“Talking about things being free,” she said pointing to the splendid little evergreens all about them. “See all those trees! They really should be thinned out. They’re free for the asking. Yet there are ten thousand homes in the city where there will be no Christmas tree this year. What do you say we cut down two or three hundred of them and take them along? We can play Santa to that many families anyway.”
“I think it’s a fine idea,” said Lucile.
“So do I! So do I,” said the others in unison.
“Well then that’s all settled. And now for a lark. Watch out; here’s the entrance to the igloo. Just take a look down, then we’ll get up the towers and start talking across empty space to the poor tired old city,” laughed Marie.
“It’s an exact reproduction of an igloo!” exclaimed Lucile.
The three girls, following the example of their hostess, had dropped through a hole some three feet square, had poised for an instant upon a board landing, to drop a second three feet and find themselves in a small square room. Leaving this room, they had gone scooting along a narrow passageway, to drop on their knees and crawl through a circular opening into a room some twenty feet square.
“Why!” exclaimed their hostess, “have you seen an igloo somewhere?”
Lucile smiled. “Marian and I spent a year on the Arctic coast of Alaska and Marian has lived most of her life in Nome on Behring Sea.”
“Why then,” Marie Neighbor’s face was a study, “then I’m just a—a—what do you call it? a chechecko, I guess—beside you.”
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” smiled Marian.
“Anyway you’ll help me with my book, won’t you? I have it only a third finished. After dinner I’ll read that to you and you may tell me frankly whether it’s any good or not.”
“I tried a story once myself,” said Lucile with a laugh.
“How did you come out with it?”
“Haven’t come out yet, but I’m really crazy to get back to the city and find out about it. I mailed it to the editor of ‘Seaside Tales’.”
The igloo was heated by genuine seal-oil lamps and over these Marie cooked her food. The pots and kettles were of the antique copper type traded to Eskimos by Russians long before the white man reached the Arctic shore of Alaska. The food cooked in this manner over a slow fire was declared to be delicious.
“And now,” said their hostess, when the dishes had been washed and put away, “I’ll introduce you to my alcove bedroom.”
Drawing aside a pair of heavy deerskin curtains she revealed a platform some six by eight feet. This was piled high with skin rugs of all descriptions. White bearskin, Russian squirrel, red fox and beaver rivaled one another in softness and richness of coloring.
“You see,” she explained, “it’s sort of a compromise between the narrow shelf of the Eskimo igloo and the broader sleeping room of the Chukches of Siberia.”
Lucile and Marian were fascinated. It took them back to the old days of Cape Prince of Wales, of East Cape and Siberia.
“Tell you what,” exclaimed Lucile. “We’ll all get fixed nice and comfy for going to sleep, then we’ll spread ourselves out in the midst of all those wonderful rugs and you may read your book to us.”
“Yes, and you’ll be asleep in ten minutes,” laughed Marie.
“No, no! No we won’t,” they all exclaimed.
“Then it’s a bargain.”
A few moments later filmy pink and white garments vied in color and softness with the rugs of Arctic furs while Marie in a well modulated tone read the beginning of the story of Nowadluk, the belle of Alaska. The three companions were quite content to listen. The ways of life seemed once more very good to them. Their friends had been notified by radiophone of their safety. They were to return to-morrow or the day after. The wind had changed. The ice was already beginning to scatter.
Now and then Lucile or Marian would interrupt the reader to make a suggestion. When the end had been reached they were unanimous in their assurance that it promised to be a wonderful story. Their only regrets were that more of it was not completed.
A half hour later Lucile and Marian were asleep. Florence and Marie were talking in whispers. Florence had been relating their strange and weird experiences while living aboard the O Moo.
“So that’s why you thought I was held captive by the Negontisks?” Marie chuckled.
“But really,” she said presently, “thereweresome of those people in Chicago. May be yet, but no one knows.”
“Tell me about it,” Florence breathed excitedly.
“I don’t know a great deal about it, only they were brought over from Siberia for exhibition purposes during a fair in Seattle. From there they were brought to Chicago by a show company. The company ran out of money and disbanded. The Negontisks were thrown upon their own resources.
“They were getting along one way or another when it was discovered that they were worshipping some kind of idol.”
