The Blue Envelope Part 7

A fog had settled down over the sea. They were drifting and paddling slowly forward, when the faint scream of a siren struck their ears. It came nearer and nearer.

"A gasoline schooner," said Marian.

The natives began shouting to avert a possible collision.

Presently the schooner appeared, a dark bulk in the fog. It took shape. Men were seen on the deck. It came in close by. The waves from it reached the skin-boat.

They were pa.s.sing with a salute, when a strange thing happened. Rover, the old dog-leader, who had been riding in the bow standing well forward, as if taking the place of a painted figurehead, suddenly began to bark furiously. At the same time, Marian caught sight of a bearded face framed in a porthole.

Involuntarily she shrank back out of sight. The next instant the schooner had faded away into the fog. The dog ceased barking.

"What was it?" asked Lucile anxiously.

"Only a face."

"Who?"

"The man who wanted the blue envelope; Rover recognized him first."

"You don't suppose he knew, and is following?"

"How could he know?"

"But what is he going to Siberia for?"

"Perhaps to trade. They do that a great deal. Let's not talk of it."

Marian s.h.i.+vered.

The incident was soon forgotten. They were nearing the Siberian sh.o.r.e which was to be their summer home. A million nesting birds came skimming out over the sea, singing their merry song as if to greet them. They would soon be living in a tent in the midst of a city of tents. They would be studying a people whose lives are as little known as were those of the natives in the heart of Africa before the days of Livingstone.

As she thought of these things Marian's cheeks flushed with excitement.

"What new thrill will come to us here?" her lips whispered.

CHAPTER V

CAST ADRIFT

There was a shallow s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sed 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!