CHAPTER XIIILAND AT LAST

Marian brought the electric range up from its hiding. After wiping it dry, she made toast and tea. The first she gave to Lucile. Then, after seeing her eyes close once more in sleep, she shared a scant breakfast with Florence.

“Things are looking better, don’t you think?” she sighed. “I am really beginning to think we’ll get out of this alive. Won’t that be wonderful?”

“Those questions,” smiled Florence, “must be answered one at a time, but I have faith that they will both be answered and that we’ll be back in the dear old city for Christmas.”

“Christmas?”

“Two weeks off. Next week is final exams. We’ve just got to be back for them.”

“In that case let’s have a look at the engine.”

A half hour later the two girls, dressed in greasy overalls, their hair done in knots over their heads, their hands black with oil, might have been seen engaged in the futile attempt to unravel the mysteries of the small gasoline engine, which, in other days, had been used to propel the O Moo when the wind failed to fill her sails.

“We might be able to sail her home,” suggested Marian.

“Might,” said Florence.

Risking a look out on deck, she opened a door. Her eyes swept the space before her. Her lips uttered a low exclamation:

“Gone! Mast, canvas, everything. We can’t sail home, that’s settled.”

* * * * * * * *

Mark Pence, after his strange adventures at the old scow, was marched off to the police station, where he was allowed to doze beside the radiator until morning.

Soon after daybreak he was motioned to a desk, where a sergeant questioned him closely regarding his knowledge of the events of the night and of the Orientals who lived in the old scow.

He was able to tell little enough and to explain next to nothing. When he had told of the disappearance of the O Moo, of the grease on the tracks, of the sample he had saved and of the block of wood with the cross embossed upon it, the officer proposed that they should together make a trip to the beach and go over the grounds.

“But these friends of mine? These girls in the O Moo?” he protested.

“Oh! That!” exclaimed the sergeant. “What could you do? That was reported to the life-saving station hours ago. Best thing you can do is to help us track down the rascals who played such an inhuman trick on your friends.”

“What could have been their motive?” demanded Mark suddenly.

“That,” said the officer, “is a mystery which must be cleared up. We think we know. But you never can tell. Are you ready? We’ll have a cup of coffee before we go.”

A half hour later Mark found himself standing once more before the old scow. In the broad light of day it had lost much of its air of mystery. The door had been left open and had been blown half full of snow. Having climbed over this pile of snow, they entered the hallway and descended the narrow, circular stairs.

A hasty search told them that the place was deserted. A careful examination revealed the fact that the bottom of the scow had been cut away; that a cellar had been dug beneath it, then walled up with cement.

“Regular underground den,” the officer exclaimed. “Must have been a swarm of them.”

“Twenty or thirty, I guess,” said Mark absent-mindedly. He had picked up a clumsily hand-forged ax.

“Guess I’ll take that along,” he said presently.

In another room he found a large iron pot one-third full of a peculiar grease.

“That settles it,” he murmured. “Come on over to my schooner.”

They went to his schooner. A comparison of his sample of grease with that in the iron pot left no doubt as to who had greased the track over which the O Moo had glided to the water. The ax he had brought from the scow had a cross on one side of it, cut no doubt with a chisel when the steel was still hot. The cross embossed on the wood exactly fitted in the cross on the side of the ax.

“They drove the ax in to pull the nails,” Mark explained. “Then when the cleats didn’t give way, they used something to pry the ax loose. That’s how the ax came to leave its mark.”

“You’d have thought the noise would have wakened your friends,” said the officer.

“There was a wild storm. Couldn’t hear anything.”

“Well,” said the sergeant, yawning as he rose, “that fixes something definitely on them. That’s what we’ve been trying to do for some time. Next thing is to catch them.”

“But why did they do it?” insisted Mark.

“Well,” replied the sergeant, “since you’ve helped us and I know you won’t go blabbing, I’ll tell you what we think.”

