repetition of the incident, and he was forced to believe that he had
been the victim of some extraordinary illusion. The next morning,
however, with his calmer judgment doubts began to visit him. There was
no one of whom he could make inquiries but his Indian helper, and their
conversation had usually been restricted to the language of signs or the
use of a few words he had picked up. He contrived, however, to ask if
there was a “waugee” (white) woman in the neighborhood. The Indian
shook his head in surprise. There was no “waugee” nearer than the remote
mountain-ridge to which he pointed. Pomfrey was obliged to be content
with this. Even had his vocabulary been larger, he would as soon have
thought of revealing the embarrassing secret of this woman, whom he
believed to be of his own race, to a mere barbarian as he would of
asking him to verify his own impressions by allowing him to look at her
that morning. The next day, however, something happened which forced him
to resume his inquiries. He was rowing around the curving spot when he
saw a number of black objects on the northern sands moving in and out
of the surf, which he presently made out as Indians. A nearer approach
satisfied him that they were wading squaws and children gathering
seaweed and shells. He would have pushed his acquaintance still nearer,
but as his boat rounded the point, with one accord they all scuttled
away like frightened sandpipers. Pomfrey, on his return, asked his
Indian retainer if they could swim. “Oh, yes!” “As far as the rock?”
“Yes.” Yet Pomfrey was not satisfied. The color of his strange
apparition remained unaccounted for, and it was not that of an Indian
woman.
Trifling events linger long in a monotonous existence, and it was nearly
a week before Pomfrey gave up his daily telescopic inspection of the
rock. Then he fell back upon his books again, and, oddly enough, upon
another volume of voyages, and so chanced upon the account of Sir
Francis Drake's occupation of the bay before him. He had always thought
it strange that the great adventurer had left no trace or sign of
his sojourn there; still stranger that he should have overlooked the
presence of gold, known even to the Indians themselves, and have lost
a discovery far beyond his wildest dreams and a treasure to which the
cargoes of those Philippine galleons he had more or less successfully
intercepted were trifles. Had the restless explorer been content to pace
those dreary sands during three weeks of inactivity, with no thought of
penetrating the inland forests behind the range, or of even entering the
nobler bay beyond? Or was the location of the spot a mere tradition as
wild and unsupported as the “marvells” of the other volume? Pomfrey had
the skepticism of the scientific, inquiring mind.
Two weeks had passed and he was returning from a long climb inland, when
he stopped to rest in his descent to the sea. The panorama of the
shore was before him, from its uttermost limit to the lighthouse on the
northern point. The sun was still one hour high, it would take him
about that time to reach home. But from this coign of vantage he could
see--what he had not before observed--that what he had always believed
was a little cove on the northern shore was really the estuary of a
small stream which rose near him and eventually descended into the ocean
at that point. He could also see that beside it was a long low erection
of some kind, covered with thatched brush, which looked like a “barrow,”
yet showed signs of habitation in the slight smoke that rose from it and
drifted inland. It was not far out of his way, and he resolved to return
in that direction. On his way down he once or twice heard the barking
of an Indian dog, and knew that he must be in the vicinity of an
encampment. A camp-fire, with the ashes yet warm, proved that he was on
the trail of one of the nomadic tribes, but the declining sun warned
him to hasten home to his duty. When he at last reached the estuary, he
found that the building beside it was little else than a long hut, whose
thatched and mud-plastered mound-like roof gave it the appearance of a
cave. Its single opening and entrance abutted on the water's edge, and
the smoke he had noticed rolled through this entrance from a smouldering
fire within. Pomfrey had little difficulty in recognizing the purpose of
this strange structure from the accounts he had heard from “loggers” of
the Indian customs. The cave was a “sweat-house”--a calorific chamber
in which the Indians closely shut themselves, naked, with a “smudge” or
smouldering fire of leaves, until, perspiring and half suffocated, they
rushed from the entrance and threw themselves into the water before it.
The still smouldering fire told him that the house had been used that
morning, and he made no doubt that the Indians were encamped near by. He
would have liked to pursue his researches further, but he found he
had already trespassed upon his remaining time, and he turned somewhat
abruptly away--so abruptly, in fact, that a figure, which had evidently
been cautiously following him at a distance, had not time to get away.
