There was a shallow space beneath a tray of color-tubes in the very bottom of Marian's paint-box. There, on leaving Cape Prince of Wales, she had stowed the blue envelope addressed to Phi Beta Ki. She had not done this without misgivings. Disturbing thoughts had come to her. Was it the right thing to do? Was it safe? The latter question had come to her with great force when she saw the grizzled miner's face framed in the porthole of that schooner.
But from the day they landed at Whaling, on the mainland of Siberia, all thoughts of the letter and the two claimants for its possession were completely crowded from her mind.
Never in all her adventurous life had Marian experienced anything quite so thrilling as this life with the Chukches of the Arctic coast of Siberia.
In Alaska the natives had had missionaries and teachers among them for thirty years. They had been Americanized and, in a sense, Christianized. The development of large mining centers to which they journeyed every summer to beg and barter had tended to rob them of the romantic wildness of their existence. But here, here where no missionaries had been allowed nor teachers been sent, where gold gleamed still ungathered in the beds of the rivers, here the natives still dwelt in their dome-like houses of poles and skins. Here they fared boldly forth in search of the dangerous walrus and white bear and the monstrous whale. Here they made strange fire to the spirits of the monsters they had slaughtered, and spoke in grave tones of the great spirit that had come down from the moon in the form of a raven with a beak of old ivory.
It is little wonder that Marian forgot all thought of fear amid such surroundings, as she worked industriously at the sketches which were to furnish her with three years of wonderful study under great masters.
But one day, after six weeks of veritable dream life, as she lifted the tray to her paint-box her eyes fell on that blue envelope. Instantly a flood of remembrance rushed through her mind; the frank-faced college boy, the angry miner, old Rover, the dog, who, sleek and fat on whale meat, lay curled up beside her, then again the grizzled face of the miner framed in a port-hole; all these passed before her mind's vision and left her chilled.
Her hand trembled. She could not control her brush. The sketch of two native women in deerskin unionsuits, their brown shoulders bared, working at the task of splitting walrus skins, went unfinished while she took a long walk down the beach.
That very evening she had news that caused her blood to chill again. A native had come from East Cape, the next village to the south. He had seen a white man there, a full-bearded man of middle age. He had said that he intended coming to Whaling in a few days. He had posed among the natives as a spirit-doctor and had, according to reports, worked many wonderful cures by his incantations. Three whales had come into the hands of the East Cape hunters. This was an excellent catch and had been taken as a good omen; the bearded stranger was doubtless highly favored by the spirits of dead whales.
"I wish our skin-boat would come for us," said Lucile suddenly, as they talked of it in the privacy of their tent.
"But it won't, not for three weeks yet. That was the agreement."
"I know."
"And we haven't a wireless to call them with. Besides, my sketches are not nearly complete."
"I know," said Lucile, her chin in her hands. "But, all the same, that man makes me afraid."
"Well, I'll hurry my sketches, but that won't bring the boat any sooner."
Had Marian known the time she would have for sketching, she might not have done them so rapidly. As it was, she worked the whole long eighteen-hour days through.
In the meantime, chill winds began sweeping down from the north. Still the bearded white man did not come to Whaling, but every day brought fresh reports of the good fortune of the people of East Cape. They had captured a fourth whale, then a fifth. Their food for the winter was secured. Whale meat was excellent food. They would have an abundance of whale-bone to trade for flour, sugar and tea.
But if the East Capers were favored, the men of Whaling were not. One lone whale, and that a small one, was their total take. Witch-doctors began declaring that the presence of strange, white-faced women in their midst was displeasing to the spirits of dead whales. The making of the images of the people on canvas was also sure to bring disaster.
As reports of this dissatisfaction came to the ears of the girls, they began straining their eyes for a square sail on the horizon. Still their boat did not come.
Then came the crowning disaster of the year. The walrus herd, on which the natives based their last hope, passed south along the coast of Alaska instead of Siberia. Their caches were left empty. Only the winter's supply of white bear and seal could save them from starvation.
"Dezra! Dezra!" (It is enough!) the natives whispered among themselves.
The day after the return of the walrus canoes Marian and Lucile went for a long walk down the beach.
Upon rounding a point in returning Marian suddenly gave a gasp. "Look,Lucile! It's gone—our tent!"
"Gone!" exclaimed Lucile unbelievingly.
"I wonder what—"
"Look, Marian; the whole village!"
"Let's run."
"Where to? We'd starve in two days, or freeze. Come on. They won't hurt us."
With anxious hearts and trembling footsteps they approached the solid line of fur-clad figures which stretched along the southern outskirts of the village.
As they came close they heard one word repeated over and over: "Dezra!Dezra!" (Enough! Enough!)
And as the natives almost chanted this single word, they pointed to a sled on which the girls' belongings had been neatly packed. To the sled three dogs were hitched, two young wolf-hounds with Rover as leader.
"They want us to go," whispered Lucile.
"Yes, and where shall we go?"
"East Cape is the only place."
"And that miner?"
"It may not be he."
Three times Marian tried to press her way through the line. Each time the line grew more dense at the point she approached. Not a hand was laid upon her; she could not go through, that was all. The situation thrilled as much as it troubled her. Here was a people kind at heart but superstitious. They believed that their very existence depended upon getting these two strangers from their midst. What was there to do but go?
They went, and all through the night they assisted the little dog-team to drag the heavy load over the first thin snow of autumn. Over and over again Marian blessed the day she had been kind to old Rover because he was a white man's dog, for he was the pluckiest puller of them all.