It was a long story, a story so absorbingly mysterious that Mark started when he looked at the clock and saw that a whole hour had been consumed in the telling of it.

“So that’s that,” smiled the officer as he rose to go. “Tell your lady friends on this O Moo if you like but not anybody else. They’ve got a right to know, I guess, and they’ll keep quiet about it until the thing’s settled for good and all.”

Florence stood upon the deck. The storm had swept it clean. She was clinging to a hand rail at the side of the cabin. The water was still rolling about in great sweeping swells. Fog hung low over all. Strain her eyes as she might, she could see but a hundred yards. The boat, she discovered, had no horn or siren attached to it.

“If only we had one,” she told Marian, “we could keep it going. Then, if anyone is searching for us, he would be able to locate us by the sound.”

She stood there trying to imagine where they were, and what was to be the next scene in their little drama. All efforts to start the engine had been futile. There are a thousand types of gasoline engines. Marian had at one time managed a small motor on Lucile’s boat but that one had been of quite a different type.

“’Tisn’t any use,” Marian had sighed at last. “We can’t get it going.”

So there Florence stood thinking. Marian was in the cabin preparing some hot soup for Lucile. Lucile’s condition was much improved. She was sitting up in her berth. That much was good. But where were they and whither were they bound?

They had gone over their supplies and had found in all about eight pounds of flour and part of a tin of baking powder, three pounds of sugar, a half pound of coffee and a quarter pound of tea, two tins of sardines, a few dried prunes and peaches, two glasses of preserves and a few other odds and ends. Beside these there were still twelve cans of the “unlabeled and unknown” vegetables and fruit.

“I hope,” Marian had smiled, “that they are all corn. One can live much longer on corn than on pineapple.”

“But we can’t live long on that supply,” Florence had said soberly. “Something has just got to happen. And,” she had added, “perhaps it won’t. If it were summer, things would be different, for at that time of the year the lake is dotted with vessels. But now they are all holed up or in dry dock. Only now and then one ventures out. We may have been blown out a long way from shore too; probably were.”

She was thinking of all this now. At the same time her eyes were squinting, half closed. She was trying to pierce the fog.

Suddenly she started. Had she seen something off to the left? A whitish bulk rising out of the fog?

She could not be sure. Well aware that one’s eyes play tricks on him when out at sea, she looked away, then turned her gaze once more to the left.

“Gone!” she muttered. “Never was there at all.”

Again she struck that listless, drooping pose which gave her whole body rest.

“But no,” she murmured, “there it is again. They have come for us. They have found us!”

She wanted to scream, to tell the other girls that help was near, but “No, no!” she decided, “not too soon. It might not be. If it is, they’ll see us. The O Moo stands well out of the water.”

To still her wildly beating heart, she allowed her gaze to wander off to the right.

Instantly she blinked her eyes.

“It can’t be,” she exclaimed, then, “Yes it is—it is! Another.”

Turning once more to the left, she found still another surprise. Two of them off there.

Fear began to assail her. Her forehead grew cold. Her hands trembled. Was it, after all, a false hope?

She had but a moment to wait. Then she knew. The fog had lifted slightly. She could see farther, could tell what was closing down upon them.

The shock was too much for her. She sank limply to the deck. It was as if she had been wandering in a fog on a rocky hillside searching for sheep, had thought she saw them coming out of the fog, only to discover that the creatures she saw were prowling wolves. The white bulks on the surface of the water were not boats searching for them but cakes of ice. And these, there could be no doubt about it, were fast closing in upon the O Moo. With the water still heaving, this meant danger—might indeed mean the destruction of their craft.

“I ought,” she struggled to her feet, “I ought to tell the girls.”

Yet she did not tell them. What was the use? she reasoned. There was nothing to do but wait, and that she could do very well alone.

There is something awe-inspiring about the gathering of great bodies of ice which have been scattered by a storm. They come together as if each had a motor, an engineer and a pilot on board. And yet their coming is in absolute silence. If one cake chances to touch another, the contact is so slight that there is no sound.