His heart leaped with astonishment. It was the woman he had seen on the
rock.
Although her native dress now only disclosed her head and hands, there
was no doubt about her color, and it was distinctly white, save for the
tanning of exposure and a slight red ochre marking on her low forehead.
And her hair, long and unkempt as it was, showed that he had not erred
in his first impression of it. It was a tawny flaxen, with fainter
bleachings where the sun had touched it most. Her eyes were of a clear
Northern blue. Her dress, which was quite distinctive in that it was
neither the cast off finery of civilization nor the cheap “government”
flannels and calicoes usually worn by the Californian tribes, was purely
native, and of fringed deerskin, and consisted of a long, loose shirt
and leggings worked with bright feathers and colored shells. A necklace,
also of shells and fancy pebbles, hung round her neck. She seemed to
be a fully developed woman, in spite of the girlishness of her flowing
hair, and notwithstanding the shapeless length of her gaberdine-like
garment, taller than the ordinary squaw.
Pomfrey saw all this in a single flash of perception, for the next
instant she was gone, disappearing behind the sweat-house. He ran after
her, catching sight of her again, half doubled up, in the characteristic
Indian trot, dodging around rocks and low bushes as she fled along the
banks of the stream. But for her distinguishing hair, she looked in her
flight like an ordinary frightened squaw. This, which gave a sense of
unmanliness and ridicule to his own pursuit of her, with the fact
that his hour of duty was drawing near and he was still far from the
lighthouse, checked him in full career, and he turned regretfully away.
He had called after her at first, and she had not heeded him. What he
would have said to her he did not know. He hastened home discomfited,
even embarrassed--yet excited to a degree he had not deemed possible in
himself.
During the morning his thoughts were full of her. Theory after theory
for her strange existence there he examined and dismissed. His first
thought, that she was a white woman--some settler's wife--masquerading
in Indian garb, he abandoned when he saw her moving; no white woman
could imitate that Indian trot, nor would remember to attempt it if
she were frightened. The idea that she was a captive white, held by
the Indians, became ridiculous when he thought of the nearness of
civilization and the peaceful, timid character of the “digger” tribes.
That she was some unfortunate demented creature who had escaped from her
keeper and wandered into the wilderness, a glance at her clear, frank,
intelligent, curious eyes had contradicted. There was but one theory
left--the most sensible and practical one--that she was the offspring
of some white man and Indian squaw. Yet this he found, oddly enough, the
least palatable to his fancy. And the few half-breeds he had seen were
not at all like her.
The next morning he had recourse to his Indian retainer, “Jim.” With
infinite difficulty, protraction, and not a little embarrassment, he
finally made him understand that he had seen a “white squaw” near the
“sweat-house,” and that he wanted to know more about her. With equal
difficulty Jim finally recognized the fact of the existence of such
a person, but immediately afterwards shook his head in an emphatic
negation. With greater difficulty and greater mortification Pomfrey
presently ascertained that Jim's negative referred to a supposed
abduction of the woman which he understood that his employer seriously
contemplated. But he also learned that she was a real Indian, and that
there were three or four others like her, male and female, in that
vicinity; that from a “skeena mowitch” (little baby) they were all like
that, and that their parents were of the same color, but never a white
or “waugee” man or woman among them; that they were looked upon as a
distinct and superior caste of Indians, and enjoyed certain privileges
with the tribe; that they superstitiously avoided white men, of whom
they had the greatest fear, and that they were protected in this by
the other Indians; that it was marvelous and almost beyond belief that
Pomfrey had been able to see one, for no other white man had, or was
even aware of their existence.
How much of this he actually understood, how much of it was lying and
due to Jim's belief that he wished to abduct the fair stranger, Pomfrey
was unable to determine. There was enough, however, to excite his
curiosity strongly and occupy his mind to the exclusion of his
books--save one. Among his smaller volumes he had found a travel book of
the “Chinook Jargon,” with a lexicon of many of the words commonly
used by the Northern Pacific tribes. An hour or two's trial with the
astonished Jim gave him an increased vocabulary and a new occupation.