Just as dawn streaked the east they came in sight of what appeared to be a rude shack built of boards. As they came closer they could see that some of the boards had been painted and some had not. Some were painted halfway across, and some only in patches of a foot or two. They had been hastily thrown together. The whole effect, viewed at a distance, resembled nothing so much as a crazy-quilt.
"Must have been built from the wreckage of a house," said Lucile.
"Yes, or a boat."
"A boat? Yes, look; there it is out there, quite a large one. It's stranded on the sandbar and half broken up."
The girls paused in consternation. It seemed they were hedged in on all sides by perils. To go back was impossible. To go forward was to throw themselves upon the mercies of a gang of rough seamen. To pass around the cabin was only to face the bearded stranger, who, they had reason to believe, was none other than the man who had demanded the blue envelope.
A few minutes' debate brought them to a decision. They would go straight on to the cabin.
"Mush, Rover! Mush!" Marian threw her tired shoulders into the improvised harness, and once more they moved slowly forward.
It was with wildly beating hearts that they eventually rounded the corner of the cabin and came to a stand by the door. At once an exclamation escaped their lips:
"Empty! Deserted!"
And so it proved. Snow that had fallen two days before lay piled within the half-open doorway. No sign of occupation was to be found within save a great rusty galley range, two rickety chairs, an improvised table, two rusty kettles and a huge frying-pan.
"They have given the ship up as a total loss, and have left in dories or skin-boats," said Marian.
"Yes," agreed Lucile. "Wanted to get across the Straits before the coming of the White Line."
The "coming of the White Line." Marian started. She knew what that meant far better than Lucile did. She had lived in Alaska longer, had seen it oftener. Now she thought what it would mean to them if it came before the skin-boat came for them. And that skin-boat? What would happen when it came to Whaling? Would the Chukches tell them in which direction they had gone? And if they did, would the Eskimo boatmen set their sail and go directly to East Cape? If they did, would they miss this diminutive cabin standing back as it did from the shore, and seeming but a part of the sandbar?
"We'll put up a white flag, a skirt or something, on the peak of the cabin," she said, half talking to herself.
"Do you think we ought to go right on to East Cape?" said Lucile.
"We can't decide that now," said Marian. "We need food and sleep and the dogs need rest."
Some broken pieces of drift were piled outside the cabin. These made a ready fire. They were soon enjoying a feast of fried fish and canned baked beans. Then, with their water-soaked mucklucks (skin-boots) and stockings hanging by the fire, they threw deerskin on the rude bunk attached to the wall and were soon fast asleep.
Out on the wreck, some two hundred yards from shore, a figure emerged from a small cabin aft. The stern of the ship had been carried completely about by the violence of the waves. It had left this little cabin, formerly the wireless cabin, high and dry.
The person came out upon the deck and scanned the horizon. Suddenly his eyes fell upon the cabin and the strange white signal which the girls had set fluttering there before they went to sleep.
Sliding a native skin-kiak down from the deck, he launched it, then leaping into the narrow seat, began paddling rapidly toward land.
Having beached his kiak, he hurried toward the cabin. His hand was on the latch, when he chanced to glance up at the white emblem of distress which floated over his head.
His hand dropped to his side; his mouth flew open. An expression of amazement spread over his face.
"Jumpin' Jupiter!" he muttered beneath his breath.
He beat a hasty retreat. Once in his kiak he made double time back to the wreck.
Marian was the first to awaken in the cabin. By the dull light that shone through the cracks, she could tell that it was growing dark.
Springing from her bunk, she put her hand to the latch. Hardly had she done this than the door flew open with a force that threw her back against the opposite wall. Fine particles of snow cut her face. The wind set every loose thing in the cabin bobbing and fluttering. The skirt they had attached to a stout pole as a signal was booming overhead like a gun.
"Wow! A blizzard!" she groaned.
Seizing the door, she attempted to close it.
Twice the violence of the storm threw her back.
When at last her efforts had been rewarded with success, she turned to rouse her companion.
"Lucile! Lucile! Wake up? A blizzard!"
Lucile turned over and groaned. Then she opened her eyes.
"Wha—wha—" she droned sleepily.
"A blizzard! A blizzard from the north!"
Lucile sat up quickly.
"From the north!" she exclaimed, fully awake in an instant. "The ice?"
"Perhaps."
"And if it comes?"
"We're stuck, that's all, in Siberia for nine months. Won't dare try to cross the Straits on the ice. No white man has ever done it, let alone a woman. Well," she smiled, "we've got food for five days, and five days is a long time. We'd better try to bring in some wood, and get the dogs in here; they'd freeze out there."
Three days the blizzard raged about the cabin where Lucile and Marian had found shelter. Such a storm at this season of the year had not been known on the Arctic for more than twenty years.
For three days the girls shivered by the galley range, husbanding their little supply of food, and hoping for something to turn up when the storm was over. Just what that something might be neither of them could have told.
The third day broke clear and cold with the wind still blowing a gale. Lucile was the first to throw open the door. As it came back with a bang, something fell from the beam above and rattled to the floor.
She stooped to pick it up.
"Look, Marian!" she exclaimed. "A key! A big brass key!"
Marian examined it closely.
"What can it belong to?"
"The wreck, perhaps."
"Probably."
"Looks like a steward's pass-key."
"But what would they save it for? You don't think—"
"If we could get out to the wreck we'd see."
"Yes, but we can't. There—"
"Look, Marian!" Lucile's eyes were large and wild.
"The white line!" gasped Marian, gripping her arm.