And so they assemble. Coming from all points of the compass, they reunite as a great fleet might after a mighty and victorious battle.

The O Moo chanced to be in the very midst of this particular gathering. As Florence watched she was thrilled and fascinated. Now the surface was a field of blue cloth with a white patch here and there. Now the white covered half, now two-thirds, now three-fourths of the field. And now a cake brushed the hull of the yacht ever so gently.

Suddenly she realized that a strange thing had happened. The water which had been rolling had ceased to roll.

“The ice did that,” she whispered. “Perhaps it’s not dangerous after all.”

She watched until the cloth of blue had been almost completely changed to one of white, then burst into the cabin.

To her unbounded surprise, she found her companions sitting on Lucile’s berth with wrapt attention staring out of the window.

“Isn’t it wonderful!” whispered Lucile.

“I—I thought it would be terribly dangerous,” said Florence.

“Not now,” said Marian. “It may be if we come to shore and the wind crowds the ice, but even then we’ll be safe enough. We can escape over the ice to shore. Only,” she added thoughtfully, “in that case the O Moo will be crushed. And that would be too sad after she has carried us through the storm so bravely.”

Florence still looked puzzled.

“You see,” smiled Marian, “Lucile and I have been in the ice-packs on the Arctic, so we know. Don’t we, old dear?” She patted Lucile on the shoulder.

“Uh—huh,” smiled Lucile as she settled back on her pillow.

Ice, as Marian had said, is quite a safe convoy of the sea until some shore is reached.

For twenty-four hours they drifted in the midst of the floe. Now a sea gull came soaring and screaming about the yacht. And now he went skimming away, leaving them to the vast silence of the conquered waters. Fog hung low over the water and the ice. No long-drawn hoot of a fog horn, no shrill siren’s scream greeted their anxious ears. A great silence hung over all.

Then Florence, who was standing on deck, noticed that, almost inperceptibly, the fog was lifting. She had been thinking of the last twenty-four hours. Lucile, who was much better, had left her berth and was sitting on one of the upholstered chairs. Marian was trying for the hundredth time to start the engine.

As Florence thought this through, she found herself at the same time wondering what the lifting of the fog would mean to them. Had they, after all, drifted only a short distance from the city? Would they be able, once the fog had cleared, to distinguish the jagged shore which the city’s sky line cut out of the blue? Would there be some boat nearer than they had dreamed? Or had they really drifted a long way? Would they look upon a shoreless expanse of water or would the irregular tree-line of some unknown shore greet them?

The fog was slow in passing. She was eager for the unveiling of this mystery. Impatiently she paced the deck.

Then, suddenly, she paused, shaded her eyes, and looked directly before her. Was there some, low, dark bulk appearing off there before the very course the ice was taking?

For a long time she could not be sure. Then with a startled exclamation she leaped to the door of the cabin crying:

“Girls! Marian! Lucile! Look! Land! Land ahead of the ice-floe.”

Marian came racing out on deck, followed more slowly by Lucile. For a moment they all stood there looking.

“It’s land all right,” said Marian at last, “but not much land. A little sandy island with a great many small evergreen trees growing on it, I should say.”

“Or perhaps a point,” suggested Lucile hopefully. “You see, if it’s a point we can go back just a little way and find people, people with plenty of food and—and everything.” Lucile had had quite enough of this adventure.

“It’s better not to hope for too much,” smiled Marian, “‘Hope for the best, be prepared for the worst,’ is my motto. And the worst!” she exclaimed suddenly, “is that the ice will begin to buckle and pile when it touches that shore.”

“And it will crush the O Moo,” said Florence with a gasp.

“Yes, unless,” Marian was studying the situation carefully, “unless we can escape it.”

For a moment she said no more. Then suddenly:

“Yes, I believe we could. There are pike-poles in the cabin. Florence, bring them, will you?”