“A blue face,” whispered Florence breathlessly.
“Something like that. It was believed that in their religious rites they resorted to inhuman practices. The government looked into the matter and decided to deport them. But just when the officials were preparing to round them up, they found that the last one of them had vanished—vanished as completely as they might had the earth opened up and swallowed them.
“That was two or three years ago. The papers were full of it. I think there was a reward offered for their capture. But I believe they never found a trace of them or their blue god.”
“Oh!” whispered Florence, suddenly sitting up among the robes. “Oh, I do hope the ice is gone by morning!”
“Why? Aren’t you happy here?”
“Yes, but I want to get back to the city—want to awfully. You see, I think I know where the blue god is and I want to go and find it.”
It was the afternoon of the second day following the night spent in the igloo before they were able to leave the island. Ice still blocked their path, that first day, so they had spent the whole day piling the deck of the O Moo high with Christmas trees. Since fate had been kind to them in landing them on the hospitable shores of this island they had been glad to do this much toward the happiness of others.
The lake could never have appeared more lovely. Its surface, smooth as a mirror, reflected the white clouds which drifted lazily overhead. The sun, sending its rosy reflections over all, made each tiny wavelet seem a saddle on the back of a fairy horse of dreamland. Across this dreamland the O Moo cut her way.
Now they were nearing the city. For some time they had been seeing the jagged line of sky scrapers. Now they could catch the outline of the beach by the dry dock. Toward this they pointed the prow of the O Moo. A wireless telephone message had made known to Dr. Holmes the probable hour of their arrival. Old Timmie would doubtless be prepared to get the O Moo back upon her trestle.
“But what makes the shore all around the dock look so black?” puzzled Lucile.
Just then there came a succession of faint and distant pop-pop-pops.
“Someone coming to meet us,” Lucile decided, pleased at the thought.
Then there came another set of poppings, another and another, all in slightly different keys.
Now they could see the gasoline launches coming toward them. Seeming but sea gulls for size at first, they grew rapidly larger.
“Six of them,” murmured Marian. “I didn’t know we had that many friends.”
Their amazement grew as three other boats put out from shore. Then Lucile, who had been studying the beach exclaimed:
“I do believe that black spot about the dry dock moves. It seems to contract and expand, to waver backward and forward. You don’t think it could be—be people?”
“Why no, of course—yes! I do believe it is!” cried Marian.
“It’s the newspapers,” exclaimed Florence. “They’ve published a lot of nonsense about our silly adventure and all those people have come down to see us come in.”
“And the people in those motorboats are reporters,” groaned Marian. “It’s the last of our life on the O Moo.”
“That’s over anyway,” said Lucile. Her face was very sober. “By the time we’ve paid for having this yacht put back in order, I figure we’ll have about enough money left to buy soup and crackers for examination week and a ticket home. Good-bye old university!”
“Ho! Well,” laughed Florence, “no use being gloomy about it. No use being gloomy about anything. Life’s too long for that. Let’s make up what we’ll tell the reporters. They won’t print the truth anyway, so we might as well tell them plenty.”
“Tell them what you like,” said Marie Neighbor, “only please don’t give them the location of my island. I don’t want them to come out there bothering me.”
“We’ll guard your secret, never worry,” smiled Lucile.
When the reporters’ boats swarmed about them, the girls told as little as they could, but when later Dr. Holmes came on board with three official reporters, they gave them the true story of their adventures.
They were shown their own pictures on the front pages of all the papers and were assured that nothing but their adventure had been talked of since their disappearance.
A woman had come on board with the reporters, a trim, matronly woman in a tailored suit. At her first opportunity she drew Florence to one side to talk with her long and earnestly.
“The cabin of the O Moo is a wreck,” Marian said to Dr. Holmes. “But really, Mr. Holmes, you may trust us to put it back into perfect shape if it takes our last penny. You may send upholsterers and decorators over as soon as the O Moo is in dry dock.”
“Tut—tut!” exclaimed the good doctor. “Don’t let that trouble you. That’s all provided for.”
“Oh, no! Really you must let us pay for all that.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” his eyes were twinkling, “that the O Moo might be insured?”
“In—insured!” Marian’s knees gave way. The news was too good to seem true.