It was true. Before them lay the dark ocean still flecked with foam, but at the horizon gleaming whiter than burnished silver, straight, distinct, unmistakable, was a white line.
"And that means—"
"We're trapped!"
Lucile sank weakly into a chair. Marian began pacing the floor.
"Anyway," she exclaimed at last, "I can paint it. It will make a wonderful study."
Suiting action to words, she sought out her paint-box and was soon busy with a sketch, which, developing bit by bit, or rather, seeming to evolve out of nothing, showed a native dressed in furs, shading his eyes to scan the dark, tossing ocean. And beyond, the object of his gaze, was the silvery line. When she had finished, she playfully inscribed a title at the bottom:
"The Coming of the White Line."
As she put her paints away, something caught her eye. It was one corner of the blue envelope with the strange address upon it.
"Ah, there you are still," she sighed. "And there you will remain for nine months unless I miss my guess. I wish I hadn't kept my promise to the college boy; wish I'd left you in the pigeon-hole at Cape Prince of Wales."
Since the air was too chill, the wind too keen for travel, the girls slept that night in the cabin. They awoke to a new world. The first glimpse outside the cabin brought surprised exclamations to their lips. In a single night the world appeared to have been transformed. The "white line" was gone. So, too, was the ocean. Before them, as far as the eye could reach, lay a mass of yellow lights and purple shadows, ice-fields that had buried the sea. Only one object stood out, black, bleak and bare before them—the hull of the wrecked and abandoned ship.
"Look!" said Lucile suddenly, "we can go out to the ship over the ice-floe!"
"Let's do it," said Marian enthusiastically. "Perhaps there's some sort of a solution to our problem there."
They were soon threading their way in and out among the ice-piles which were already solidly attaching themselves to the sand beneath the shallow water.
And now they reached a spot where the water was deeper, where ice-cakes, some small as a kitchen floor, some large as a town lot, jostled and ground one upon another.
"Wo-oo, I don't like it!" exclaimed Lucile, as she leaped a narrow chasm of dark water.
"We'll soon be there," trilled her companion. "Just watch your step, that's all."
They pushed on, leaping from cake to cake. Racing across a broad ice-pan, now skirting a dark pool, now clambering over a pile of ice ground fine, they made their way slowly but surely toward their goal.
"Listen!" exclaimed Marian, stopping dead in her tracks.
"What is it?" asked Lucile, her voice quivering with alarm.
A strange, wild, weird sound came to them across the floe, a grinding, rushing, creaking, moaning sound that increased in volume as the voice of a cyclone increases.
Only a second elapsed before they knew. Then with a cry of terror Marian dragged her companion to the center of the ice-pan and pulled her flat to its surface. From somewhere, far out to sea, a giant tidal wave was sweeping through the ice-floe. Marian had seen it. The mountain of ice which it bore on its crest seemed as high as the solid ridge of rock behind them on the land. And with its weird, wild, rushing scream of grinding and breaking ice, it was traveling toward them. It had the speed of the wind, the force of an avalanche. When it came, what then?
With a rush the wild terror of the Arctic sea burst upon them. It lifted the giant ice-pan weighing hundreds of tons, tilted it to a dangerous angle, then dropped from beneath it. Marian's heart stopped beating as she felt the downward rush of the avalanche of ice. The next instant she felt it crumble like an egg-shell. It had broken at the point where they lay. With a warning cry of terror she sprang to her feet and pitched forward.
The cry was too late. As she rose unsteadily to her knees, she saw a dark brown bulk topple at the edge of the cake, then roll like a log into the dark pool of water which appeared where the cake had parted. That object was Lucile. Dead or alive? Marian could not tell. But whether dead or alive she had fallen into the stinging Arctic brine. What chance could there be for her life?
For the time being the ice-field was quiet. The tidal wave had spent its force on the sandy beach.
That other, less violent disturbances, would follow the first, the girl knew right well. Hastily creeping to the brink of the dark pool, she strained her eyes for sight of a floating bit of cloth, a waving hand. There was none. Despair gripped her heart. Still she waited, and as she waited, there came the distant sound, growing ever louder, of another onrushing tide.
When Lucile went down into the dark pool she was not dead. She was conscious and very much alive. Very conscious she was, too, of the peril of her situation. Should that chasm close before she rose, or as she rose, she was doomed. In one case she would drown, in the other she would be crushed.
Down, down she sank. But the water was salt and buoyant. Now she felt herself rising. Holding her breath she looked upward. A narrow ribbon of black was to the right of her.
"That will be the open water," was her mental comment. "Must swim for it."
She was a strong swimmer, but her heavy fur garments impeded her. The sting of the water imperiled her power to remain conscious. Yet she struggled even as she rose.
Just when Marian had given up hope, she saw a head shoot above the water, then a pair of arms. The next instant she gripped both her companion's wrists and lifted as she never lifted before. There was wild terror in her eye. The roar of the second wave was drumming in her ears.
She was not a second too soon. Hardly had she dragged the half-unconscious girl from the pool than it closed with a grinding crash, and the ice-pan again tilted high in air.
The strain of this onrush was not so great. The cake held together.Gradually it settled back to its place.
Marian glanced in the direction of the wreck. They were very much nearer to it than to the shore. She thought she saw a small cabin in the stern. Lucile must be relieved of her water soaked and fast-freezing garments at once.
"Can you walk?" she asked as Lucile staggered dizzily to her feet. "I'll help you. The wreck—we must get there. You must struggle or you'll freeze."