Florence came back presently with two stout poles some twelve feet long. These were armed with stout iron hooks and points at one end.

“You see,” explained Marian rapidly, “we are much nearer the fore edge of the floe than to either side or to the back, and up there some forty feet there is a narrow channel reaching almost through to the edge. All that is necessary is that we crowd the ice to right and left a bit until we reach that channel, then draw the O Moo through it. If we reach the sandy shore before the floe does, the worst that can happen is that the O Moo will be driven aground but not crushed at all, and the best that can happen is that we will find some sort of little harbor where the yacht will be safe until the wind shifts and the ice goes back out to sea.”

“But can we move that ice?” Florence’s face showed her incredulity.

“It’s easier than it looks. Come on,” ordered Marian briskly. Throwing the rope ladder over the side, she sprang down it to leap out upon a broad ice pan.

Florence shuddered as she followed. This was all new to her.

Marian had said that it was easy, but they did not find it so. True, they did move the O Moo forward. Inch by inch, foot by foot, fathom by fathom she glided forward. But this was accomplished only at the cost of blistered hands, aching muscles and breaking backs.

All this time the ice-floe was moving slowly but surely forward. Now it was a hundred fathoms from the shore, now fifty, now thirty. And now—

But just at this moment the yacht moved out into the open water before the floe. At the same time Marian caught sight of a narrow stream which cut down through the sandy beach some fifty yards from the point where they had broken through.

“If only we can make that channel,” she panted. “If the water’s deep enough all the way to it, we can. Or if the floe doesn’t come too fast.”

Florence, who thought she had expended every ounce of energy in her body, took three long breaths, then, having hooked her pole to the prow of the O Moo, began to pull. Soon Marian joined her on the pole and together the girls struggled.

By uniting their energies they were able to drag the reluctant O Moo length by length toward the goal.

Once Florence, having entrusted her weight to a rotten bit of ice, plunged into the chilling waters. But by Marian’s aid she climbed upon a safer cake and, shaking the water from her, resumed her titanic labors. Twice the hull of the O Moo touched bottom. Each time they were able to drag her free.

At last with a long-drawn sigh they threw their united strength into a shove which sent her, prow first, up the still waters at the mouth of the stream.

There remained for them but one means of reaching shore—to swim.

With a little “Oo-oo!” Marian plunged in. She was followed closely by Florence.

Twenty minutes later they were in the cabin of the O Moo and rough linen towels were bringing the warm, ruddy glow of life back to their half-frozen limbs. The O Moo was lying close to the bank where an overhanging tree gave them a safe mooring.

As Florence at last, after having drawn on a garment of soft clingy material and having thrown a warm dressing gown over this, sank into a chair, she murmured:

“Thanks be! We are here. But, after all, where is ‘here’?”

It was night, dark, cloudy, moonless night. Florence could scarcely see enough of the sandy beach to tell where she was going. She had, however, been over that same ground in the daytime, so she knew it pretty well. Besides, she wasn’t going any place; just walking back and forth, up and down a long, narrow stretch of hard-packed and frozen sand.

She was thinking. Walking in the darkness helped her to think. When there is nothing to hear, nothing to see and nothing to feel, and when the movement of one’s feet keeps the blood moving, then one can do the best thinking. Anyway that was the way this big, healthy, hopeful college girl thought about it. So she had wrapped herself in a heavy cape and had come out to think.

They had been ice-locked on the island for thirty-six hours. The ice had crowded on shore for a time. It had piled high in places. Now the wind had gone down and it was growing colder. It seemed probable that the ice would freeze into one solid mass, in which case they would be locked in for who knows how long.

The water in their little natural harbor had taken on something of a crust. It was possible that the boat would be frozen into the stream.

“Not that it matters,” she told herself rather gloomily. “We can’t start the engine and as long as we can’t it is impossible for us to leave the island; only thing we can do is wait until someone discovers our plight or we are able to hail a boat.”

