where sometimes they sat silent for long
minutes, only occasionally looking across the fire at each other with
the smile of understanding that is often better than speech. Sometimes
they laughed together as only youth can laugh, over inconsequential
things, and sometimes he sang to her--songs of the sea, men's songs at
first, but these gave place later to the songs of sentiment that may,
when the singer choose, be made more intimate, more tenderly personal
than the most personal spoken word.
Jean, after she had gone down to her little bunk at night, often lay
there wondering how, under the circumstances, she could be so happy,
especially since the food situation was becoming more desperate each
day. But, with the exception of occasional lapses into acute anxiety,
she was strangely content and confident for the future.
One morning she was awakened by Loll's excited whisper.
"Jean! Oh J-e-a-n! Do you hear anything?" The youngster was standing
beside her bunk, the early light falling on his red head, his ear
raised alertly after the manner of the little dog in a famous
phonograph advertisement. She roused herself drowsily and sat up to
listen. Above the sound of the surf on the beach came the faint wild
call of gulls.
"Oh, Loll, winter's gone!" she exclaimed just above a whisper. "The
birds have come back to nest!"
She bounded out of bed and a moment later the two slipped quietly out
to the porch. The light fall of snow had already been gone for weeks.
It was a glorious morning of sunshine and sparkling sea. Looking up
she saw against the cobalt sky the white wings of sea-gulls--the
harbingers of spring.
Her happiness in the sight was somewhat lessened as the sound of
coughing came from inside the cabin. Everyone but Ellen appeared to be
standing well the enforced diet of bread and shellfish upon which they
were now living. Sometimes Jean was worried over her sister's
condition. She suspected that never from the first had Ellen eaten her
full share of the food, even when they had had beans and rice and
oatmeal. Her sister could not eat the tough "gumboots" and her only
nourishment was obtained from bread and black coffee. Ellen still went
about her household tasks, but it took her longer to do them now and it
was evident to Jean's critical eye that her strength was waning.
Meat--meat was what she needed, the girl thought. The pigeon--once she
suggested to Ellen that it might be killed, but her sister opposed the
idea so violently that Jean never mentioned it again.
One day Harlan brought down a sea-gull with a stone. Jean hopefully
cooked it, but the flesh was so tainted with fish that no one could eat
it. The sea-parrots had returned to the Island but these wary little
birds kept far out over the water.
There came a morning when Ellen did not get up for breakfast. The men
left early for the lake. They were devoting all their time to their
mining, and secure in the thought that they had struck something rich,
they were eager for the clean-up; but to Jean, stepping quietly about
her household tasks, gold did not seem valuable now. It made no
difference how much they found--it would not buy them one ounce of
nourishing food--and nourishing food was what Ellen must have, and soon.
The girl tip-toed to the bed and looked down at her sister's face,
white and thin against the tumbled mass of golden-brown hair. There
was something small and very girlish-looking about Ellen as she lay
there--and something suggestive of a great weariness. Jean felt a
sudden tenderness for her--a desire to clasp her sister in her strong
young arms and shield her, from what she could not tell. She stooped
and softly kissed the small, work-stained hand that lay outside the
blanket.
As she continued her work, the plan which had often before suggested
itself to her, now returned. Ellen's peculiar conduct in regard to the
pigeon precluded her mentioning it to her sister. She took a sheet of
thin paper and in painstaking, minute characters wrote a message. She
would attach it to the pigeon and turn the bird loose. Perhaps it
might fly back to Katleean, and then, surely, if the White Chief found
her message he would make an effort to come at once.
Half an hour later she had the pigeon on the beach below the cabin.
She was urging it to fly, but the bird merely spread its wings and
fluttered about. Fearing that the long confinement had deprived it of
the power of flight, Jean was redoubling her efforts, when Loll came
running along the sand.
"Gee Whiz, Jean!" he yelled, "What-cha doing with my pigeon? Can't you
see he can't fly good yet? Dad clipped his wings that time one of them
got caught in the hinge of his cage." And Lollie, with coaxing noises
and terms of endearment proceeded to gather his pet into his arms.