Lucile did try. She fought as she had never fought before, against the stiffening garments, the aching lungs and muscles, but most of all against the almost unconquerable desire to sleep.
Foot by foot, yard by yard, they made their way across the treacherous tangle of ice-piles which was still in restless motion.
Now they had covered a quarter of the distance, now half, now three-quarters. And now, with an exultant cry, Marian dragged her half-unconscious companion upon the center of the deck.
"There's a cabin aft," she whispered, "a warm cabin. We'll soon be there."
"Soon be there," Lucile echoed faintly.
The climbing of the long, slanting, slippery deck was a terrible ordeal. More than once Marian despaired. At last they stood before the door. She put a hand to the knob. A cry escaped her lips. The cabin door was locked.
Dark despair gripped her heart. But only for an instant.
"Lucile, the key! The key we found in the cabin! Where is it?"
"The key—the key?" Lucile repeated dreamily.
"Oh, yes, the key. Why, that's not any good."
"Yes, it is! It is!"
"It's in my parka pocket."
The next moment Marian was prying the key from a frozen pocket, and the next after that she was dragging Lucile into the cabin.
In one corner of the cabin stood a small oil-heater. Above it was a match-box. With a cry of joy Marian found matches, lighted one, tried the stove, found it filled with oil. A bright blaze rewarded her efforts. There was heat, heat that would save her companion's life.
She next attacked the frozen garments. Using a knife where nothing else would avail, she stripped the clothing away until at last she fell to chafing the white and chilled limbs of the girl, who still struggled bravely against the desire to sleep.
A half-hour later Lucile was sleeping naturally in a bunk against the upper wall of the room. She was snuggled deep in the interior of a mammoth deerskin sleeping-bag, while her garments were drying beside the kerosene stove. Marian was drowsing half-asleep by the fire.
Suddenly, she was aroused by a voice. It was a man's voice. She was startled.
"Please," the voice said, "may I come in? That's supposed to be my cabin, don't you know? But I don't want to be piggish."
Marian stared wildly about her. For a second she was quite speechless.Then she spoke:
"Wait—wait a minute; I'm coming out."
When Marian heard the voice outside the cabin on the wreck, she realized that a new problem, a whole set of new problems had arisen. Here was a man. Who was he? Could he be the grizzled miner who had demanded the blue envelope? If so, what then? Was there more than one man? What was to come of it all, anyway?
All this sped through her mind while she was drawing on her parka. The next moment she had opened the door, stepped out and closed the door behind her.
"Ah! I have the pleasure—"
"You?" Marian gasped.
For a second she could say no more. Before her, dressed in a jaunty parka of Siberian squirrel-skin, was her frank-faced college boy, he of the Phi Beta Ki.
"Why, yes," he said rather awkwardly, "it is I. Does it seem so strange? Well, yes, I dare say it does. Suppose you sit down and I'll tell you about it."
Marian sat down on a section of the broken rail.
"Well, you see," he began, a quizzical smile playing about his lips, "when I had completed my—my—well, my mission to the north of Cape Prince of Wales, it was too late to return by dog-team. I waited for a boat. I arrived at the P. O. you used to keep. You were gone. So was my letter."
"Yes, you said—"
"That was quite all right; the thing I wanted you to do. But you see that letter is mighty important. I had to follow. This craft we're sitting on was coming this way. I took passage. She ran into a mess of bad luck. First we were picked up by an ice-floe and carried far into the Arctic Ocean. When at last we poled our way out of that, we were caught by a storm and carried southwest with such violence that we were thrown upon this sandbar. The ship broke up some, but we managed to stick to her until the weather calmed. We went ashore and threw some of the wreckage into the form of a cabin. You've been staying there, I guess." He grinned.
Marian nodded.
"Well, the ship was hopeless. Natives came in their skin-boats fromEast Cape."
"East Cape? How far—how far is that?"
"Perhaps ten miles. Why?"
He studied the girl's startled face.
"Nothing; only didn't a white man come with the natives?"
"A white man?"
"I've heard there was one staying there."
"No, he didn't come."
Marian settled back in her seat.
"Well," he went on, "the captain of this craft traded everything on board to the natives for furs; everything but some food. I bought that from him. You see, they were determined to get away as soon as possible. I was just as determined to stay. I didn't know exactly where you were, but was bound I'd find you and—and the letter." He paused.
"By the way," he said, struggling to conceal his intense interest, "have—have you the letter?"
Marian nodded. "It is in my paint-box over in the cabin."
The boy sprang eagerly to his feet. "May we not go fetch it?"
"I can't leave my friend."
"Then may I go?" He was eager as a child.
Then after a second, "Why, by Jove! I'm selfish. Haven't given you a chance to say a thing. Perhaps your friend's in trouble. Of course she is, or she'd be out here before this. What is it? Can I help you?"
"She's only chilled and recovering from a trifling shock. The tidal wave threw her into the sea."
"Oh!" The boy stood thinking for a moment. "Do—do you intend to remain in Siberia all winter?"
"We had no such intentions when we came, but the storm and the white line caught us. No more boats now."
"The white line of ice from the north? No more boats this season?"
Then quickly, "Say, you two can keep my cabin. The shack on the beach is poor, and I dare say you haven't much food. There's a bunk below the deck where I can be quite comfortable. We'll be snug as a bug in a bushel basket."
Marian lifted a hand in feeble protest. What was the use? They were trapped in Siberia. Here was an American who seemed at least to be a friend.
"I'll go for your things. You stay here. Any dogs?"
"Three."
"Good! I'll be back quicker than you think."