They were on an island; they had made sure of that first thing. She and Marian had gone completely around it. It wasn’t much of an island either. Just a wreath of sand thrown up from the bottom of the lake, it could scarcely be more than three miles long by a half mile wide. The stream they had entered, running almost from end to end of it, drained the whole of it. The highest point was at the north. This point was a sand dune some forty feet high. Their boat was moored at the south end. The entire island, except along the beach, was covered with a scrub growth of pine and fir trees. As far as they could tell, not a single person had ever lived on the island.

“It’s very strange,” Marian had said when they had made the rounds of it. “It doesn’t seem possible that there could be such an island on the lake without summer cottages on it.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Florence had answered. “What an ideal spot! Wonderful beaches on every side. Fishing too, I guess. And far enough from land to enjoy a cool breeze on the hottest day of summer.”

Though they had constantly strained their eyes in an endeavor to discover other land in the distance, they had not succeeded.

“Probably belongs to someone who will not lease it,” said Florence at last.

So here she was trying to think things through. There was danger of a real catastrophe. The food in their pantry could not possibly last over ten days. Then what? As far as she knew, there was not a thing to be eaten on the island. It was possible that fish could be caught beneath the lake ice or in their stream. She meant to try that in the morning.

“What a plight to put one in!” she exclaimed. “Who could have done it and why did they do it?”

This question set her mind running over the mysterious incidents which, she could not but believe, had led up to this present moment.

There had been Lucile’s seeing of the blue face in the old Mission, her own affair with the stranger in the museum; the blue candlestick; the visit to Mr. Cole in the new museum; Lucile’s frightful adventure on the lake ice; the incident of the two men with the sled on the ice of the lagoon and the single man sitting on the ice; then the spot of blue ice discovered next day.

“Blue ice!” she exclaimed suddenly, stopping still in her tracks. “Blue! Blue ice!”

Florence frowned, as she considered it.

A new theory had come to her regarding that spot of blue ice on the lagoon, a theory which made her wish more than ever to get away from this island.

“Ho, well,” she whispered at last, “there’ll probably be a thaw before we get back or those men will come back and tear it up. But if there isn’t, if they don’t then—well, we’ll see what we’ll see.”

She was still puzzling over these problems when a strange noise, leaping seemingly out of nowhere, smote her ear.

It was such a rumble and roar as she had heard but once before in all her life. That sound had come to her over a telephone wire as she pressed her ear to the receiver during a thunderstorm. But here there was neither wire nor receiver and the very thought of a thunderstorm on such a night was ridiculous.

At first she was inclined to believe it to be the sound of some disturbance on the lake, a sudden rush of wind or a tidal wave.

“But there is little wind and the sea is calm,” she told herself.

She was in the midst of these perplexities when the sound broke into a series of sput-sput-sputs. Her heart stood still for a second, then raced on as her lips framed the word:

“Wireless.”

So ridiculous was the thought that the word died on her lips. There was no wireless outfit on the yacht; could be none on the island, for had they not made the entire round? Had they not found it entirely uninhabited? Whence, then, came this strange clash of man-made lightning? The girl could find no answer to her own unspoken questions.

After a moment’s thought she was inclined to believe that she was hearing the sounds created by some unknown electrical phenomena. Men were constantly discovering new things about electricity. Perhaps, all unknown to them, such isolated points as this automatically served as relay stations to pass along wireless messages.

Not entirely satisfied with this theory, she left the beach and, feeling her way carefully among the small evergreens, came at last to the base of a fir tree which capped the ridge. This tree, apparently of an earlier growth, towered half its height above its fellows.

Reaching up to the first branch she began to ascend. She climbed two-thirds of the way to the top with great ease. There she paused.

The sound had ceased. Only the faint wash-wash of wavelets on ice and shore, mingled with the mournful sighing of the pines, disturbed the silence of the night.