Each day the incongruous pair took a lesson from the lexicon. In a week
Pomfrey felt he would be able to accost the mysterious stranger. But
he did not again surprise her in any of his rambles, or even in a later
visit to the sweat-house. He had learned from Jim that the house was
only used by the “bucks,” or males, and that her appearance there had
been accidental. He recalled that he had had the impression that she had
been stealthily following him, and the recollection gave him a pleasure
he could not account for. But an incident presently occurred which gave
him a new idea of her relations towards him.
The difficulty of making Jim understand had hitherto prevented Pomfrey
from intrusting him with the care of the lantern; but with the aid of
the lexicon he had been able to make him comprehend its working, and
under Pomfrey's personal guidance the Indian had once or twice lit the
lamp and set its machinery in motion. It remained for him only to
test Jim's unaided capacity, in case of his own absence or illness. It
happened to be a warm, beautiful sunset, when the afternoon fog had for
once delayed its invasion of the shore-line, that he left the lighthouse
to Jim's undivided care, and reclining on a sand-dune still warm from
the sun, lazily watched the result of Jim's first essay. As the twilight
deepened, and the first flash of the lantern strove with the dying
glories of the sun, Pomfrey presently became aware that he was not the
only watcher. A little gray figure creeping on all fours suddenly glided
out of the shadow of another sand-dune and then halted, falling back on
its knees, gazing fixedly at the growing light. It was the woman he had
seen. She was not a dozen yards away, and in her eagerness and utter
absorption in the light had evidently overlooked him. He could see
her face distinctly, her lips parted half in wonder, half with the
breathless absorption of a devotee. A faint sense of disappointment came
over him. It was not HIM she was watching, but the light! As it swelled
out over the darkening gray sand she turned as if to watch its effect
around her, and caught sight of Pomfrey. With a little startled cry--the
first she had uttered--she darted away. He did not follow. A moment
before, when he first saw her, an Indian salutation which he had
learned from Jim had risen to his lips, but in the odd feeling which her
fascination of the light had caused him he had not spoken. He watched
her bent figure scuttling away like some frightened animal, with a
critical consciousness that she was really scarce human, and went back
to the lighthouse. He would not run after her again! Yet that evening he
continued to think of her, and recalled her voice, which struck him now
as having been at once melodious and childlike, and wished he had at
least spoken, and perhaps elicited a reply.
He did not, however, haunt the sweat-house near the river again. Yet he
still continued his lessons with Jim, and in this way, perhaps, although
quite unpremeditatedly, enlisted a humble ally. A week passed in which
he had not alluded to her, when one morning, as he was returning from a
row, Jim met him mysteriously on the beach.
“S'pose him come slow, slow,” said Jim gravely, airing his newly
acquired English; “make no noise--plenty catchee Indian maiden.” The
last epithet was the polite lexicon equivalent of squaw.
Pomfrey, not entirely satisfied in his mind, nevertheless softly
followed the noiselessly gliding Jim to the lighthouse. Here Jim
cautiously opened the door, motioning Pomfrey to enter.
The base of the tower was composed of two living rooms, a storeroom and
oil-tank. As Pomfrey entered, Jim closed the door softly behind him.
The abrupt transition from the glare of the sands and sun to the
semi-darkness of the storeroom at first prevented him from seeing
anything, but he was instantly distracted by a scurrying flutter and
wild beating of the walls, as of a caged bird. In another moment
he could make out the fair stranger, quivering with excitement,
passionately dashing at the barred window, the walls, the locked door,
and circling around the room in her desperate attempt to find an egress,
like a captured seagull. Amazed, mystified, indignant with Jim, himself,
and even his unfortunate captive, Pomfrey called to her in Chinook to
stop, and going to the door, flung it wide open. She darted by him,
raising her soft blue eyes for an instant in a swift, sidelong glance of
half appeal, half-frightened admiration, and rushed out into the open.
But here, to his surprise, she did not run away. On the contrary, she
drew herself up with a dignity that seemed to increase her height, and
walked majestically towards Jim, who at her unexpected exit had suddenly
thrown himself upon the sand, in utterly abject terror and supplication.