He was away. Bounding from ice-cake to ice-cake he soon disappeared.Marian turned to enter the cabin.
Lucile was still asleep. Marian sat down to think. She was not certain that their position was at all improved. They knew so little of the young stranger. She felt almost resentful at his occupation of the wireless cabin. They could have been quite cozy there alone. Then again, in quite another mood, she was glad the stranger was here; he might suggest a means of escape from the exile and might assist in carrying it out. At any rate, if they were forced to go to East Cape for food, they would not be afraid to go under his guard.
She fell to wondering if he had reached the shore safely. Leaving the cabin, she climbed to the highest point on the rail. There she stood for some time scanning the horizon.
"Strange he'd be way down there!" she murmured, at last. "Quarter of a mile south of the cabin. Perhaps the ice carried him south."
The distance was so great she could distinguish a figure, a mere speck, moving in and out among the ice-piles that lined the shore.
For a moment she rested her eyes by studying the ship's deck. Then again she gazed away.
"Why," she exclaimed suddenly, "he has reached the cabin! Must have run every step of the way!"
In the cabin on shore, the young stranger began packing the girl's possessions preparatory to putting them on the sled.
"Some careless housekeeper!" he grumbled as he gathered up articles of clothing from every corner of the room, and, having straightened out Marian's paint-box, closed its cover down with a click. He arrived at the schooner an hour later. The sled load was soon stowed away in the wireless cabin.
He brought a quantity of food, canned vegetables, bacon, hardtack, coffee and sugar from his store below. Then he stood by the door.
Marian was bustling about the cabin, putting things to rights.
"Wants to make a good impression," was the young man's mental comment.
Lucile, a trifle pale, was sitting in the corner.
Presently Marian caught sight of him standing there.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "you are waiting for your reward?"
"Any time," he smiled.
"You shall have it right now—the blue envelope."
She seized her paint-box, and throwing back the cover lifted the paint-tray. Then from her lips escaped one word:
"Gone!"
He sprang eagerly forward.
"Can't be," Lucile breathed.
"Take a good look," the boy suggested.
Marian inspected the box thoroughly.
"No," she said with an air of finality, "it's not here."
"Your—er—the paint-box was a bit disarranged," he stammered.
"Disarranged?"
"Well, not in the best of order. Letter might have dropped out in the cabin. I dare say it's on the floor back there. Had you seen it lately?"
"Only this morning. I can't understand about the box. The wind must have blown it down, or something."
"I dare say." The boy smiled good-naturedly as he recalled the disordered room.
"I'll hop right back and look for it." He was away like a flash.
It was with a very dejected air that he returned. Marian could not tell whether it was genuine or feigned. Had he been in such haste to secure the letter that he had taken it at once from the box? Was all his later action mere stage-play?
"No," he said, bringing forth a forlorn smile, "I couldn't find it.It's not there."
That evening, after a supper served on a small tip-down table in the wireless cabin, after the boy had gone to his bunk below, and Lucile had fallen asleep, Marian lay awake a long time puzzling over the mysteries of the past and the problems of the future. Where had the blue envelope disappeared to? Did the boy have it? She resolved to search the cabin on the beach for herself. She felt half-inclined to talk matters over frankly with him. There were mysteries which might be cleared up. She remembered with what astonishing speed he had reached the cabin once he had sprung upon the shore. She remembered, too, how he had spoken of the disordered paint-box. She prided herself on neatness. And that paint-box, was it not her work-shop, her most prized possession? She longed to talk it over with him. But on the other hand, she could not bring herself to feel that her trust in him was fully warranted. She hated above all things to be "taken in." If she discussed all these things with him, and if, at the same time, the letter rested in his pocket, wouldn't she be taken in for fair? Wouldn't she, though?
"No," she pressed her lips tight shut, "no, I won't."
But even as she said this, she saw again the downhearted expression on his face, heard his mournful, "I couldn't find it. It's not there." With that she relented, and ere she slept resolved to take up the matter of the mysterious disappearance with him the first thing in the morning.
But morning found the boy in quite a different mood. He laughed and chatted gayly over his sour-dough pancakes.
"Now you know," he said, as he shoved back his stool, "I like your company awfully well, and I'd like to keep this up indefinitely, but truth is I can't; I've got to get across the Straits."
"We'll be sorry to lose you," laughed Marian; "but just you run along. And when you get there tell the missionary breakfast is ready. Ask him to step over and eat with us."
"No, but I'm serious."
"Then you're crazy. No white man has ever crossed thirty-five miles of floeing ice."
"There's always to be a first. Natives do it, don't they?"
"I've heard they do."
"I can go anywhere a native can, providing he doesn't get out of my sight."
"A guide across the Straits! It's a grand idea!" Marian seized Lucile about the waist and went hopping out on deck. "A guide across the Straits. We'll be home for Christmas dinner yet!"
"What, you don't mean—" The boy stared in astonishment.
"Sure I do. We can go anywhere you can, providing you don't get out of our sight."
"That—why, that will be bully."
He said this with lagging enthusiasm. It was evident that he doubted their power of endurance.
"We'll have to go to East Cape to start," he suggested.
"East Cape?" Marian exclaimed in a startled tone.
"Sure. What's wrong with East Cape?"
"Nothing. Only—only that's where that strange white man is."
"What's so terrible about him?"
Marian hesitated. She had come to the end of a blind alley. Should she tell him of her experience with the miner who demanded the blue envelope, and of her suspicion that this man at East Cape was that same man?