For some time she stood there clinging to the branches. Here she caught the full sweep of the lake breeze. She grew cold; began to shiver; called herself a fool; decided to climb down again, and was preparing to do so, when there came again that rumbling roar, followed as before by the clack-clack-clack, sput-sput.

“That’s queer,” she murmured as she braced herself once more and attempted to pierce the darkness.

Then, abruptly, the sound ceased. Strain her ears as she might she caught no further sound. She peered into the gloom, trying to descry the wires of an aerial against the sky-line, but her search was vain.

“It’s fairly spooky!” she told herself. “A phantom wireless station on a deserted island!”

Ten minutes longer she clung there motionless. Then, feeling that she must turn into a lump of ice if she lingered longer, she began to climb down.

“I’ll come back here in the morning and have a look,” she promised herself. “Won’t tell the girls; they’ve troubles enough.”

She made her way back to the yacht and was soon in her berth fast asleep.

It was with considerable amusement that she retraced her steps next morning. There could not, she told herself, be a wireless station of any kind on that island. A wireless station called for a home for the operators and there was no such home. She and Marian had made sure of that.

“But then what was it?” she asked herself, “What could it have been?”

She climbed the tree, this time up to its very top, then, turning, shaded her eyes to gaze away the length of the island.

“Just as I thought,” she murmured. “Nothing. Just nothing at all.”

It was true. There could be no wireless tower. If there had been she could have seen it. What was more, there certainly was no house on the island. Had there been, she could not have failed to detect its roof from her point of vantage.

There was no house and no wireless station, yet, as she looked her lips parted in an exclamation of surprise.

She was witnessing strange things. Toward the other end of the island something was moving in and out among the drifting ice-cakes. This, she made out presently, by the flash of a paddle, was some sort of a boat.

“And it is,” she breathed. “No—no it can’t be! Yes, it is, it’s an Eskimo kiak!”

At once she thought of the Negontisks. Could it be possible that they had stumbled upon a secret home of some of these people?

As if in answer to her question, the strange manipulator of this queer craft drew the kiak on shore, then, skipping hurriedly along the beach and up a sandy ridge, suddenly put two hands on something and the next instant dropped straight down and out of sight.

Florence caught her breath sharply. She clutched the fir boughs in the fear that she would fall.

Then, realizing that she might be plainly seen if anyone chanced to look her way, she began hastily to descend.

“He might come out of his igloo and see me,” she told herself.

That the thing the person had entered was an igloo she had no reason to doubt. Igloos go with kiaks and are built beneath the earth.

“But,” she said suddenly, “the other girls will know a great deal more about those things than I do. I must tell them at once. We will hold a council of war.”

Twenty-four hours after Florence’s mysterious discovery, the cabin of the O Moo was pervaded by a quiet and studious atmosphere. Lucile, who was quite herself again, was mastering the contents of a book devoted to the study of the technique of short story writing. Florence was delving into the mysteries of the working of the human mind. Marian was doing a still life study in charcoal.

One might conclude that by some hosts of good fairies the yacht had been spirited back to its place on the dry dock. This was not, however, the case. The O Moo was still standing in the little stream on the sandy island. Its position had been altered a trifle. It had been poled out into midstream and there anchored. This precaution the girls had felt was necessary. In case the Negontisks attempted to board the yacht it would give those on board a slight advantage. It is difficult to board a yacht from kiaks.

That the strange persons who lived in holes beneath the sand dunes were these wild natives they did not doubt. “For,” Marian had reasoned, “who else in all the wide world would live in such a manner?”

“Yes, but,” Florence had argued, “how did they ever get to the shores of Lake Michigan anyway?”

The question could not be answered. The fact remained that there were people living beneath the ground on this island and that the girls were afraid of them, so much afraid that they were not willing, voluntarily, to expose themselves to view.

This was why they were remaining aboard the O Moo and studying rather than attempting to catch fish. “Might as well make the best of our time,” Florence had reasoned. To this the others had agreed but when she went on to say that she somehow felt that they would be back at the university for final exams, they shook their heads.

