The Blue Envelope Part 22

The two girls looked at one another solemnly for a full minute. In their larder was still a little tea, a pint bottle of weak duck soup, a half-can of much frozen condensed milk--and that was all. They were on an island of which as yet they knew nothing. Above them towered great, overhanging cliffs. Before them the giant ice-pans rose, crumbling and creaking in mad turmoil.

"Life is so strange," said Lucile, at length; then energetically: "Let's make some soup of the things we have left. Then, if we can get up there, we'll explore our island. We'll have three or four hours of daylight left, and if there's anything for us to eat anywhere, the sooner we find it out the better."

The climb to the top of the island, which they undertook an hour later, was scarcely less dangerous than had been the struggle to cross the tumbling ice-floe, for this island was little more than a gigantic granite bowlder rising for a distance of some five hundred feet out of the sea.

They crept along a narrow shelf where a slip on some pebble might send them cras.h.i.+ng to death in the tumbled ma.s.s of ice below. They scaled an all but perpendicular wall, to drag their sleeping-bag and the few other belongings, which they had dared attempt to carry, after them by the aid of a skin-rope. Then, after a few minutes' rest, they would rise to climb again.

But at last, their efforts rewarded, they found themselves standing on the edge of a snow-capped plateau. "Now," said Lucile, "if there are any people living on the island, it won't be on top of it, but in some sheltered cranny down by the sh.o.r.e where they are away from the sweeping winds and where they can hunt and fish."

"But think what they may be like!" said Marian. "They may be savages who have never seen a white man. We don't even know whether we are a hundred miles from Bering Straits or five hundred. And neither of us has ever been on an island in the Arctic Ocean!"

"That," said Lucile, "has nothing to do with it. We're on one now. We can't very well go back to the ocean ice. We haven't any food. We couldn't hide on this little island if we wished to. So the best thing to do is to try to find the people, if there are any, and cast our lot with them. I once heard a great bishop say that 'humanity is everywhere very much the same.' We've just got to believe that and go ahead."

Shouldering the sleeping-bag, and leaving to Marian the remaining seal-oil in the skin-sack, the butcher knife, and the fis.h.i.+ng outfit, she marched steadily forward on a course which in time would enable them to make the outer circle of the island.

"See those piles of stones?" Lucile said fifteen minutes later. "Those did not just happen to be there. They were put there by men. See how carefully they are piled. The piles look tall and slim. I have heard a sea captain say that the natives of this coast, in very early days, when there was warring among tribes, piled stones on high points like this to make those who desired to attack them think they were men, and that there were many warriors in the place."

"Then," said Marian, catching her breath at the thought, "there must be people on this island."

"Not for sure," said Lucile. "The people who piled up those rocks might merely have been living here temporarily, using this island as a hunting station; and then, even if they were living here permanently, famine and contagious diseases may have killed all of them off."

They trudged on again in silence. Everywhere the rocky rim of the island frowned up at them, offering no suggestion of a path down to the foot, or of a rocky shelf below where a group of hunters might build a village.

"There's a place somewhere," said Lucile stoutly, as she lowered her burden to the snow and paused for a brief rest. "There's a path down and we must find it, if it's nothing more than to find a safe spot by the sea where we can fish for smelt, tomcod and flounders."

Dusk was falling when, at length, with a little cry of joy, Lucile sprang forward, then began a cautious descent over a winding and apparently well-worn trail which even the snow did not completely conceal.

With hearts beating wildly, in utter silence they made their way down, down the winding way--to what? That, they could not tell.

Finally Lucile paused. She caught her breath quickly and clutched at her throat.

At length, in a calmer moment, she pointed down and to the right of the trail.

"See that square of white?"

Marian strained her eyes to peer through the gathering darkness.

"Yes," she said at last, "I see it."

"That," said Lucile in a tone that was tense with emotion, "is the roof of a house--a white man's house!"

"Wha--what makes you think so?" gasped Marian.

"There's nothing as square as that in nature's panorama. And a native does not build a house like that."

"And if it is?"

"If it is, we must trust ourselves to their care, though I'd almost rather they were natives." She closed her eyes and saw again the rough, unkempt white men, beach combers, who lived by trading, hunting and whaling with the natives. They were a hard, bad lot, and she knew it.

"Well," she sighed, "come on. Let's go down."

Down they went, each turn of the path bringing them closer to the mysterious house.

"There's no light," said Lucile at last.

"There are no tracks in the snow," added Marian, a moment later.

"It's boarded up," said Lucile, as they came closer. It would have been hard to judge whether there was more of relief or of disappointment in the tone in which she said this.

They stood there staring at the house. It was a nice house, a bungalow such as one might desire for a summer home in the mountains or at the seash.o.r.e.

"Who do you suppose brought all that fine lumber up here and built that house?" said Lucile.

"I wonder who," echoed Marian.

They took a turn about it. All the windows had been boarded up with rough lumber. There were two doors. These were fastened with padlock and chain. An examination of the locks showed that keys had not been used in them for months.

Lucile's eyes were caught by poles and some platforms to the right, along the rocky sh.o.r.e. She walked in that direction.

"Marian, come here!" she cried presently. Marian came running. "Look!

Here's a whole native village! They've built their homes out of rocks.

See! It's like tunneling into the side of the mountain. Must be homes for a hundred people!"

"And not a soul here! How strange!"

"Not even a dog!" Lucile's own voice sounded strangely hollow to her, as if echoed by the walls of a tomb.

CHAPTER XV

TWO RED RIDING HOODS

Before Phi struck out for the unknown land which had so suddenly thrust itself into his line of vision, he paused to ask himself the question whether he had come upon some island or a point on the mainland.

Finding himself unable to answer the question, he at once set plans for reaching that land.

The rifle, now a useless inc.u.mbrance, he left leaning against an up-ended cake of ice. That sh.o.r.e, if not lifted high by a mirage, was at least ten miles away. And ten miles to a boy and dog who have appeased their hunger for three days with two small birds, is no mean distance.

Bravely they struck out. Now they crossed a broad, level pan and now climbed a gigantic pile of bowlder-like fragments that rolled and slipped at their every move, threatening to send them cras.h.i.+ng to the surface of the ice-pans or to submerge them in the deep, open pool of stinging water that lay at its base.

Exercising every precaution, the boy made his way slowly forward. More than once he paused to wait for the dog, time after time lifting him over a dangerous crevice or a.s.sisting him in climbing a particularly difficult barrier.

"I know you'd help me if you could," he said with a smile as he moistened his cracked lips, "so if we go down, we go together."

Time after time, dizzy-headed and faint, he sat down to rest, only to rise after a moment and struggle on again. At times, too, he was obliged to shake himself free from the spells of drowsiness which the chill wind and brisk Arctic air threw over him.

"We--we'll make it, old boy. We--we'll make it," he repeated over and over.