CHAPTER V
THE WHITE LINE
Out on the wreck, some two hundred yards from shore, a figure emerged from a small cabin aft. The stern of the ship had been carried completely about by the violence of the waves. It had left this little cabin, formerly the wireless cabin, high and dry.
The person came out upon the deck and scanned the horizon. Suddenly his eyes fell upon the cabin and the strange white signal which the girls had set fluttering there before they went to sleep.
Sliding a native kayak down from the deck, he launched it, then, leaping into the narrow seat, began paddling rapidly toward land.
Having beached his boat, he hurried toward the cabin. His hand was on the latch when he chanced to glance up at the white emblem of distress which floated over his head.
His hand dropped to his side; his mouth flew open. An expression of amazement spread over his face.
"Jumpin' Jupiter!" he muttered beneath his breath.
He beat a hasty retreat. Once in his kayak he made double time back to the wreck.
Marion was the first to awaken in the cabin. By the dull light that shone through the cracks, she could tell that it was growing dark.
Springing from her bunk, she put her hand to the latch. Hardly had she done this when the door flew open with a force that threw her back against the opposite wall. Fine particles of snow cut her face. The wind set every loose thing in the cabin bobbing and fluttering. The skirt they had attached to a stout pole as a signal was booming overhead like a gun.
"Ah! A blizzard!" she groaned.
Seizing the door, she attempted to close it. Twice, the violence of the storm threw her back.
When at last her efforts had been rewarded with success, she turned to rouse her companion. "Lucile! Lucile! Wake up! A blizzard!"
Lucile opened her eyes.
"Wha—wha—" she droned sleepily.
"A blizzard! A blizzard from the north!"
Lucile sat up quickly.
"From the north?" she exclaimed, fully awake in an instant. "The ice?"
"Perhaps."
"And if it comes?"
"We're stuck in Siberia, that's all, for eight or nine months. We won't dare try to cross the straits on the ice. No white man has ever done it, let alone a woman. Well," she smiled, "we've got food for five days, and five days is a long time. We'd better try to bring in some wood and get the dogs in here; they'd freeze out there."
Three days the blizzard raged. Such a storm at this season of the year had not been known on the Arctic for twenty years. The third day broke clear and cold, with the wind still blowing a gale. Lucile was the first to throw open the door. As it came back with a bang, something fell from the beam above and rattled to the floor.
She stooped to pick it up. "Look, Marion!" she exclaimed, "A key! A large brass key!"
Marion examined it closely. "What can it belong to?"
"The wreck perhaps. Looks like a steward's pass-key."
"But what would they save it for? You don't think—"
"If we could get out to the wreck, we'd see."
"Yes, but we can't. There—"
"Look, Marion!" Lucile's eyes were large and wild.
"The white line!" exclaimed Marion, gripping her arm.
It was true. Before them lay the dark ocean still flecked with foam, but at the horizon, gleaming whiter than burnished silver, straight, distinct, unmistakable, was a white line.
"And that means—"
"We're trapped!"
Lucile sank weakly into a chair. Marion began pacing the floor.
"Anyway," she exclaimed at last, "I can paint it! It will make a wonderful study."
Suiting action to words, she sought out her paint-box and was soon busy with a sketch, which, developing bit by bit, or rather, seeming to evolve out of nothing, showed a native dressed in furs, shading his eyes to scan the dark, tossing ocean. And beyond, the object of his gaze, was the silvery line. When she had finished, she playfully inscribed a title for the sketch at the bottom—"The Coming of the White Line."
For a moment she stood there thinking of the possibilities of a winter in this terrible land. Suddenly a glimmer of hope shot in out of the darkness—the strange, brown boy who had come to them out of the sea that day on Mutineer's Island! The scientist had said that he had probably been brought from somewhere to the north of Russia. If he should cross their path now, they would at least feel that, in all this wilderness, they had one friend. Then, with a smile, she realized how wildly improbable was the thought. To build a hope upon such a remote chance seemed utterly absurd.
As she put her paints away, something caught her eye. It was one corner of the blue envelop with the strange address upon it.
"Ah, there you are still," she sighed. "And there you will remain for nine months, or I miss my guess. I wish I hadn't kept my promise to the boy—wish I'd left you in the pigeonhole at Cape Prince of Wales."
Since the air was too chill, the wind too keen for travel, the girls slept that night in the cabin.
They awoke to a world unknown. The first glimpse outside the cabin brought surprised exclamations to their lips. The "white line" was gone. So, too, was the ocean. Before them, as far as the eye could see, lay a mass of yellow lights and purple shadows, ice-fields that had buried the sea. Only one object stood out black and bare before them—the hull of the wrecked ship.
"Look!" said Lucile, suddenly. "We can go out to the ship over the ice-floe!"
"'THE WHITE LINE!' EXCLAIMED MARION, GRIPPING HER ARM"
"Let's do it," said Marion, eagerly. They were soon threading their way in and out among the ice-piles, which were already solidly attaching themselves to the sand beneath the shallow water. And now they reached a spot where the water was deeper; where ice-cakes, some small as a kitchen floor, some large as a town lot, jostled and ground one upon another. They were only half-way to the wreck.
"Wo-oo, I don't like it!" exclaimed Lucile, as she leaped a narrow chasm of dark water.
"We'll soon be there," trilled her companion. "Just watch your step, that's all."