The food supply was growing lower with every meal. Six cans of the unknown fruits and vegetables had been opened and with all the perversity of unknown quantities had turned out to be fruit, pleasing but not nourishing.

“There’s some comfort in knowing that there are other people on the island, at that,” Lucile had argued. “They’ve probably got a supply of food and, rather than starve, we can cast ourselves upon their mercy.”

“How many of them do you suppose there are?” Marian suddenly looked up from her book to ask.

“Only saw one,” answered Florence, “but then of course there are others.”

“Strange we didn’t see any tracks when we went the rounds of the island.”

“Snowed the night before.”

“But people usually have things outside their igloos; sleds, boats and hunting gear.”

“Not when they’re in hiding. There might be fifty or a hundred of them. Nothing about an igloo shows unless you chance to walk right up to the entrance or the skylight. And we didn’t. We—”

She broke off abruptly as Lucile whispered. “What was that?”

She had hardly asked the question when the sound came again—a loud trill. It was followed this time by a musical:

“Who-hoo!”

“I never heard a native make a sound like that,” exclaimed Lucile, springing to her feet.

“Nor I,” said Marian.

“Sounds like a girl.”

Throwing caution to the wind the three of them rushed for the door.

On reaching the deck, they saw, standing on shore, a very short, plump person with a smiling face. Though the face was unmistakably that of a white girl, she was dressed from head to toe in the fur garments of an Eskimo.

“Hello there,” she shouted, “Let down the gang plank. I want to come aboard.”

“Haven’t any,” laughed Florence. “Wait a minute. You climb out on that old tree. We’ll pole the yacht around beneath it, then you can drop down on deck.”

“What a spiffy little cabin,” exclaimed the stranger as she entered the door and prepared to draw her fur parka off over her head. “I wasn’t expecting company. When did you arrive?”

“Came in with the ice-floe,” smiled Marian.

“Are—are you a captive?” asked Lucile suddenly. “And—and do they make you live with them?”

“Captive? Live with whom?” the girl’s eyes were big with wonder.

“The Negontisks.”

“The what?”

“The Negontisks.”

“Why, no, child. Of what are you dreaming? I never saw a Negontisk, let alone living with them. Heard of them though. Please explain.”

She bounced down into one of the overstuffed chairs with a little sigh of “Oh! What delicious comfort! You don’t know how strange it is to live like an Eskimo. It’s trying at times, too.”

It took a great deal of explaining for Lucile to make the reasons for her questions clear to the stranger. In the meantime, Florence had an opportunity to study their visitor.

“Very small, not weighing over ninety pounds, very vivacious, decidedly American and considerably older than we are,” was her final analysis.

“Why! My dear!” the little lady cried when Lucile had explained. “You may put your mind quite at ease. Besides yourselves I am positively the only person on the island. What’s more,” she smiled, “I have in my igloo oodles and oodles of food, enough for all of us for six months to come.”

The three girls fairly gasped in their relief and delight. It was with the greatest difficulty that they refrained from embracing the visitor.

“I suppose,” said the stranger, “that you would like to know how it comes about that I am living here on this island all by myself; and, above all things, in an igloo. Well, you see, my uncle owns this island. He is a retired Arctic trader. For twenty years he lived on the coast of the Arctic—made a huge fortune in furs and whale bone. Then he came back to the city to live.

“Well, you see,” she sighed after a pause for breath, “he had lived in igloos on the Arctic coast for so long that he wasn’t satisfied with the cave he lived in on the shores, in the noisy city. So what does he do but buy this little island and have a wonderful little igloo built beneath one of its sand dunes?

“Of course he doesn’t live in his igloo all the time; just comes over when he wishes to. This winter he is spending in Florida so he lent his igloo to me.

“I graduated from the university last year. And I wanted to write a book, a book about the vanishing race—the Eskimo. Sort of an Eskimo Ramona, don’t you know.