Obliged by Ellen's illness to assume the responsibilities of the larder
Jean was surprised and dismayed at the small amount of food that was
left them. She tried to banish the fears that this knowledge brought
her by talking cheerfully of the certainty of procuring seabird eggs.
Spring had the effect of coming suddenly. The yellow grass and bare
branches which had greeted them for so many months changed seemingly
overnight. The adventurers awakened one morning to find that the
alders had burst into pungent, sticky little green leaves and the
tundra had taken on a tinge of emerald. When the Indian celery had
grown a foot in height Jean and Loll brought an arm-load to the cabin.
The girl remembered that Senott at Katleean had told her "him plenty
good eatin' when salmon run." Everyone craved something green and
though the celery was hollow-stalked, very watery and of a strong musky
taste and odor, they ate it, because, as Loll put it, it _felt_ like
green stuff going down, anyway.
Ducks and geese flew over the Island so low that the sibilant sound of
their wings could be heard from the porch. Shane often tried to kill
one with a stone, but without success. He and Kayak Bill had long ago
used all the ammunition for their revolvers endeavoring to shoot
hair-seals off the south end. Shane's revolver finally disappeared
entirely. One day, however, after he had stood long by Ellen's bed, he
went out to the shed. Jean coming upon him there had found him
thoughtfully twirling the weapon on his finger--his trigger finger as
he had often called it. Although he announced that there were no more
cartridges for it the girl later came upon five wrapped in a bandana
handkerchief.
When at last the flowers began to bud, Jean and her nephew climbed the
gulch trail to the top of the Island where Kobuk lay under the tundra
on the crest of the hill. The lone tree, so like a woman with
wind-blown hair, had lost one of its branches during the winter gales,
but it still stood, as if looking out across Kobuk's grave to the
far-away, illimitable skyline; ever looking, Jean thought, as she was,
for a ship that never came.
She and Lollie made Kobuk's resting place a bed of transplanted violets
and iris and dog-tooth lilies. When the work was finished, Lollie
stood leaning on the club he had begun to carry, as his one desire in
life at this period was to emulate Robinson Crusoe. He looked
thoughtfully down at the grave for some time.
"Perhaps, after all, Jean, it's better that Kobuk died," he said at
last. "We'd have nothing to feed him now, poor old Kobuk, and he'd be
hungry, like us." He raised his thin little face to watch a sea-parrot
flying overhead with a fish in its bill.
Jean leaned against the tree, one of her recurrent floods of
hopelessness sweeping her. Far down the tundra toward the north she
could see the flag-pole on the Lookout. The tattered home-made flag
hung dispiritedly in the still sunny air, and the smoke of the signal
fire was a mere straight-rising wisp. The calls of happy mating gulls
came to mock her--gulls replete with the bountiful food of the sea.
Today she was hungry, so hungry that every atom of her body cried for
food, hot, nourishing food which she had not known for months. And
Ellen, back there at the cabin, was growing weaker and weaker each day.
The girl's eyes dully followed the low-flying sea-parrots. In a half
conscious way she noticed that many of them came toward the crest of
the hill and disappeared. Sea-parrots were not as fishy tasting as
gulls, as she had heard Kayak Bill say. If only they had some way of
killing these birds perhaps the broth and the flesh might bring back
Ellen's strength.
"Jean, isn't that the place the old bear came up the hill?" Lollie's
voice broke in on her thoughts. He was pointing to the scrubby growth
on the brow of the hill where she had first seen the bear of Kon Klayu.
"Let's go over and see."
As they walked toward the ridge their feet made no sound on the soft
tundra. They peered down hill into the shady recesses under the
stunted alder and salmon-berry bushes. Jean's nostrils twitched as
there was wafted up to her the strong, acrid odor which lingers about
the places of nesting birds. As her eyes became accustomed to the
dimness, she ventured a remark which died abruptly as she caught her
breath. Beneath the low canopy of branches the ground was bare of
vegetation, and on the cool brown earth, packed hard by the patter of
webbed feet, a dozen or more sea-parrots were sitting not fifteen
slanting feet below!
