Rough seas prevailed during the first five days of their isolation, and
these were followed by a long period of comparative calm,—a pleasant
change indeed, in Ivan’s mind. The weather on the mainland, however,
continued unsettled,—clouds that drifted in over the ranges, lowered
threateningly and vanished; occasional showers followed by short bursts
of yellow sunlight in which the wet moss steamed, rainbows bending down
into the sea and thrilling Dorothy with renewed hope, and nights of
bitter, penetrating cold. It was unpleasant, threatening weather, yet
nothing to keep stout ships in from the sea; and at the end of ten days
of waiting that which at first was only a vague fear became almost a
certainty: that the _Warrior_ had gone down among the island crags and
would not return.
They had given her five days of bad weather in which to lie at anchor in
some sheltered harbor, and five days more to pull up and make the run
back to the rocky coast where they were; and even Pete had to agree that
this was time enough. On top of this they waited a few extra days for
good measure, an impatient wait that, on Ivan’s part at least, was
endured only because no other way was open. And now the castaways found
themselves confronted by an ugly situation. As their hopes of rescue by
the _Warrior_ went down, the available supply of food likewise
decreased, and autumn was dying in the land. The northern winter is a
formidable prospect at best; and even such seasoned old wilderness men
as Pavlof and Fortune Joe did not care to face it with inadequate
supplies of food.
So one evening Pete called an informal council of war. “I’ll admit we’ve
got to do something, and we can’t wait very much longer,” he began.
“We’ve given the _Warrior_ time in plenty to get back, with some days to
spare to take care of breakdowns—and we haven’t as much as had word of
her. It may be she’ll get back yet—delayed through some more or less
serious accident we haven’t figured on—and again she may not. This is a
port of missing ships, out here. I don’t see how we dare wait much
longer for her to come.”
“Agreed,” Dorothy replied promptly. “What do you suggest we do about
it?”
“Let’s sum it all up first, and see where we are. Let’s assume the
worst, that the _Warrior_ has gone down, and that she went down before
she got word to anybody to come and rescue us. Let’s see first if
anybody will become worried about us, and send after us. Of course
somebody will—in time—but our plans didn’t include returning to Squaw
Harbor, and the winter watchman there won’t give us a thought. Sooner or
later Bradford and De Long, down in Seattle, will learn that the
_Warrior_ did not come into Seward, but she wasn’t likely expected at
any definite time, if she was expected at all, and it may be months
before a search party is sent out,—a half-hearted search party at that,
because they will naturally think we went down with the _Warrior_. After
the same long period of weeks and months, some of your relatives and
friends down below will become anxious about you and dispatch some
search parties; but they will likely become discouraged by the same
news—that we went down with the _Warrior_—and rank us among the
missing.” Pete did not add that this business of being included with the
missing was an old game to him: rather he looked quietly, half-smiling,
out to sea.
“But say they do come and search this shore: at least, it will be a
matter of weeks and months. And weeks and months in this climate, and
winter and with little food, is a deadly deal. We have only one pair of
snow-shoes, and not near enough winter equipment to supply the five of
us here on the mainland. Of course we may get picked up by a passing
trader, but the sea lanes are quite far out here, pretty well out of
sight of land. We can’t rely on such a long chance as that. There
remains the dory, and the difficult, more or less dangerous trip down
the coast to some settlement.
“Of course, it’s the only possible plan now; you’ll agree with me in
that. But our food supplies are already so low it wouldn’t be safe to
attempt the trip for the five of us. There will likely be long periods,
days and days, of being tied up on sandy spits where there isn’t a
particle of fuel. To attempt that trip, you’ve got to have plenty of
already cooked food—dried meat, canned goods, and things like that—and
we haven’t got ’em. It will be the toughest kind of a tough project at
best, but we can’t do anything else.
“We’ve got to get busy quick. The natives are already getting scared;
they say they can smell winter, that it’s going to set in early. I don’t
put my own fear into their mouths either—I’ll stick it out as long as
you say—but these men are natives, and they have not white man’s
fortitude to hold them up. Now this is my plan.