“I had never been in Alaska but my uncle had told me about it. Nights and nights he talked about nothing else, so I knew enough to make a book. All I needed was the atmosphere. I thought I could get that best by coming out here and living in his igloo all by myself, paddling about in a kiak, fishing through the ice and all that. So that,” she laughed, “is how I came to be here.”

The three girls stared at her with looks of wonderment in which was mingled not a little joy. Had she been a fairy come down from some magic kingdom to render them a great service she could hardly have been more welcome.

“Oh!” she cried, bouncing up from her chair, “You shall all go to my igloo. We will have dinner together there and—and why don’t you bring along a few of your things, prepared to stay all night? You’ll hardly be leaving to-night. No, of course you won’t. Ice won’t let you.”

“It’s not alone the ice,” said Florence soberly. “We don’t know how to start our motor.”

“Oh! Those motors! There now!” she exclaimed “I’ve never told you my name. It’s Marie Neighbor. What are yours?”

The girls told her.

“Motors are a real bother,” she said, returning to her original subject. “Uncle has had six or eight of them in all, on cars, yachts and all that. Not one of them was like any other one. I puzzled my poor old head nearly off over them but I always succeeded in making them go. They’re worse when there’s no gas. Once I tried a pint of ether and some moth balls instead of gas. That came near being my last experiment. The cylinder exploded. Perhaps I can help you with your engine. Let’s have a look.”

Florence led the way to the engine room and there switched on a light.

Marie studied the motor for a moment.

“But my dear,” she exclaimed at last, “this wire should be fastened there and that one here. You have them crossed. That will never do. Hope you haven’t ruined your batteries. But never you mind, I have a set down at the igloo.”

“Now about the timer. That screw’s loose there. Off time of course. Why, there’s nothing the matter with the motor; not really. We’ll have it going in a moment.”

She gave the balance wheel a turn. There followed a sucking sound. A second turn brought a similar result; the third elicited a loud explosion and the fourth threw the engine into such a spasm of coughing as set the whole yacht a-tremble.

“There you are,” she exclaimed triumphantly. “I told you there wasn’t anything the matter.” She touched a lever. The engine stopped. Then she reached for a handful of waste with which to clean her dainty fingers.

“Now,” she said, “shall we go over to the igloo? I think the wind is changing. The ice may be going out to-night. In that case you may be wishing to leave in the morning. The yacht will be all right here. No one about and no chance for her to go out of the river. Throw a line out and tie her to the shore. That’ll make her doubly safe.”

Delighted with this strange and efficient hostess, the girls went about the task of making the ship snug, then, having each gathered up a small bundle of clothing, went ashore.

“By the way,” said Marie, “if you don’t mind I think I’d like to go back to the city with you. I’ll work my passage as chief engineer.”

“That would be splendid!” said Florence enthusiastically. “I’ve been worrying about the engine. We might get it going and not be able to stop it.”

“And might stop it and not get it going again,” laughed Marie. “Well, I’m glad that’s arranged. A friend had promised to come after me, but I was talking to him night before last and he told me his boat had sprung a leak. Didn’t think he could come.”

“You were talking with him?” cried Marian.

“Yes, radio, don’t you know. Oh! I didn’t tell you. I have a radiophone for short-distance work. Uncle insisted on my having it; thought I wouldn’t be safe without it. When I wish to talk to shore all I have to do is to hoist up my two portable towers, key up my instrument and start right in jabbering away. I have the wireless too, and can talk to my uncle way down in Florida.”

Florence took a long breath. “So this,” she told herself, “is the explanation of the phantom wireless.”

“By the way,” said Marie, “your friends must be anxious about you. Of course they must be. I’ll get my little talking machine going as soon as we are at the igloo and you may tell them all your troubles; also assure them you’ll be home to-morrow or the next day.”

“Oh! How can we thank you?” cried Lucile.

“Don’t have to,” laughed their hostess. “It doesn’t cost me anything and I’m to get a free passage home for it.”

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