At the sight of them Loll dropped to his hands and knees and, club in
hand, crept cautiously down under the low-growing bushes. Inch by inch
he drew nearer to the birds. . . . Then, with a swift movement he was
in the midst of wildly flapping wings, clubbing fiercely at
crimson-beaked heads.
Jean, fearing that he was in danger, threw herself on the ground and
tried to wriggle forward to him, but the low growth made the passage of
her larger body impossible. She drew herself back and called
frantically to the boy. She could hear the commotion and see the
parrots one by one flying clumsily out as they escaped from the spot
where he fought. With a shout of encouragement to him she made another
attempt to crawl under the brush. At that moment Loll's freckled face
was thrust through the undergrowth. He turned to tug at something,
grunting and straining as if trying to free it from the tangle.
"Jean! I've got 'em! I've got 'em!" he yelled.
A second later he was standing before her, breathless, his blouse torn
from his shoulders, his face scratched. In his bleeding little hands
he held five dead sea-parrots. "Killed 'em with my club, Jean, just
like Robinson Crusoe, 'cause they can't fly away quick under there!" he
explained. "They've all got little tunnels under there, too--nests I
think they are, but I couldn't reach the end of 'em when I put in my
arm!"
An hour later Jean was attending to the cooking of the birds. When
skinned, only the breast was found to be edible. The meat when cooked
was coarse and dark red, but it was a palatable sea-parrot and dumpling
mulligan that the girl evolved.
When the men returned from Skeleton Rib that night there was more
rejoicing over the food than there was over the fact that at last
everything was in readiness at the lake for the first clean-up. Three
puddling-boxes stood full of the soft brown muck that had once been
turf. The sluices were in place ready for the water that would be
turned into them the following day, and the tools, wheelbarrow and the
cart had been drawn aside, clearing the space for action.
"Tomorrow, boys, we'll be bringing home _hi-yu_ gold!" Shane asserted
confidently at supper. "And before the end of the week we'll all have
enough to go anywhere we wish. Now that we are certain of plenty of
birds sure our hearts should be light as feathers--for a boat will
surely be along soon!"
On the Lookout that night Jean said good-night early to Harlan. As she
came down the hill to the cabin she stopped to look at the
wide-spreading ocean. The sun had gone down in a strange sea mist and
below her the waters heaved dim and vast and ghost-like in the
twilight. There was a hushed feeling in the air. It may have been
that she was more tired than usual, for when she slipped into her
little bunk she fell into a heavy sleep almost as soon as her head
touched the pillow.
It was Shane's incredulous shout that awakened her.
"Kayak! Come here!"
She could hear Kayak Bill moving quickly toward the door in the
living-room.
"Ellen, you come out, too!" It was evident that Shane was laboring
under an intense astonishment.
The girl clambered out of her bunk and flinging on a kimono, started
for the porch. Before she reached the door Kayak Bill's unbelieving
exclamation sounded:
"By--hell! The lake--" he paused in sheer leaden amazement. "The lake
is _gone_!"
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE CLEFT
On the porch all eyes were turned toward the south where the silver of
the little lake off Skeleton Rib had always glimmered through its
screen of alders. There was no friendly sparkle of water this morning,
and gone were the trees that bordered the shore nearest the beach.
Instead, a strange desolation, more noticeable because of the brilliant
sunshine, hung over the spot, which now showed a vague-reddish brown in
the distance. It had the sickening effect of an empty socket from
which the eye has been torn.
The bewildered look on Kayak's face was slowly changing to one of
enlightenment.
"Folks," he said quietly. "We're lucky to be alive this morning.
There's been a tidal wave!"
His eye was taking in the length of the beach that lay between the
cabin and the lake. There was a weird look of alteration about it, as
if a giant hand had tampered with it during the night. Piles of
drift-logs were stacked up far inland, and the vegetation on the banks
above the beach was flattened and in many instances swept completely
away. Close at hand--not twenty feet from the cabin--lay windrows of
seaweed, left there by the spent wash of the great wave. Death, swift,
sweeping, terrible, had been diverted only by the high bank that stood
below the cabin.