“To-morrow you let me take three days’ rations of grub—a Siwash outfit,
the men up here call it—and start off across the Peninsula on foot.
It’s no trip for a woman, Mrs. Newhall; for you to go would be
absolutely out of the question. I’ll pick my way over that range,
sleeping out at night, and down on to the Pacific side, where I’m bound
to run into some native village or trapper’s hut in a few days’ travel.
Then I’ll get a hundred pounds of canned goods and come back here.
Meanwhile the natives will go hunting and kill all the venison they can,
which we’ll dry over the fire—cut it into strips and jerk it the best
we can. Then with that fresh supply of food, you two, with the two
natives to man the oars, can work down the coast and out.”
“And what will you do, in the meantime?” Dorothy asked.
“You can leave me a little flour and my rifle, and I’ll make it through;
when you hit a settlement you can ask a native to pack me in a load of
grub. That isn’t a very big boat, and your grub will be limited, the
best you can do. Besides, there’s a possibility that some one will come
here to look for you, and in that case one of us ought to be here to
tell him where to pick you up.”
It was a good plan; she felt at once that it was the only plan. But when
she tried to be hopeful, a deep wave of depression seemed to engulf her,
a feeling of hopelessness, indifference to the future, almost as if old
age had suddenly claimed her. Perhaps it was merely an outgrowth of a
hidden fear of the difficult, dangerous journey that waited her in the
open dory. Of conscious fear there was none.
Pete would be left here, then, to the desolation and the storm. What a
fate for a man of his character and instinctive refinement! Even when
she took up her old life anew with Ivan—in the gaiety that would drown
her remorse and still the yearning in her heart—she would never cease
to think of him, living out his life on this lonely shore, standing
stanch against the storm; lifting awe-filled eyes to the tempestuous
sea; misty—like a ghost—in the drifting clouds of fog.
“I don’t see why it will be necessary for any one to cross the
mainland,” Ivan said, in the hush that followed Pete’s mellow, deep
baritone. He spoke with considerable emphasis and urgency. “While you
were gone, we’d just be eating more grub all the time. We’d better start
in the dory to-morrow.”
Pete shook his head. “It wouldn’t be safe, with our supplies so far
reduced. You must remember that while I’m gone the natives can be
hunting and drying meat.”
“Perhaps the best plan would be for you to stay and hunt too: jerked
venison is a fine ration, and with the little we have here it would be
all we’d need for the trip.”
“But only one of us can hunt, because we’ve got only one rifle, Mr.
Ishmin,” Pete argued politely. “Pavlof can take that; of course, by
careful stalking, Fortune Joe might get a head or two with your pistol.
While they’re doing that, I’ll be getting a good backload of
essentials.”
Ivan hesitated, and his face looked yellowish-white in the fading light
of day. “If some one is going to go, it had better be me,” he said at
last. “I can cross the ranges as well as you can.” Pete’s eyes dropped
over the Mongol’s graceful, yet powerful form, and he believed that this
was true. “If help can be found, I’ll find it—I’m not afraid of
hardship, either. I’ve seen plenty of it, in my training for the Russian
army. The great advantage of this is that the camp’s supply of venison
can be piled up twice as fast; while the two breeds are hunting and
packing in, you can work at curing it. Otherwise one of them would have
to be here all the time. You can take care of Mrs. Newhall and look out
for her comfort as you’ve done previously.”
Pete glanced at Dorothy to see what her face showed; but she was
evidently neutral. “Perhaps Mrs. Newhall would not want to be left
here—without your protection,” he said simply.
“On the contrary, I’m perfectly willing to do what’s best for all
concerned,” Dorothy remarked. “If you think you can make the trip
successfully, Ivan, and it’s best for everybody, you needn’t worry about
me.”
“I’m sure it would be best. You need Pete here to look out for your
comfort, to dry the venison and to take care of the camp while the
natives are hunting. I have every confidence in you, Pete; and so has
Mrs. Newhall.”
