CARIBOU ISLAND
No place in the heart of North America could be more suited for a real
game of Robinson Crusoe than Caribou Island; but books were scarce in
most American homes of the Colonial period and neither Ray nor Bruce
had ever heard of Crusoe and his island. Nor did they know that the
famous trader Alexander Henry had visited this island only a few years
ago, attracted by the strange name, for Henry had at that time caught
the “mining fever,” and he thought that the “yellow sand” of which the
Indians spoke might be gold. Henry and his companions found the island
well stocked with caribou and provided themselves with plenty of meat;
and since Henry’s time, the island became known as Caribou Island and
as such it appears on all modern maps.
The fog lasted all night and all next day, and the lads felt as if they
and Ganawa were the only people on earth and that they had been cast
away on an island in the sea. Even Ganawa, who was no stranger to
solitude, confessed that he would be afraid without his white son that
could make and sail a white man’s boat, and as the white boys sat and
listened to the lapping of the waves, for Lake Superior like the ocean
is never entirely quiet, and as they tried in vain to peer through the
fog, the words of the Bible ran through their minds: “And the earth was
without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And
the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
The second morning broke clear and warm, and as the lake was quiet, the
three sailors launched their canoe and started to paddle around the
small island. The first thing that attracted their attention was the
host of big rocks, as Ray called them, that they found scattered over
the shallow water south of the island. If they had struck one of them
they might have been wrecked within a stone’s throw of the island.
With eyes and ears keenly alert and with throbbing hearts, the lads
peered toward the land for signs of human beings. Unless they found
some sign of Jack Dutton on this island, they would have to give up the
search. Once Bruce thought he saw a man slip out of the spruce timber,
but it was an animal, a deer. No, it was a caribou, Ganawa told them.
And then Ray spied something that made them all stop. “Look there!
Look!” Ray cried, and pointed to the top of the hill. “There is a rag
tied to a pole. Some man must have been there.”
They landed at once and climbed the hill. They found the signal. It was
a piece of a butternut-dyed shirt. To the pole was also tied a piece of
birch-bark with a message:
“Am stranded here. My partner is gone. I have no ax. Camp on east
shore, near south point. J. D. April 26.”
The lads cheered and danced around the pole and then all of them
started for Jack Dutton’s camp. For the moment all their hardships and
dangers were forgotten.
They found his camp-site, but the camp had been moved, and they found
no message. What did it mean? Had he been taken off by somebody? A man
without an ax cannot build a raft or boat. If he is still on the island
they ought to be able to find his camp-fire. Ganawa knew that there
were several small shallow lakes in the interior, but a man who wishes
to be taken off an island would not camp in the interior. He would set
up his tent or tepee near shore and he would keep a fire going. So the
three men paddled around the whole island and looked sharp for signs of
a camp or a human being. From time to time they sang out Jack Dutton’s
name, but no sign or sound greeted them in reply to their calls except
the echo of their own voices. The mystery, which for a brief hour they
had thought solved, had grown only deeper and darker. Jack Dutton must
either have been taken off the island by some chance trader, or he was
lying dead somewhere in a thicket or swamp of the island. It seemed not
probable that he had been taken off, for so rarely was the solitary
island visited by either Indians or white men that neither traders nor
Indians knew that the island was stocked with caribou. Although the
existence of the island was known to the Indians with whom Alexander
Henry traded, their information was vague and none of them had ever
been to the island.
That evening Ganawa and his sons were more downcast than they had ever
been on their whole long journey. Even the rare treat of sweet tea with
their supper of broiled lake trout failed to revive their spirits. Each
drank his share of the tea, but most of the fine broiled fish was left
on the birch-bark platter. And after the meal was over, hardly a word
was spoken, as each man sat and stared blankly into the fire. And this
time, the spirit of the white lads had even drooped deeper than that of
the old Indian hunter.
“My sons,” he said when he poured water on the camp-fire, “to-morrow we
shall hunt again for Jack Dutton. If he is alive we must find him, and
if he is dead we must find him. If he is alive, maybe Ohnemoosh can
find him, if we cross his tracks.”