It seemed incredible, monstrous, that they all should have slept
peacefully while the mass of water was rolling in on them from the
deep. Kayak Bill, who had once seen a tidal wave on Bering Sea,
pictured it advancing in the grey unnatural night from the far reaches
of the ocean, growing larger and larger as it neared the shallows off
Kon Klayu, and then, tossing its dancing crest to the sky in gigantic
abandon, curling down from aloft in green-white, crushing splendor and
flinging itself far over the beachline in its endeavor to encompass
them all.
Without waiting for breakfast the men went down to the spot where the
little lake had been. Nothing but a dark ooze remained. Every block
of gold-carrying turf, every puddling-box, sluice and tool had been
carried out to sea. The work of weeks had come to naught. Their last
hope of gold was gone.
During the gloomy fortnight that followed it was the food supply,
however, and not the calamity of the tidal wave that was subject of the
most discussion. With the exception of flour there was little left of
the outfit that had been landed on Kon Klayu, and to the consternation
and chagrin of the men, they discovered that Loll was the only one who
could slip up on the sea-parrots and kill them with a club. Shane and
Harlan and even Kayak Bill tried it repeatedly with no success. They
were unable to creep down under the low-growing brush in a manner
stealthy enough to reach the birds. Even Loll found it impossible to
approach them in the open, and they grew more wary day by day. Six
people depended on the child for nourishing food, and Lollie, after
that first wild morning when he had discovered his ability to kill the
birds, found his tender heart revolting against his bloody task.
Ellen, slowly recovering her strength now that sea-parrot broth had
been added to the daily fare, had become painfully intuitive in the
matter of all those phases of the situation which Shane and the others
clumsily tried to keep from her. Though apparently asleep, she knew
the instant that Shane crept from his bed in the very early mornings
before the sun had dried the dew on the tundra. She could hear him
tip-toe into Lollie's bunk and with forced lightness call softly:
"Come, Loll, son. Hop up now. We must be after the birds this fine
morning!"
"Oh, dad! I don't want to kill any more--I can't do it, dad! . . .
Let this morning go by . . . please!" . . .
"Whist, lad! Your mother'll hear you. Come along now, son, we'll talk
it over on the outside."
"Oh, please, _please_ . . ."
Quickly Ellen would put her fingers over her ears that she might not
hear the beseeching little-boy voice, but she knew the moment Shane
lifted the reluctant child from his warm bunk, and she knew, too, that
Shane's heart must be aching with the pity of it, as was her own.
One morning, thinking they had gone, she raised her head to note the
hour. There was the sound of a quick step on the porch outside.
"Oh, dad!" came Lollie's pleading tones, and Ellen knew just how his
grey eyes, big now in his small thin face, were raised to his father's,
"dad, if you could see them down there under the leaves, strutting so
cute-like and innocent in front of their little tunnel nests getting
ready for their babies!" Then with passionate intensity: "Today . . .
couldn't you just let me off for to-day, dad?" Inspired, perhaps, by
some shade of feeling in Shane's eyes he went on with hurried,
promising emphasis: "An' _tomorrow_, maybe tomorrow, dad, I'll feel
like getting lots of 'em! Honest, maybe I will!"
Ellen, with a moan of mental anguish, buried her face in her pillow and
covered her ears to shut out the rest. That her boy, friend and lover
of all wild things, was obliged, against his will, to slaughter birds
in order that they might live seemed more than she could bear.
And as if to add to the hopelessness of the situation, daily now
steamers and sailing vessels passed far out on the North Pacific, but
none swerved in its course. There was nothing to hinder the _Hoonah's_
coming--nothing but the word of the White Chief of Katleean. Ellen
chafed inwardly as the long, light days and nights dragged by. Help
must come soon, and for some time she had been counting the hours until
the pigeon's wing-feathers should grow out again. As soon as the bird
could fly she was going to take it to the Lookout and speed it on its
way with her message of capitulation to Paul Kilbuck.