They pushed on, leaping from cake to cake, or racing across a broad ice-pan, now skirting a dark pool, now clambering over a pile of ice ground fine, as they made their way slowly, but surely, toward their goal.
"Listen!" exclaimed Marion.
"What is it?" asked Lucile, her voice quivering with alarm.
A strange, wild, weird sound came to them across the floe—a grinding, rushing, creaking, moaning sound, that increased in volume as the voice of a cyclone increases.
Only a second elapsed before they knew. Then with a cry of terror, Marion dragged her companion to the center of the ice-pan and pulled her flat to its surface. From somewhere, far out to sea, a giant tidal wave was sweeping through the ice-floe. Marion had seen it. The mountain of ice which it bore on its crest seemed as high as the solid ridge of rock behind them on the land. And with its weird, wild, rushing scream of grinding and breaking ice, it was traveling toward them. It had the speed of the wind, the force of an avalanche. When it came, what then?
With a rush, the wild terror of the arctic sea burst upon them. It lifted the giant ice-pan weighing hundreds of tons, tilted it to a dangerous angle, then dropped from beneath it. Marion's heart stopped beating, as she felt the downward rush of the avalanche of ice. The next instant she felt it crumble like an egg-shell. It had broken at the point where they lay. With a warning cry of terror, she sprang to her feet and pitched backward.
The cry came too late. As she rose unsteadily to her knees, she saw a dark brown bulk topple at the edge of the cake, then roll with a swash into the pool of water which appeared where the cake had parted. It was Lucile! She had fallen into the stinging arctic brine. What chance could there be for her life?
For the time being, the ice-field was quiet. The tidal wave had spent its force on the sandy beach.
That other, less violent, disturbances would follow the first, the girl knew right well. Hastily creeping to the brink of the dark pool, she strained her eyes for the sight of floating bit of cloth, a waving hand. There was none. Despair gripped her heart. Still she waited, and, as she waited, there came the distant sound, growing ever louder, of another onrushing tide.
When Lucile went down into the dark pool she was not only conscious but very much alive, and acutely aware of the peril of her situation. Should that chasm close before she rose, or as she rose, she was doomed. In one case she would drown; in the other, she would be crushed like a barnacle between ocean liners.
Down, down she sank. But the water was salt and buoyant. Now she felt herself rising. Holding her breath, she looked upward. A narrow ribbon of black was there to the right.
"That will be the open water," was her mental comment, "I must swim for it."
She was a strong swimmer. Her heavy fur garments impeded her. The sting of the water imperiled her power to remain conscious. Yet she struggled even as she rose.
Just when Marion had given up hope, she saw a head shoot above the water, then a pair of arms. The next instant she gripped both her companion's wrists and lifted as she had never lifted before. There was wild terror in her eyes. The roar of the second wave was drumming in her ears.
She was not a second too soon. Hardly had she dragged the half-unconscious girl from the pool, than it closed with a grinding crash, and the ice-pan again tilted high in air.
The strain of this on-rush was not so great. The cake held together. Gradually it settled back to its place.
Marion glanced in the direction of the wreck. They were very much nearer to it than to the shore. She thought she saw a small cabin in the stern. Lucile must be relieved of her salt-water-soaked and fast-freezing garments at once.
"Can you walk?" she asked.
Lucile staggered dizzily to her feet.
"I'll help you. The wreck! We must get there. You must struggle or you'll freeze."
Lucile did try. She strove as she had never done before—against the stiffening garments, the aching lungs and muscles, but most of all against the almost unconquerable desire to sleep.
Foot by foot, yard by yard, they made their way across the treacherous tangle of ice-piles, which was still in restless motion.
Now they had covered a quarter of the distance, now half; now three quarters; and now, with an exultant cry, Marion dragged her half-unconscious companion upon the deck.
"There's a cabin aft," she whispered, "a warm cabin. We'll soon be there."
"Soon be there," Lucile echoed faintly.
The climbing of the long, slanting, slippery deck was a terrible ordeal. More than once Marion despaired. At last they stood before the door. She put a hand to the knob. A cry escaped her lips:
"Locked!" Dark despair gripped her heart. But only for an instant. "Lucile, the key! The key we found in the cabin! Where is it?"
"The key—the key?" Lucile repeated dreamily.
"Yes, the key! The key!"
"Oh, yes, the key. Why, that's of no use."
"Yes, it is! It is!"
"It's in my parka pocket."
The next moment Marion was prying the key from a frozen pocket, and the next after that she was dragging Lucile into the cabin.
In one corner of the cabin stood a small oil-heater. Above it was a match-box. With a cry of joy, Marion found matches, lighted one, tried the stove, found it filled with oil! A blaze rewarded her efforts. There was heat; heat that would save her companion's life.
She next attacked the frozen garments. Using a knife where nothing else would avail, she stripped the clothing away until at last she fell to chafing the white and chilled limbs of the girl who still struggled bravely against the desire to sleep.
A half-hour later Lucile was sleeping naturally in a bunk at the upper wall of the room. She was snuggled deep in the interior of a mammoth deer-skin sleeping-bag. Her garments were drying beside the kerosene stove. Marion was drowsing half asleep by the fire.
Suddenly, she was aroused by a voice. It was a man's voice. She was startled.
"Please," the voice said, "may I come in? That's supposed to be my cabin, don't you know? But I don't want to be piggish."
Marion stared wildly about her. For a second she was speechless. Then she spoke: "Wait—wait a minute; I'm coming out."