“Then, then we can stay?”
“In school, yes, but on the O Moo, probably not. Too much publicity, you see. University people would object and all that, don’t you know. But then, cheer up. I fancy the lady dean is telling Florence of something which will interest you all.”
“In the meantime,” he exclaimed, “we are not getting ashore. Yo-ho, Timmie,” he cupped his hands and shouted, “bring on the rowboats and tackle. Let’s get her brought in.”
It was night. The crowd that had screamed its welcome to the returning O Moo and her crew was gone. A great truck loaded high with Christmas trees had departed with Marie Neighbor bouncing about on top of it.
The three girls were in the cabin of the O Moo. This, they were sure, was to be their last night on board. The lady dean had told Florence that a flat belonging to the university, three rooms, kitchenette and bath, was at their disposal. The rent seemed terribly high to them, but someway they must meet it, since the dean had looked very sternly adown her nose and said, “Of course this sort of thing cannot be gone on with. The university would be scandalized. Besides, there is no telling what may happen to you if you remain here.”
“Of course,” Lucile said with a long face as the three of them discussed the matter, “she says it’s a very nice apartment but it can’t be half as nice as—”
“As the O Moo,” Florence put in. “Of course not. Nothing ever can be.”
“Oh, well,” Marian sighed, “I guess we’ll have to do it. But I do think the old O Moo is a dear. I shouldn’t like anything better than rambling through a whole summer with her almost anywhere on the Great Lakes.”
Since this was to be their last night they determined to make the most of it. They had Mark Pence in for hot chocolate and vanilla wafers. They told him of their adventures and he spoke modestly of his own.
“So you see,” he said, going back to the very beginning of the story as he now knew it, “when these Negontisks found out they were going to be deported they hunted out an unscrupulous Chinaman who transformed them into people of his own race. That wasn’t hard. They were Orientals anyway. All he had to do was to provide them with black sateen suits and artificial pigtails and the transformation was complete.
“Then the Chinaman saw a chance to make a lot of easy money. He put them to work in his laundry—virtually made slaves of them. Fixed up that old scow for them secretly and made them sneak back and forth to work during the night.
“That lasted for a time, then the greedy old Chinaman suddenly disappeared. Negontisks sacrificed him to the blue god, like as not. Served him right too.
“But that was where the police took up the trail. The savages knew there was trouble coming. They thought you were a plant—that you were set here to spy on them. They’d been betrayed by some woman before, it seems. When they couldn’t get rid of you by frightening you, they decided to cut you loose in a storm.”
“And now—” began Florence.
“Now they’ve vanished. Not a trace of them has been seen since that night.”
“Not a trace?”
“Not one.”
“Why then,” exclaimed Florence leaping to her feet, “I invite you all to a ghost hunt. A ghost hunt for a blue god.”
“Anything for a last nighter,” agreed Lucile.
“For this type of ghost hunt,” said Florence, “one needs an ax and two kettles of boiling water.”
“I’ll provide the ax,” volunteered Mark.
“And we the boiling water,” chimed in Marian and Lucile in unison.
It was a strange little procession that stole from the shadow of the O Moo a short time later. Florence led the way. She was profoundly silent. Lucile and Marian followed, each with a tea kettle of boiling water carefully poised at her side. Mark, as a sort of vanguard, brought up the rear with his ax. Now and then Mark let forth a low chuckle.
“Sh!” Marian warned. “You might disturb her serious poise.”
Straight away toward the end of the lagoon Florence led them. Once on the surface of the lagoon her course was scarcely less certain until she had reached a point in the center of the broad, glistening surface.
“Should be right about here,” she murmured.
Snapping on a flashlight she moved slowly backward and forward, studying the ice beneath the circle of intense light.
“Cold place for a ghost,” whispered Mark.
“Ten thousand people have skated over it and cut it down. Can’t tell. Maybe it’s gone,” Florence said under her breath, but still she kept up the search.
“Water’s getting cooled off in the kettles. Ghost won’t mind it at all,” whispered Mark.
Pausing on tiptoe for a moment, Florence fixed her eyes on a certain spot. Then, bending over, she brushed the ice clear of frost.
“There!” she announced. “There! That’s it.”