It was true: there was nothing of the degenerate, the wild beast in the
man who had been chosen to guide them in the wilderness. His instinctive
chivalry was not to be doubted. “I appreciate what you say, very much,”
Pete returned.
“I do mean it. You’ve kept your place so far and I know you’ll continue
to keep it. You can watch out for the breeds as well as I can. We’ll
call it decided—only, if you don’t mind, Dorothy, we’ll wait one more
day to see if the ship comes in.”
Thus it was arranged, and now, as the night lowered, Ivan and Dorothy
sat by the fireside at the door of her tent. Her gray mood of
hopelessness had not yet lifted; and Ivan’s most ardent wooing, his most
brilliant discourse did not beguile her from her own, dark musings. At
first she sat only dull and inert, depressed both physically and
spiritually, as she watched the hopeless fight of the little,
upward-leaping tongues of flame against the immensity of the growing
darkness.
But soon she forgot herself in the eerie, imponderable air of mystery
that the night had brought. Her imagination began to catch fire. Somehow
she was near the heart of things to-night: there were profound, eternal
secrets in the soft sound of the waves on the shore, in the whispering
of the winds that confided together in the thickets, in the thousand,
little, half-guessed noises that blend together and make the silence of
the wilderness night. She felt small and fragile in the face of powers
too vast and awful for her to name.
The natives’ camp fire burned fitfully,—a smudge of dull red in the
gloom. She could just see the long curves of the waves as they rolled
and changed, ceaselessly, against the pale, late-evening sky. Swift
clouds were scurrying through the heavens, and sometimes stars showed
through their tattered rents, and sometimes the moon brought dimly the
white glory of the distant peaks. There was a pronounced threat in the
tone of the night she had never sensed before, as in the wind that blows
before an invading, ravishing army. She felt that the very elements,
long at peace, were assembling in battle array and would soon swoop down
in fury upon these gray shores. She sensed the truth not only in those
scurrying clouds, but in the lash of the wind that swept down into the
fire’s glow; the sense of impending disaster that haunted every living
thing upon that rock-bound coast. She felt baffled and estranged, and
her thoughts wandered in little-known fields.
Ivan was always as sensitive as a delicate electrical instrument, and he
also was aware of the sinister tone of the night. He was a brave man,
and the only fear he had was small and dim, too obscure for him to
fasten his thought upon; yet the deadly magic of the hour did not spare
him. The voice of the land was clear to-night, and he found himself
answering, to the full, its primal appeal; and in gathering himself to
meet the onslaught of the raw forces of the winter that now threatened
him, he seemed to strip off more and more of his Occidental veneer, and
more and more the soul of Asia was revealed. Because it was his first
need, his desire for Dorothy was immeasurably enhanced. He wooed her
with a fire she had never seen in him before.
To-night he urged immediate marriage. When she asked him how, exiled as
they were from civilization, immediate marriage could be brought about,
he had a ready answer. “Can marriages occur only in civilization?” he
asked. “It’s especially simple here—you know that Nick Pavlof is
empowered to marry people. As you must have heard, he has some sort of
right from the Greek Church—hereditary, I guess—and it holds good
through all this end of Alaska. It wouldn’t be quite conventional, I’ll
admit, but it would be holy, and it would stand. A license is not
required when there is no way to get it—it’s just a legal record, at
best—and if you wish, that could be handled when we get to Seward.
Marry me to-night, Dorothy—then together we’ll go away—to Russia, to
the South Seas, anywhere. If you say the word, we’ll lose ourselves in
some savage native village on this coast and never emerge again. I’d
renounce the world in an instant for you.”