She looked into his frank blue eyes for a moment, then said to herself,"Yes, I will."
She did tell him the whole story. When she had finished, there was a new, a very friendly light in the boy's eyes.
"I say," he exclaimed, "That was bully good of you. It really was.That man—"
He hesitated. Marian thought she was going to be told the whole secret of the blue envelope.
"That man," he repeated, "he won't hurt you. You need have no fear of him. As for yours truly, meaning me, I can take care of myself. We start for East Cape today. What say?"
"All right."
Marian sprang to her feet, and, after imparting the news to Lucile, who had by this time fully recovered from the shock of the previous day, set to work packing their sled for the journey.
All the time she was packing her mind was working. She had meant to discuss the mysterious disappearance of the blue envelope with the college boy. Even as she thought of this, there flashed through her mind the question, "Why is he so cheerful now? Why so anxious to get across the Straits?"
One explanation alone came to her. He had deceived them. The envelope was secure in his possession. It had imparted to him news of great importance. He was eager to cross the Straits and put its instructions into execution. What these instructions might be, she could not tell. The North was a place of rare furs, ivory and much gold. Anything was possible.
"No," she almost exploded between tight-set teeth, "no, I won't talk it over with him, I won't."
One thing, however, she did do. Under pretense of missing some article from her wardrobe when on the beach ready to start for East Cape, she hastened to the cabin on the beach, and executed a quick search for the missing envelope. The search was unrewarded.
One thing, though, arrested her attention for a moment. As she left the cabin she noticed, near the door, the print of a man's skin-boot in the snow. It was an exceedingly large print; such as is made by a careless white man who buys the first badly-made skin-boots offered to him by a native seamstress. The college boy could not have made that track. His skin-boots had been made by some Eskimo woman of no mean ability. She had fitted them to his high-arched and shapely feet, as she might have done had he been her Eskimo husband.
"Oh, well," she exclaimed, as she raced to join her companions, "probably some native who has passed this way."
Even as she said it, she doubted her own judgment. She had never in her life seen a native wear such a clumsy and badly-shaped skin-boot.
It was with a feeling of strange misgiving that Marian found herself on the evening of the day they left the wreck entering the native village of East Cape. Questions continually presented themselves to her mind. What of the bearded stranger? Was he the miner who had demanded the blue envelope? If it were he; if he appeared and once more demanded the letter, what should she say? For any proof ever presented to her, he might be the rightful owner, the real Phi Beta Ki. What could she say to him? And the natives? Had they heard of the misfortunes of the people of Whaling? Would they, too, allow superstitious fear to overcome them? Would they drive the white girls from their midst?
This last problem did not trouble her greatly, however. They would find a guide at once and begin their great adventure of crossing from the Old World to the New on the ice-floe.
An interpreter was not hard to find. Many of the men had sailed onAmerican whalers. They were told by one of these that there was butone man in all the village who ever attempted the dangerous passage ofBering Straits. His name was O-bo-gok.
O-bo-gok was found sitting cross-legged on the sloping floor of his skin-igloo, adjusting a new point to his harpoon.
"You tell him," said the smiling college boy, "that we want to go toCape Prince of Wales. Can he go tomorrow?"
The interpreter threw up his hands in surprise, but eventually delivered his message.
The guide, a swarthy fellow, with shaggy, drooping moustache and a powerful frame, did not look up from his work. He merely grunted.
"He say, that one, no can do," smiled the interpreter.
The college boy was not disturbed. He jingled something in his hand. Marian, who stood beside him, saw that he held three double eagles. She smiled, for she knew that even here the value of yellow disks marked with those strange pictures which Uncle Sam imprints upon them was known.
The man, dropping his harpoon, began to talk rapidly. He waved his hands. He bobbed his head. At last he arose, sprang from the sleeping compartment and began to walk the space before the open fire. He was still talking. It seemed as if he would never run down.
When at last he had finished and had thrown himself once more upon the floor of the sleeping-room, the interpreter began:
"He say, that one, he say, 'Wanna go Cape Prince Wales two month, three month, all right, maybe. Go now? Not go.' He say, that one, 'Wanna go now; never come back.' He say, that one, 'Two, three, four days come ice. Not plenty ice,' say that one. 'Some water, some ice. See water. Too much water. Wanna cross. No cross. Quick starve. Quick freeze.'
"'He say, that one, 'Tide crack spirit all-a-time lift ice, push ice this way, that way. Wanna kill man. No can go.'
"He say, that one, 'Great dead whale spirit wanna lift ice, wanna throw ice this way, that way, all way. Wanna kill man. Man no go Cape Prince Wales.'
"He say, that one, 'Wanna go Cape Prince Wales, mebby two month, mebby three month. Mebby can do. Can't tell,' he say, that one."
The college boy smiled a grim smile and pocketed his gold.
"Which all means," he said, "that the ice is not sufficiently compact, not well enough frozen together for the old boy to risk a passage, and that we'll be obliged to wait until he thinks it's O. K. Probably two or three months. Meanwhile, welcome to our village! Make yourselves at home!" He threw back his shoulders and laughed a boyish laugh.
"Oh!" exclaimed Marian, ready to indulge in a childish bit of weeping.
"Yes," smiled the boy, "but think of the sketches you'll have time to make."
"No canvas," she groaned.
"That's easy. Use squares of this sealskin the women tan white for making slippers."
"The very thing!" exclaimed Marian. She was away at once in search of some of this new style canvas, in her eagerness to be at work on some winter sketches of these most interesting people, quite forgetting the peril of natives, the danger of the food supply giving out, the probability of an unpleasant meeting with the bearded stranger.