The long sunny days of May passed, turning Kon Klayu into a garden of
wild flowers. It was violet time with great bunches of purple blossoms
nodding against the hillsides. Above the beachline rice-grass waved
luxuriantly. Indian celery thrust its graceful, creamy parasols above
beach forget-me-nots, strawberry blooms, black lilies, blue geraniums
and thick carpets of delicate wee flowers that have no names. The
green of the tundra on top of the Island was splashed with yellow
buttercups and pink and lavender daisies, and on every little brown
pool and lake floated golden lilies. The warm salt wind from the sea
stirred the fragrance of it all--the flowers, the moist tundra, the
sun-warmed sand into a perfume that is the breath of Alaska; a clean,
invigorating perfume that once known can never be forgotten. It is
charged with that indefinable charm, that hint of promise, which is so
much a part of the great North country.
To Jean and Gregg, racing along the beaches on their various hunts for
food, it brought a joy of spring that, when they were in the open, made
them forget completely the growing seriousness of their situation.
Nearly every day now the air was softly, embracingly warm, and owing to
the scarcity of garments, no one was wearing more than was necessary.
The men had long been going barefooted, and Jean, as soon as the
weather and the nature of her work permitted it, put her only remaining
pair of worn shoes in the loft against the day when she should leave
Kon Klayu. She, too, went barefooted for the most part, delighting in
the feel of the cool sand against her feet, but she carried with her
the hair-seal moccasins given her by Add-'em-up Sam's widow at
Katleean. These she put on to walk over stones or along the tundra.
As the sea-parrots were daily growing more wary, and Lollie had now to
exercise the greatest caution to get near enough to club them, the need
of eggs became imperative. One day Jean and Harlan were racing along
the beach headed for the south cliffs to make their accustomed search.
A rope coiled about the young man's waist held to him a bucket which
dangled and bobbed as he ran. The afternoon was sunny and a fresh sea
wind lifted the hair on their bare heads. The surf ringed the grey
sands at their feet with long foaming lines.
"It's so beautiful, so beautiful, this land and sea, Gregg, that I feel
today must bring us some good luck!" Jean, out of sheer exuberance,
was skimming along ahead, her arms outspread, her chin high, as she
dipped and leaped in imitation of Senott's sea-gull dance which she had
seen at the Potlatch.
"Wait a minute, wild girl!" called Harlan, endeavoring to accomplish
the feat of rolling up a trouser leg as he hobbled. "Come back here!"
His voice took on an exaggerated tone of threat. "Don't you realize
that a squaw's place is three steps to the rear!"
In answer to his shout she turned, and laughingly waited for him. He
advanced, suddenly assuming the slouching, shoulder-swinging gait of
the "bad man," his brows drawn and fierce, his chin thrust out.
"Don't cross muh, woman!" he hissed, melodramatically. "I tell yuh,
I'm rough, an' I'm tough, an' I'm from Katleean! Muh bite is poi-sson,
an' muh s-s-s-ting is d-e-a-t-h! To the rear, I say!"
Quick as a flash the girl bent, and catching up a long streamer of damp
kelp tossed it about his neck, retaining her hold on it as she ran
ahead.
"Speak not to me of the rear, Man!" she intoned boastfully. "_I_ am
Xun, the Unfettered! Xun, the Woman-of-the-North-Wind! Men move not
in the North except by my will. My breath in their lungs brings
oblivion. My voice in their ears--and the trail--is--empty! Come!"
Laughing derisively at his pawing efforts to dislodge the clammy kelp,
she drew him along until the streamer broke. Then still talking their
happy nonsense, they trotted side by side toward the cliffs.
Half a mile farther on Jean sat down on a spherical boulder and donned
her moccasins. Afterward they turned in from the beach, crossed a flat
sweep of tundra and ascended the hill to the top of the Island. As
they walked toward the edge of the cliffs the shrill chorus of
thousands of sea-birds grew louder.
"O-o-o-o!" there was a little bell-like shiver in the girl's voice.