She did not doubt this. His face was stark white; his eyes glowed like
the coals of the dying fire. Her lips trembled piteously as she sought
his hand in the dusk. “Don’t talk about it to-night,” she urged, almost
pleading. “I’m so troubled—the future is so uncertain——”
He looked straight into her eyes, as if he would hypnotize her. “You’re
troubled only because you haven’t as yet made up your mind to accept
me—a decision you are sure to make in the end,” he told her slowly,
with deep emphasis. “You won’t quit being troubled until you do
it—because you love me in your heart. For this same reason your future
seems so dark and uncertain. Dorothy, the women of my race are never
troubled, because they put their destinies absolutely in the hands of
the men they love. That’s the lesson your western women have got to
learn before they can ever find real peace, real poise. Dorothy, marry
me to-night and put your destiny in my hands.”
She would not hear of it, yet the idea disturbed her and stimulated her
imagination. Perhaps that was the answer: to forget the hundreds of
doubts and fears that oppressed her and place her destiny irrevocably in
Ivan’s hands. Her course would be settled then, and she would have to
make the best of it. At least she would be free of the haunting,
maddening uncertainty—the light and the shadow—the hesitancy and the
faltering. Perhaps, after all, her alternate periods of happiness and
despair were all born of a thwarted love for this distinguished man of
the Orient; perhaps all her unrest was due to the fact that she loved
Ivan in her heart and because of some erratic impulse—possibly her
remorse for the part she had played in Peter’s downfall and death—she
would not let herself yield to him. If she turned, accepted his offer
and married him here beside the sea, all her problems would solve
themselves, if for no other reason than that all other gates would be
closed.
“I don’t want to think about it any more to-night,” she told him
earnestly. “Ivan, I wish you would play. Sometimes music is like a
light, helping me to straighten everything out——”
He took the violin in his slim hands. “What kind of music?” he asked.
“The ‘Humoresque’——?”
“No. I don’t want laughter in the midst of tears. That won’t help. Play
a song of _life_, if you know what I mean——”
“That means a song of death.” He hesitated, then began softly the
immortal “Elegie” by Massenet. This song of tears, deathlessly sweet,
brought her very nearly to the answer of her problem. She did not
actually come to a conclusion in regard to Ivan’s suit, but she believed
she found the reason why she had not yielded to him long since, and thus
the source of all her uncertainty, her haunting doubts and fears. This
was a song of the dead, and through the magic of its genius she was
able, vaguely, to pierce the veil of death.
It was, indeed, a loyalty to Peter—mistaken, perhaps, but yet an
emotion of great power—that had kept her from Ivan’s arms so long.
Partly this loyalty was an echo of her remembered love for him, partly
it was born of her remorse for failure in duty toward him. And now that
she stood at Peter’s grave, the situation had reached its crisis.
But her thoughts reached further. A dim sense that previously had been
too vague to put into concrete thought became suddenly an unqualified
conviction. And the wonder of it brought a mist of tears to her eyes.
She heard the marvelous music through to the end, carried out of herself
by its wailing beauty, moved to the depths of her heart. The last note
died away; and Ivan, ever the genius, listened, rapt by his own magic,
for the last, dying echo.
“Tell me something, Ivan?” The girl spoke quietly, her low, deep,
beautiful voice tremulous with wonder, and the soft, starlike luster of
tears in her eyes. “Ivan, do you believe in ghosts?”
It was no petty question, blasphemous in the holy spell of his music.
She was deeply in earnest and he gave her an earnest answer.
“Of course,” he said. “Who doesn’t? No one can believe in immortality
and not, strictly speaking, believe in ghosts. The whole world knows of
them—not just believes in them.”
“But do you believe they come back—to this earth?”
“Yes. I believe that too: every man does, in his heart. I don’t even
think it’s a matter of conjecture.”
“A great truth has just come to me.” The girl was exalted. “I’ve known
it all the time, but I just wasn’t aware of it. Maybe that isn’t plain.
I mean that I’ve sensed it, subconsciously—all the time I’ve been
here—in some back part of myself; and I can’t imagine why I’ve taken so
long for my conscious self to be aware of it. The music sent it home to
me, just now.”
“It often takes music, or some other stimulus to the emotions, to send
home the truth. What is it?” he asked gently.
“Peter is watching over me. I feel his presence just as surely as if he
were in the flesh.”