Lucile, always of a more practical frame of mind, at once attacked the knotty problem of securing comfort and food for her little party. The question of a warm shelter during these months of sweeping winds and biting frost was solved for them by the aged chief Nepos-sok. He furnished them with a winter igloo. An interesting type of home they found it and one offering great comfort. An outer covering of walrus skin was supported by tall poles set in a semicircle and meeting at the top. The inside of this tepee-like structure was lined with a great circling robe of long-haired deerskin. The hair on these winter skins was two inches long and matted thick as felt. When this lining had been hung, a floor of hand-hewn boards was built across the rear side of the inclosure. This floor, about six by eight feet, was covered with a deerskin rug, over which were thrown lighter robes of soft fawn skin and out-of-season fox skins. Above this floor were hung curtains of deerskin. This sleeping room became a veritable box of long-haired deerskins. When it was completed the girls found it, with a seal oil lamp burning in it, warm and cozy as a steam-heated bedroom.
"Who could dream of anything so comfortable in a wilderness like this?" murmured Lucile before falling asleep in their new home on the first night.
Phi was given a place in the chief's sleeping room.
The space in the igloo before the girls' sleeping room was given over to stores. It was used too as kitchen and dining room. Here, by a snapping fire of dwarf willows, the three of them sat on the edge of the sleeping room floor and munched hardtack or dipped baked beans from tin cans.
The problem of securing a variety of food was a difficult one. The supply from the ship was found to be over-abundant in certain lines and woefully lacking in others: plenty of beans and sweet corn in cans, some flour and baking powder but no lard or bacon; some frozen and worthless potatoes; plenty of jelly in glasses; a hundred pounds of sugar. So it ran. Lucile was hard pressed to know how to cook with no oven in which to do baking and with no lard for shortening.
She had been studying this problem for some time when one day she suddenly exclaimed, "I have it!"
Drawing on her parka she hurried to the chief's igloo and asked for seal oil. Gravely he poured a supply of dark liquid from a wooden container into a tin cup.
Lucile put this to her lips for a taste. The next instant she with great difficulty set the cup on the floor while all her face was distorted with loathing.
"Rotten!" she sputtered. "A year old!"
"Eh—eh," grinned the chief, "always eat 'em so, Chukche." Thoroughly disheartened, she left the igloo. But on her way back she came upon a woman skinning a seal. Seeing the thick layer of fat that was taken from beneath the animal's skin she hastened to trade three cans of beans for it. Bearing this home in triumph she soon had the fat trying out over a slow fire.
Seal oil proved to be quite as good cooking oil as lard. Even doughnuts fried in it were pronounced delicious by the ever-hungry Phi.
Experimenting with native food was interesting. Seal steak was not bad, and seal liver was as good as calf's liver. Polar bear steak and walrus stew were impossible. "Wouldn't even make good hamburger," was Phi's verdict. The boiled flipper of a white-whale was tender as chicken. But when a hind quarter of reindeer meat found its way into the village there was feasting indeed.
In a land so little known as this one does not seek long for opportunities to express strange and unusual things. Marian had not been established a week with Lucile in their igloo, when an unusual opportunity presented itself.
Among the supplies brought from the ship was found a well-equipped medicine-chest. During her long visits in out-of-the-way places, Marian had learned much of the art of administering simple remedies. She had not been in the village three days before her fame as a doctor became known to all the village.
She had learned, with a feeling of great relief, that the bearded stranger who had posed as a witch-doctor had gone away from the village. Whether he had gone toward Whaling, or south to some other village, no one appeared to know. Now that he had departed, it seemed obvious that she was destined to take his place as the village practitioner.
It was during one of her morning "clinics," as she playfully called them, that a native of strange dress brought his little girl to her for treatment. The ailment seemed but a simple cold. Marian prescribed cough syrup and quinine, then called for the next patient. Patients were few that morning. She soon found herself wandering up the single street of the village. There she encountered the strange native and his child.
"Who are they?" she asked of a boy who understood English.
"Reindeer Chukches."
"Reindeer Chukches?" she exclaimed excitedly. "Where do they live?"
"Oh, mebby fifteen miles from here."
"Do they live on the tundra as they used to?"
"Yes."
"Are there many of them?"
"Not now. Many, one time. Now very few. Not many reindeer. Too much not moss. Plenty starve. Plenty die."
"Ask the Chukche," Marian said eagerly, "if I may go home with him to see his people."
The boy spoke for a moment with the grave-visaged stranger.
"He say, that one, he say yes," smiled the boy.
"Tell him I will be back quick." Marian was away like a shot.
Tearing into their igloo she drove Lucile into a score of activities. The medicine chest was filled and closed, paints stowed in their box, garments packed, sleeping-bags rolled up. Then they were away.
Ere she knew it, Lucile was tucked in behind a fleet-footed reindeer, speeding over the low hills.
"Now, please tell me where we are going," she asked with a smile.
"We are going to visit the most unique people in all the world—the Reindeer Chukches. They are almost an extinct race now, but the time was when every clump of willows that lined the banks of the rivers of the far north in Siberia hid one of their igloos, and every hill and tundra fed one of their herds.