“Right here,” she pointed, motioning to Mark. “Cut here. No—let me have the ax. You might go too deep.”
With measured and cautious swings she began hacking a circle in the ice some two and a half feet in circumference.
Mark’s amusement had vanished. Curious as the others, he bent over and watched in awed silence. Eight inches of solid ice had been chipped up and thrown out when they began noticing its peculiar blueness.
“Like a frozen tub of blueing,” whispered Marian.
“Sh!” warned Lucile.
“Now, let’s have the water.”
Florence took one of the teakettles and poured the hot water into the hole she had cut.
As they stood there staring with all their eyes, they thought they made out the outline of something.
“Like a dream picture on the movie screen,” whispered Marian.
Lucile pinched her arm.
“A face,” came from Mark.
Suddenly Lucile gasped, wavered, and all but sank down upon the ice.
“The face!” she cried in a muffled scream. “The horrible blue face.”
“I thought it might be.” Florence’s voice was tense with emotion.
She poured the second kettle of water into the hole.
The pool of water was blue, but through it there appeared the dim outlines of an unspeakably ugly face.
With trembling fingers Florence tested the water. Twice she found it too hot. The third time she plunged in her hand. There followed a sound of water being sucked up by some object. The next instant she placed on the ice, within the circle of light, a strange affair of blue stone.
Covering her eyes Lucile sprang back shuddering. “The blue face! The terrible blue face.”
Marian and Mark stared curiously.
Florence straightened up. “That,” she said with an air of great satisfaction, “is the marvelous and much-sought blue god.”
“Oh! Ah!” came from Marian and Mark. Lucile uncovered her eyes to look.
“Perfectly harmless; merely a blue jade carving. Nevertheless a thing of some importance, unless I miss my guess,” said Florence. “I suggest that we take it to the police station.”
“To-night?” exclaimed Marian.
“Oh, yes! Right now!” demanded Lucile through chattering teeth. “I could never sleep with that thing on board the O Moo.”
Arrived at police headquarters, they asked for their friend, the sergeant. When he came out, his eyes appeared heavy with sleep, but once they fell upon the thing of blue jade it seemed that they would pop out of his head.
“It ain’t!” he exclaimed. “It is! No, it can’t be.”
Taking it in his hands he turned it over and over, muttering to himself. Then, “Wait a minute,” he said. Handing the blue face to Florence, he dashed to the telephone.
There for a moment he quarreled with an operator, then talked to someone for an instant.
“That,” he said as he returned, “was your friend, Mr. Cole, from down in the new museum. He lives near here. He’s coming over. He’ll tell us for sure. He knows everything. Sit down.”
For ten minutes nothing was heard in the room save the tick-tock of a prodigious clock hung against the wall. From Florence’s lap the blue god leered defiance to the world.
Suddenly a man without hat or collar dashed into the room. It was Cole.
“Where is it?” he demanded breathlessly.
“Here.” Florence held out the blue face.
For a full five minutes the great curator studied the face in silence. Turning it over and over, he now and again uttered a little cry of delight.
Florence, as she watched him, thought he could not have been more pleased had a long-lost son been returned to him.
“It is!” he murmured at last. “It is the blue god of the Negontisks.”
“See that!” exclaimed the sergeant, springing to his feet. “I told you he’d know. And that’s the end of that business. The whole gang of ’em was caught in Sioux City, Iowa, last night, but they didn’t have the blue god. They’ll be deported.”
“Will—will you give it back to them now?” faltered Lucile.
“Give it back?” he roared. “I’d say not! You don’t know what crimes have been committed in the name of the blue god. No! No! We’ll not give it back. If they must have one when they get to where they’re going they’ll have to find a new one.”
“Sergeant,” said Cole, “I’d like to speak with you, privately.”
“Oh! All right.”
The two adjourned to a corner, where for some time they conversed earnestly. The sergeant might be seen to shake his head emphatically from time to time.
At last they returned to the group.
“I have been trying,” said Cole thoughtfully, “to persuade the sergeant to allow you to sell the blue god to our museum. It is worth considerable money merely as a specimen, but he won’t hear to it; says it’s sort of contraband and must be held by the police. I’m sorry. I’m sure you could have used the money to good advantage.”