She approached him slowly, with one small hand uplifted in a menacing
gesture. The man writhed and squirmed before her. Then she turned,
caught sight of Pomfrey standing in the doorway, and walked quietly
away. Amazed, yet gratified with this new assertion of herself, Pomfrey
respectfully, but alas! incautiously, called after her. In an instant,
at the sound of his voice, she dropped again into her slouching Indian
trot and glided away over the sandhills.
Pomfrey did not add any reproof of his own to the discomfiture of his
Indian retainer. Neither did he attempt to inquire the secret of this
savage girl's power over him. It was evident he had spoken truly when he
told his master that she was of a superior caste. Pomfrey recalled her
erect and indignant figure standing over the prostrate Jim, and was
again perplexed and disappointed at her sudden lapse into the timid
savage at the sound of his voice. Would not this well-meant but
miserable trick of Jim's have the effect of increasing her unreasoning
animal-like distrust of him? A few days later brought an unexpected
answer to his question.
It was the hottest hour of the day. He had been fishing off the reef
of rocks where he had first seen her, and had taken in his line and was
leisurely pulling for the lighthouse. Suddenly a little musical cry not
unlike a bird's struck his ear. He lay on his oars and listened. It was
repeated; but this time it was unmistakably recognizable as the voice of
the Indian girl, although he had heard it but once. He turned eagerly
to the rock, but it was empty; he pulled around it, but saw nothing.
He looked towards the shore, and swung his boat in that direction,
when again the cry was repeated with the faintest quaver of a laugh,
apparently on the level of the sea before him. For the first time he
looked down, and there on the crest of a wave not a dozen yards ahead,
danced the yellow hair and laughing eyes of the girl. The frightened
gravity of her look was gone, lost in the flash of her white teeth and
quivering dimples as her dripping face rose above the sea. When their
eyes met she dived again, but quickly reappeared on the other bow,
swimming with lazy, easy strokes, her smiling head thrown back over
her white shoulder, as if luring him to a race. If her smile was a
revelation to him, still more so was this first touch of feminine
coquetry in her attitude. He pulled eagerly towards her; with a few long
overhand strokes she kept her distance, or, if he approached too near,
she dived like a loon, coming up astern of him with the same childlike,
mocking cry. In vain he pursued her, calling her to stop in her own
tongue, and laughingly protested; she easily avoided his boat at every
turn. Suddenly, when they were nearly abreast of the river estuary,
she rose in the water, and, waving her little hands with a gesture of
farewell, turned, and curving her back like a dolphin, leaped into the
surging swell of the estuary bar and was lost in its foam. It would have
been madness for him to have attempted to follow in his boat, and he
saw that she knew it. He waited until her yellow crest appeared in the
smoother water of the river, and then rowed back. In his excitement and
preoccupation he had quite forgotten his long exposure to the sun
during his active exercise, and that he was poorly equipped for the cold
sea-fog which the heat had brought in earlier, and which now was quietly
obliterating sea and shore. This made his progress slower and more
difficult, and by the time he had reached the lighthouse he was chilled
to the bone.
The next morning he woke with a dull headache and great weariness, and
it was with considerable difficulty that he could attend to his duties.
At nightfall, feeling worse, he determined to transfer the care of the
light to Jim, but was amazed to find that he had disappeared, and what
was more ominous, a bottle of spirits which Pomfrey had taken from his
locker the night before had disappeared too. Like all Indians, Jim's
rudimentary knowledge of civilization included “fire-water;” he
evidently had been tempted, had fallen, and was too ashamed or too drunk
to face his master. Pomfrey, however, managed to get the light in order
and working, and then, he scarcely knew how, betook himself to bed in
a state of high fever. He turned from side to side racked by pain, with
burning lips and pulses. Strange fancies beset him; he had noticed when
he lit his light that a strange sail was looming off the estuary--a
place where no sail had ever been seen or should be--and was relieved
that the lighting of the tower might show the reckless or ignorant
mariner his real bearings for the “Gate.” At times he had heard voices
above the familiar song of the surf, and tried to rise from his bed, but
could not. Sometimes these voices were strange, outlandish, dissonant,
in his own language, yet only partly intelligible; but through them
always rang a single voice, musical, familiar, yet of a tongue not his
own--hers! And then, out of his delirium--for such it proved afterwards
to be--came a strange vision. He thought that he had just lit the light
when, from some strange and unaccountable reason, it suddenly became dim
and defied all his efforts to revive it. To add to his discomfiture,
he could see quite plainly through the lantern a strange-looking vessel
standing in from the sea. She was so clearly out of her course for the
Gate that he knew she had not seen the light, and his limbs trembled
with shame and terror as he tried in vain to rekindle the dying light.
Yet to his surprise the strange ship kept steadily on, passing the
dangerous reef of rocks, until she was actually in the waters of the
bay. But stranger than all, swimming beneath her bows was the golden
head and laughing face of the Indian girl, even as he had seen it the
day before. A strange revulsion of feeling overtook him. Believing that
she was luring the ship to its destruction, he ran out on the beach
and strove to hail the vessel and warn it of its impending doom. But he
could not speak--no sound came from his lips. And now his attention was
absorbed by the ship itself. High-bowed and pooped, and curved like the
crescent moon, it was the strangest craft that he had ever seen. Even
as he gazed it glided on nearer and nearer, and at last beached itself
noiselessly on the sands before his own feet. A score of figures
as bizarre and outlandish as the ship itself now thronged its high
forecastle--really a castle in shape and warlike purpose--and leaped
from its ports. The common seamen were nearly naked to the waist; the
officers looked more like soldiers than sailors. What struck him more
strangely was that they were one and all seemingly unconscious of the
existence of the lighthouse, sauntering up and down carelessly, as if on
some uninhabited strand, and even talking--so far as he could understand
their old bookish dialect--as if in some hitherto undiscovered land.
Their ignorance of the geography of the whole coast, and even of the sea
from which they came, actually aroused his critical indignation; their
coarse and stupid allusions to the fair Indian swimmer as the “mermaid”
that they had seen upon their bow made him more furious still. Yet
he was helpless to express his contemptuous anger, or even make them
conscious of his presence. Then an interval of incoherency and utter
blankness followed. When he again took up the thread of his fancy
the ship seemed to be lying on her beam ends on the sand; the strange
arrangement of her upper deck and top-hamper, more like a dwelling than
any ship he had ever seen, was fully exposed to view, while the seamen
seemed to be at work with the rudest contrivances, calking and scraping
her barnacled sides. He saw that phantom crew, when not working, at
wassail and festivity; heard the shouts of drunken roisterers; saw the
placing of a guard around some of the most uncontrollable, and later
detected the stealthy escape of half a dozen sailors inland, amidst the
fruitless volley fired upon them from obsolete blunderbusses. Then
his strange vision transported him inland, where he saw these seamen
following some Indian women. Suddenly one of them turned and ran
frenziedly towards him as if seeking succor, closely pursued by one of
the sailors. Pomfrey strove to reach her, struggled violently with the
fearful apathy that seemed to hold his limbs, and then, as she uttered
at last a little musical cry, burst his bonds and--awoke!
As consciousness slowly struggled back to him, he could see the bare
wooden-like walls of his sleeping-room, the locker, the one window
bright with sunlight, the open door of the tank-room, and the little
staircase to the tower. There was a strange smoky and herb-like smell in
the room. He made an effort to rise, but as he did so a small sunburnt
hand was laid gently yet restrainingly upon his shoulder, and he heard
the same musical cry as before, but this time modulated to a girlish
laugh. He raised his head faintly. Half squatting, half kneeling by his
bed was the yellow-haired stranger.
With the recollection of his vision still perplexing him, he said in a
weak voice, “Who are you?”
Her blue eyes met his own with quick intelligence and no trace of her
former timidity. A soft, caressing light had taken its place. Pointing
with her finger to her breast in a childlike gesture, she said,
“Me--Olooya.”
“Olooya!” He remembered suddenly that Jim had always used that word in
speaking of her, but until then he had always thought it was some Indian
term for her distinct class.
“Olooya,” he repeated. Then, with difficulty attempting to use her own
tongue, he asked, “When did you come here?”
“Last night,” she answered in the same tongue. “There was no witch-fire
there,” she continued, pointing to the tower; “when it came not, Olooya
came! Olooya found white chief sick and alone. White chief could not get
up! Olooya lit witch-fire for him.”
“You?” he repeated in astonishment. “I lit it myself.”