"Long before the Eskimos of Alaska thought of herding the reindeer, short-haired deerskin and soft, spotted fawn-skins were traded across Bering Straits and far up along the Alaskan coast. These skins came from the camps of the Reindeer Chukches of Siberia. Many years ago the Mikado of Japan, in the treasure of furs with which he decorated his royal family, besides the mink, ermine and silver fox, had skins of rare beauty, spotted skins, brown, white and black. These were fawn-skins traded from village to village until they reached Japan. They came from the camps of the Reindeer Chukches. And now we are to see them as they were many years ago, for they have not changed. And I am to paint them! Paint them! Think of it!"
"Yes, but," Lucile smiled doubtfully, "supposing the ice gets solid while we're gone. Suppose Phi takes a fancy to cross without us? What then?"
Marian's face sobered for a moment. But the zeal of a born artist and explorer was upon her.
"Oh, fudge!" she exclaimed, "it won't. He won't. I—I—why, I'll hurry. We'll be back at East Cape in no time at all."
No wildest nomadic dream could have exceeded the life which the two girls lived in the weeks that followed.
Trailing a reindeer herd over hills and tundra; camping now in a clump of willows by the glistening ice of a stream, now beneath some shelving rock, and now in the open, wind-swept tundra; eating about an open fire, while the smoke curled from the top of the dome of the tepee-like igloo, they reveled in the strange wildness of it all. Here was a people who paid no rent, no taxes, owned no land yet lived always in abundance. In the box beside the sleeping platform were tea and sugar. Over the fire hung a copper teakettle of ancient design. In the sleeping-box, which was made of long-haired deerskins, were many robes of short-haired deerskin, fawn-skin and Siberian squirrel.
To all these the two girls were more than welcome. Their guide and his daughter did not live alone. A little tribe whose twenty igloos dotted the tundra traveled with him. These people were sometimes in need of simple remedies. For these they were singularly grateful. They, their women and their children, posed untiringly for sketches. But one thing Marian had not taken into consideration; these people seldom visited the village of East Cape. Although she did not know it, their herds were at this time feeding away from this trading metropolis of the Straits region. Each day while she seized every opportunity to sketch and hastened her work as much as she could, found them some ten miles farther from East Cape.
When at last, by signs and such native words as she knew, she indicated to her native friends that she was ready to return to East Cape, they stared at her in astonishment and indicated by a diagram on the snow that they were now at a point three days' journey from that town and that none of them expected to return before the moon was again full.
No amount of gesturing and jabbering could make them understand that it was necessary for the girls to return at once.
"We'll never get back," Marian mourned in despair, "and it's all my fault."
"Oh, we'll make it still," encouraged Lucile, cheerfully. "Probably the Straits are not fully frozen over yet anyway."
However, after a week of inaction, even Lucile lost her cheerful smile.
One morning, after they had reached what appeared to be the final depths of despair, they heard a cry of, "Tomai! Tomai! Tomai," rise in a chorus from among the tents. By this they knew that visitors had arrived. They hurried out to find the villagers grouped about three fur-clad figures standing beside three reindeer hitched to sleds of a strange design.
By a few words and by signs they were made to understand that these people came from a point some two hundred miles farther north, a village on the north coast of Russia.
As ever, eager to look upon some new type, Marian crowded through the throng when, to her immense surprise, the smaller of the three, in reality only a boy, sprang forward, and, kneeling at her feet, kissed the fur fringe of her parka.
This action, so unusual among these natives, struck her dumb. But once he had looked up into her face, she understood all; he was none other than the strange brown boy who had come swimming to them from the sea off the coast of Washington.
She was so surprised and startled at first sight of him that she found herself incapable of action. It seemed to her that she must be seeing a ghost. It appeared entirely incredible that he should be in this out of the way place when they had left him, months before, on a deserted island of Puget Sound.
Her second reaction was one of great joy; here was someone who really owed them a debt of gratitude. Might they not hope to receive assistance from him in solving the problem of making their way to the shore of Bering Straits?
Springing to his feet, the boy mingled native dialect with badly spokenEnglish in his expression of joy at meeting them again.
At last, when the crowd had gone its way and the girls had invited him to their tent, he told them in the few words of English he had learned since seeing them, and with many clever drawings, the story of his adventures.
He was a native of the north coast of Russia; a far away point where white men's boats never come. One whaleship had, however, been carried there by the ice-floes. After trading for the natives' furs and ivory, and having found an open channel of water to the east, the captain had kidnaped him and carried him from his home. He had been made the captain's slave.
So badly was he treated, over-worked, kicked, cuffed and beaten, that when at last he saw land off the coast of Washington, dressed only in his bird-skin suit, he had leaped overboard when no one was looking and had attempted to swim ashore.
The ship had passed on out of sight. He had been swimming for two hours when the girls rescued him from what was almost sure to have been a watery grave, for he was almost ready to give up hope.
He had been missed from the ship and the captain, fearing the strong arm of the law if he were rescued by others, sent three seamen to search for him along the island. How he had fared with these, the girls knew well enough.
After leaving the camp of the girls he had wandered in the woods and along the beach for two weeks. He had at last been picked up by some honest fishermen who turned him over to the revenue cutter which made Alaskan ports. By the cutter he had been carried to Nome and from there made his way, little by little, by skin-boat, dog-team, and reindeer back to his native village. When he had finished telling his story he turned to Marian and said:
"Idel-bene?" (yours) meaning he would like to hear their story.
Marian was not slow in telling their troubles.
"Me, I will take you back," the boy exclaimed as she finished. "To-day we go."
Two hours later, with sleds loaded, they were discussing two possible trails, one leading down a river where blizzards constantly threatened, the other a valley trail through wolf-infested hills. The latter course was finally chosen, since it promised to be the least dangerous at that time of the year. Then they were away.