“Oh, that’s all right—” The words stuck in Florence’s throat.
“Hold on now! Hold on!” exclaimed the sergeant, growing very red in the face. “I’m not so hard-hearted as I might seem. There’s a reward of five hundred dollars offered for the arrest and conviction—or words to that effect—of this here blue god. Now you girls have arrested him and before Mr. Cole he’s been convicted. All’s left is to make out the claims and I’ll do that free gratis and for nothing.”
“Five hun—five hundred dollars!” the girls exclaimed.
The sergeant stepped back a pace. It was evident that he was in fear of the embarrassment which might come to him by being embraced by three young ladies in a police station.
“I—I’ll lock him up for the night,” he muttered huskily and promptly disappeared into a vault.
“Well, I guess that’s all of that,” breathed Florence. “Quite a thrilling night for our last on the O Moo.”
“Not quite all,” said Cole. “There’s still the blue candlestick. The state makes no claims upon that. In the name of the museum I offer you two hundred dollars for it. How about it?”
“Splendid! Wonderful!” came from the girls.
“All right. Come round in the morning for the check. Good-night.” He disappeared into the darkness.
“We—we’re rich,” sighed Lucile as they walked toward the O Moo, “but you know I have a private fortune.”
She drew a letter from her pocket and waved it in air. “One hundred dollars for my story. Hooray!”
“Hooray!” came from the rest.
“Of course,” sighed Lucile, “the editor said the check would spoil me for life, but since the story was worth it he was bound to buy it. Regular fatherly letter, but he’s a dear and the check is real money.”
“To eat has a more pleasant sound than to sleep,” said Florence when they were once more in the cabin of the O Moo. “What do you say to lamb chops, french fried potatoes, hot coffee and doughnuts?”
“At two in the morning?” grinned Mark.
“What’s a better time? All in favor, say ‘aye.’ The ayes have it.”
“There are a few things I don’t yet understand,” said Lucile as they sat enjoying their repast.
“And a lot that I don’t,” added Mark. “Miss Florence Huyler, the pleasure’s all yours.”
“Well,” said Florence, “it was about like this: The Negontisks were living in that old scow. Instead of three or four sleepy old Chinamen, there were twenty or thirty near-savages skulking about this dry dock. Being afraid of us, they tacked a note of warning to our yacht. When we didn’t leave they decided to frighten us or kill us, I don’t know which. They chased me into the old museum and tried to surround Lucile among the ice-piles. Lucile’s seeing the blue face in the old Mission was of course an accident; so too was my finding the blue candlestick. That man who chased me lost it. When other plans failed they decided to set us adrift, which they did.”
“But the blue god frozen in the ice?” questioned Marian.
“You remember the two men with the sled and the one man who appeared to come from nowhere? Well, I guess he was dropped off the sled with the blue god, a jug of blue water, and an ax. He cut a hole in the ice and, after covering the blue god with blue water left it to be frozen in. I stumbled upon the spot next morning. Little by little I guessed what was hidden there and how it was hidden.”
“Seems strange they never came back for it,” said Lucile.
“Police were too hot on their tracks,” declared Mark. “They didn’t dare to.”
“And that,” said Florence, “is the story of the blue god. Quite an exciting episode. To-morrow we enter upon the monotonous life of modern city cave dwellers. Good-bye to romance.”
“Well,” said Mark, “you never can tell.”
He rose. “I must bid you good-night and good-bye. I work in the ‘stacks’ of your great university library. Come to see me there sometime. Perhaps I might dish up a bit of excitement for you, you never can tell.”
He bowed himself out of the cabin. Fifteen minutes later the cabin was dark. The cruise of the O Moo was at an end.
Mr. Snell is a versatile writer who knows how to write stories that will please boys and girls. He has traveled widely, visited many out-of-the-way corners of the earth, and being a keen observer has found material for many thrilling stories. His stories are full of adventure and mystery, yet in the weaving of the story there are little threads upon which are hung lessons in loyalty, honesty, patriotism and right living.
Mr. Snell has created a wide audience among the younger readers of America. Boy or girl, you are sure to find a Snell book to your liking. His works cover a wide and interesting scope.
Here are the titles of the Snell Books: