The Blue Envelop, St Nicholas, 1922/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
"WITHOUT COMPASS OR GUIDE"
It was with a staggering sense of hopelessness that the two girls on the bosom of the arctic floe saw the snow-fog settle down upon them.
"It's likely to last for days, and by that time—" Marion's lips refused to frame the words that would express their condition when the snow-fog lifted.
"By that time—" echoed Lucile. "But now—we must do something. Surely, there is some way!"
"'Without compass or guide?'" Marion smiled at the impossibility of a solution.
Unconsciously, she had repeated the first line of an old song. Lucile said over the verse softly:
"Without compass or guide
On the crest of the tide.
Oh, light of the stars
Pray pilot me home!"
Involuntarily her glance stole skyward. Instantly an exclamation escaped her lips: "Oh, Marion! We can see them! We can! We can!"
"What can we see?" asked Marion.
"The stars!"
It was true. The snow-fog, though spread over the vast surface of the ice, was shallow. The stars gleamed through it, as if there were no fog at all. Wildly their hearts beat now with hope.
"If we can locate the Big Dipper," said Lucile, whose astronomical research had been of a practical sort, "we can follow the line made by the two stars at the lower edge of the Dipper and find the north star. All we have to do then is to let the north star guide us home."
This was quickly done, and in a short while they had mapped out a course for themselves which would certainly come nearer bringing them to the desired haven than would the northward drift of the ice-floe.
"But Phi?" exclaimed Lucile.
Marion stood for a moment undecided. Should they leave this spot without him? She believed he would make a faithful attempt to rejoin them. What if they were gone when he came? Suddenly she laughed.
"Rover!" she exclaimed. "He can follow our trail. If Phi comes, he will have only to follow us. He can travel faster than we shall. He may catch up with us."
So with many a backward glance at the gleaming north star, the two girls set their course south by east; a course which, in time, should bring them in the vicinity of the Diomede Islands.
In their minds, however, were many questions: Would further tide-cracks impede their progress? Would the snow-fog continue? If it did, would they ever be able to locate the two tiny islands which were, after all, mere rocky pillars jutting from a sea of ice?
Phi did not sit long on the ice-pile under the snow-fog. He was born for action. Something must be done. As he rushed back over the way by which he had come, something caught his eye.
An immense ice-pan had been up-ended by the press of the drift. It had toppled half over and lodged across the edge of a smaller cake. Now, like an ancient drawbridge, it hung suspended over the black moat of the salt-water channel.
"'OH, MARION! WE CAN SEE THEM! WE CAN!'"
The boy's quick eye had detected a very slight movement downward. As he remembered it now, the cake had made a far more obtuse angle with the surface of the pool a half-hour before than it did now.
Was there hope in this? Hastily he arranged three bits of ice in one pile, then two in another. By dropping flat on the ice and squinting across these, he could just see the tip of the up-ended cake. If it were in motion, the tip would soon disappear.
Eagerly he strained his eyes for a few seconds. Then, in disgust, he closed his eyes. The cake did not seem to move.
For some time he lay there in deep thought. He was searching for a way out. After a while he opened his eyes. More from curiosity than hope, he squinted once more along the line. Then, with a wild shout, he sprang into the air. The natural drawbridge was falling. Its point had dropped out of line.
The shout died on his lips. His eyes had warned him that the channel of water was widening. If it widened too rapidly, if the drawbridge fell too slowly, or ceased to fall at all, hope would die.
Moment by moment he measured the two distances with his eye. Rover, sitting by his side, now and again peered up into his eyes as if to say, "What's it all about?"
Now the drawbridge took a sudden drop of a foot. Hope rose. Then, again, it appeared wedged solidly in place. It did not move. The channel widened a foot, two feet, three. Hope seemed vain.
But now came a sudden tide tremor across the floe. With a crunching sound, the massive cake toppled and fell.
The boy was on his feet in an instant. The chasm was bridged. But the cake had broken in two. Could he make it?
Calling to his dog, he leaped upon the slippery surface. An ever widening river of water flowed where the cake had split. With one wild bound, he cleared it. The dog followed. In another moment they were safe on the other side!
"That's well over with," the boy sighed, patting the old dog on the head. "Now the question is, how can we find our friends?"
That, indeed, was a problem. They had covered considerable ground. To pick up their back trail seemed impossible.
An hour's search convinced him that it could not be done. He sat down in a brown study. He could not go away and leave these girls to drift north and perish; yet further search seemed futile.
Just as he was about to despair, Rover began to bark in the distance. Following the sound, he came to where the dog was apparently barking at nothing. But as the boy approached, the dog shot away over the ice.
"A trail!" he muttered, following on.
The ice was hard and smooth. A soft skin "muckluck" left no mark. Even the hard toes of a white bear would not scratch it.
When the boy had followed for a half-hour, he thought of these things and paused to consider. What if he were following the meandering trail of a lumbering white bear? And if it happened to be a trail of a human being, was it his own trail, that of the girls, or of the bearded miner and his guide?
His compass would tell something. Studying his compass then, he walked forward slowly.
Fifteen minutes of this told him that this was no white bear's trail. It went too straight ahead for that. Neither could it be his own trail, for he would have come to a sudden turn before this. One thing more was certain—the person or persons who made this trail were headed due south by east.
After a few moments' reflection, he decided that there remained but one thing for him to do—to follow this trail.
"All right, old dog," he said, "let's see where this ends and who's there. Might be an Eskimo hunter who has wandered far on the ice-floe, for all I know; but he'll end up somewhere, sometime."
During the greater part of this time, Marion and Lucile, shaping their course by the stars, were traveling in the general direction of the Diomede Islands.
Suddenly, as she marched along ahead, Marion uttered a low exclamation, at the same time pointing to the mark of a skin-boot in the snow.
She did not say it, but she was at once convinced that it was worn by the same person whose footprint she had seen close to the cabin on the beach near the wreck. Had they come upon the trail of the bearded miner and his guide, or was this some other person? If they met on the ice-floe, what would happen, defenseless as they were? Even their dog was gone.
For a moment, consternation seized her; but the next instant found her calm. There was nothing to do but go on, keeping the course they had chosen.
"Probably some Eskimo hunter out for white bear," she said to Lucile; "or, for that matter, it might have been made some time ago, on a spot of the ice-bound ocean's surface hundreds of miles from here."
And again they took up their march due south by east.
{[dhr]} Phi had been plodding along after Rover for hours. Minute by minute the scent of the trail they followed grew fresher. He could tell this by the old dog's growing eagerness. At every ice-pile they rounded, he expected to catch sight of human figures. Would it be two men or two girls? He could not tell. Not a chance footprint in soft snow had he seen.
When he had fairly given up hope of overtaking them, as he speeded around a gigantic ice-pile, he came in sight at once of those he followed and of land.
So overjoyed was he, that, before determining their identity, he shouted cheerily, "Hey, there!"
The figure nearest him wheeled in his track. Then, with the fierce growl of a beast, sprang at the boy's throat.
So taken by surprise was Phi, that he was totally unprepared for the attack. He caught a vision of a pair of fiery eyes set in a mass of shaggy hair; the next instant he felt himself crashed to the hard surface of the ice.
The odds were all in favor of the man. Larger, stronger, older, with the advantage of the aggressor, he bade fair to finish his work quickly. The native guide had passed beyond the next ice-pile. Rover had followed.
But the boy's college days had not been for naught. He knew a trick or two. As if stunned by the fall, he relaxed and lay motionless. Seeing this, the man took time to plant his knees on the boy's chest before moving his hands toward the lad's throat.
The next instant, as if thrown by a springboard, the man flew into the air. Phi was now on his feet. His one thought was of escape. Turning, he dashed around an ice-pile; then another and another. But fate was not with him. Just at the moment when he felt that he could elude his pursuer, his foot struck a crevice in the ice, and he went sprawling. Again the thing of terror was upon him.
But this time, there came tearing over the ice a new wild terror, and this one was his friend. Old Rover, silent and determined, sprang clean at the man's throat. The assailant went down, striking out with hands and feet and roaring for mercy.
Phi dragged the dog away from him, and, pointing toward the islands which loomed in the distance, motioned the man to go.
"You're some dog!" the boy laughed at the old leader; "well, now, I'll say you are!"
The dog stood on his haunches and howled; howled until the distant cliffs of the islands sent back the echo.
Other audience he had than Phi. Marion and Lucile heard that howl, and redoubled their speed.
As they rounded some splinters of ice, Marion sprang forward.
"Look, Lucile! The blue envelop!"
It was none other. It lay there on the ice alone.
"That's queer," said Lucile.
Marion still held the envelop in her hand, when they came upon Phi and Rover.
"Did did you lose this?" she asked, without thinking.
"Why, yes," the boy smiled, "I believe I did, or you did, or something of the kind. Glad to see it. May I have it?"
His face took on a tense expression, as he took the letter from the envelop. He read with what appeared to be absorbing interest.
"Jove!" He said, "That's—that's all right! Where'd you find it?"
Marion suddenly forgot that she had suspected him of having it all the time. "Back there on the ice," she smiled.
"That explains it. His nibs, your bearded friend, just now attacked me. Probably thought I was after that letter. In the fight he doubtless lost it from his pocket."
All at once Marion remembered the large skin-boot track by the cabin on the beach and the one on the ice-floe.
"Yes," she said, "that explains it. He stole it from my paint-box. It was he who threw our things about while searching for it."
"But it wouldn't do him any good," the boy's face took on a puzzled expression; "it's written in Greek."
"Probably going across to find some one who could read it."
"Probably."
For a time they were silent.
"I—I guess I may as well tell you about it," said the boy. "It's really no great mystery; no great story of the discovery of gold, or anything. Just the locating of a bit of whalebone.
"You see, my uncle came to the North with two thousand dollars. He stayed three years. By that time the money was gone and he had found no gold. That happens often, I'm told. Then, one day, he came upon the carcass of an immense bow-head whale far north on the Alaskan shore. It had been washed ashore by a storm. No natives lived near. The bone of that whale was worth a fortune. He cut it out and buried it in the sand-dunes near the beach. So eager was he to make good at last, that he actually lived on the gristly flesh of that whale until the work was done. Then he went south in search of a gasolene schooner to bring the treasure away. It was worth four or five thousand dollars. But he had made himself sick. He was brought home from Nome delirious. From his ravings, his son, my cousin, gathered some notion of a treasure hid away in Alaska. The doctor said he would recover in time. His family was in need of money. I offered to come up here and find out what I could. His son was to write me any information he could obtain. We had written one another letters in Greek while in college. We decided to do it in this case, addressing one another as Phi Beta Chi.
"Apparently, my uncle had said too much in his delirium before he left Nome. This crooked old miner, our bearded friend, heard it, and later, somehow, got on my trail.
"You know the rest, except that this letter gives the location of the whalebone. In the spring I shall go after it."
"Then," murmured Marion, still a trifle mystified, "why were you in such a hurry to get across the straits?"
"That's easy," he smiled; "there was a fair chance that the letter you had lost was not the most important one. The right one might still be waiting for me at the post-office. Then, too, my cousin might have written a duplicate. At any rate, I had to take the chance. It was all there was left to do."
"Shall we go now?" He smiled again. "All right, Rover; mush!"
"Brave old Rover!" murmured Marion. "For he is a white man's dog."
No further interruptions came to Phi's plans. In the middle of the next summer he might have been seen leaning over the rail of a southbound steamer. Beside him stood a girl. It was Marion. She was going "outside" to study art; he to deliver the treasure to its owner.
THE END