"There's no sound in all the world so wild, so suggestive of the
mystery of the untamed, as the calling of nesting gulls, Gregg!" They
stood on the promontory with the winged things dipping and swirling all
about them. Jean continued slowly, as if trying to put into words some
illusive feeling. "Sometimes--it frightens me--I don't know why--and
at the same time, it fills me with such a sense of freedom and
lightness that often, just for a little moment, I almost believe I too
might rise into the air and balance myself against the breeze with
them!"
Harlan had never seen the nesting grounds of gulls in season, but Jean,
before coming to Kon Klayu, had once gone ashore on a gull island
during laying time.
"For weeks afterward," she told him, "every night when I closed my eyes
I could see the green waving grass and grey sand dotted with hundreds
and hundreds of crude nests. Each nest contained from one to three
eggs, larger than duck eggs, and of a nile-green color closely speckled
with brown, yellow and lavender. Why, they were so near together,
Gregg, that it was difficult to step without crushing the eggs!"
With the memory of the gull island in her mind, she started with Harlan
to traverse the stretch of green back of the promontory.
Back and forth for a square mile they went, searching the flat above
the cliffs. Gulls, flying above, eyed them curiously, making strange
human sounds. Occasionally one alighted on the ground. As often as
this happened they raced hopefully to the spot but found nothing but
grass blades bending from the wind.
"It's no use, Jean," Harlan decided, after two hours' vain effort.
"It's too early for them to lay. Let's go back to the edge of the
cliffs. The shags lay earlier, I believe, only their nests are so
blamed hard to get at down there."
Jean was not enthusiastic about shag nests.
"They fill me with melancholy--those long-necked, black creatures,
Gregg," she said uneasily. "Lollie and I call them witch-birds. I
remember last fall we used to sit on the porch steps in the afterglow,
watching them--strings of dusky, witch-birds, speeding silent and low
over the darkening water to the cliffs. But, if you wish," she added,
"we'll go and see."
They headed for the windy heights overlooking the ocean, where nodding
tundra grass fringed the space beyond. Harlan took her hand as they
crept close to the edge. They peered down through the cloud of wild
fowl that swarmed in uncounted thousands before their eyes. Three
hundred feet below, deliberate blue rollers, with spray-laced tops
swept in and broke against the rocks, the impact sending whitened water
high into the air. The face of the cliff was plastered with seabirds:
murres, gulls, sea-parrots and cormorants. Harlan threw a stone down
and the air became black with them, leaving the numbers in the rocks
apparently the same. Sea-parrots flew in from the water and
disappeared under the overhanging sod at the top. Mingled with the
breath of the ocean was the wild, unforgetable odor that clings to the
places where seabirds roost.
Suddenly Harlan spoke. "There _are_ shags eggs down there, Jean, but
the cliff right here is too steep for us to get them. I couldn't even
let you down over the edge on the rope. But I'll tie one end to you
and we'll go along here until we find a place from which I can descend,
perhaps."
They drew back from their perilous position, and after making fast the
rope about Jean's waist, proceeded, stopping at intervals to lie flat
and look down over the rim of space.
They were feeling their way along the highest part of the Island, when
suddenly at their feet the tundra opened in a deep cleft not over five
feet wide. It began six yards or more back from the edge and led down
between crumbling, rocky walls at a fearful incline, to a ledge thirty
feet below.
Jean drew back with a cry at the sense of peril that came over her, but
Harlan looked eagerly down.
"By Jove, there are a _lot_ of eggs on that ledge," he announced
enthusiastically, "and we can get them!" He hesitated a moment,
considering. His eyes sought hers. "You're not strong enough to lower
me down to the ledge, Jean, but--would--would you be frightened if I
should let you down to them?"
For one awful moment the sea and sky and birds swirled together as the
girl stood, steeped in fear. Then the raucous cries of the gulls
penetrated her consciousness like shrieking voices calling: "Coward!
Quitter!"
Harlan was saying convincingly: "I wouldn't let you fall, Jean. My
arms are strong as a blacksmith's--" he flexed the muscles beneath his
thin shirt--"and see, there's a depression here at the head of the
chasm. I can stand in it and brace myself!"