CHAPTER VI
THE BLUE ENVELOP DISAPPEARS
When Marion heard the voice outside the cabin on the wreck, she realized that a new problem, a whole set of new problems, had arisen. Here was a man. Who was he? Could he be the grizzled miner who had demanded the blue envelop? If so, what then? Was there more than one man? What was to come of it all, anyway?
All this sped through her mind while she was drawing on her parka. The next moment she had opened the door, stepped out, and closed it behind her.
"Ah! I have the pleasure—"
"You?" Marion gasped.
For a second she could say no more. Before her, dressed in a jaunty parka of Siberian squirrel-skin, was the frank-faced college-boy—he of the Phi Beta Chi.
"Why, yes," he said rather awkwardly, "it is I. Does it seem so strange? Well, yes—I dare say it does. Suppose you sit down and I'll tell you about it."
Marion sat down on a section of the rail.
"Well, you see," he began, a quizzical smile playing about his lips, "when I had completed my—my—well, my mission to the north of Cape Prince of Wales, it was too late to return by dog-team. I waited for a boat. I arrived at the P.O. you used to keep. You were gone. So was my letter."
"Yes, you said—"
"Now, now, don't interrupt. That was quite all right; the thing I wanted you to do. But, you see, that letter is mighty important. I had to follow. This craft we're sitting on was coming this way. I took passage. She ran into a mess of bad luck. First we were picked up by an ice-floe and carried far into the Arctic Ocean. When at last we poled our way out of that, we were caught by a storm and carried southwest with such violence that we were thrown upon this sand-bar. The ship broke up some, but we managed to stick to her until the weather calmed. We went ashore and threw some of the wreckage into the form of a cabin. You've been staying there, I guess." He grinned.
Marion nodded.
"Well, the ship was hopeless. Natives came in their skin-boats from East Cape."
"East Cape? How far—how far is that?"
"Perhaps ten miles. Why?" He studied the girl's startled face.
"Nothing; only didn't a white man come with the natives?"
"A white man?"
"I've heard there was one staying there."
"No, he didn't come."
Marion settled back on the rail.
"Well," he went on, "the captain of this craft traded everything on board to the natives for furs; everything but some food. I bought that from him. You see, they were determined to get away as soon as possible. I was just as determined to stay. I didn't know exactly where you were, but was bound I'd find you—and the letter." He paused. "By the way," he said, struggling to conceal his intense interest, "have you the letter?"
Marion nodded. "It is in my paint-box over in the cabin."
The boy sprang eagerly to his feet. "May we not go fetch it?"
"I can't leave my friend here alone."
"BEFORE HER WAS THE FRANK-FACED COLLEGE-BOY"
"Then may I go?" He was eager as a child. Then, after a second, "Why, by Jove! I'm selfish. Haven't given you a chance to say a thing. Perhaps your friend is in trouble. Of course she is, or she'd be out here. What is it? Can I help you?"
"She's only chilled and recovering from a shock. The tidal wave threw her into the sea."
"Oh!" He stood thinking for a moment. "Do you intend to remain in Siberia all winter?"
"We had no such intention when we came, but the storm and the white line caught us. No more boats now."
"Say," he exclaimed, "you two can keep my cabin! There's a bunk below the deck where I can be quite comfortable." He did not wait for her reply. "I'll go for your things. You stay here. Any dogs?"
"Three."
"Good! I'll be back quicker than you think."
He was away. Bounding from ice-cake to ice-cake, he soon disappeared.
Marion reëntered the cabin, and sat there for a time, thinking. Then she fell to wondering if the boy had reached the shore safely, so she went outside again and climbed to the highest point on the rail. There she stood for some time, scanning the horizon.
"Strange he'd be way down there!" she murmured, at last; "a quarter of a mile south of the cabin. Perhaps the ice carried him."
The distance was so great she could distinguish no more than a figure, a mere speck, moving in and out among the ice-piles that lined the shore. For a moment she rested her eyes by studying the ship's deck. Then again she gazed away toward the cabin.
"Why!" she exclaimed suddenly, "he has reached the cabin! He must have run every step of the way!"
In the cabin on shore, the young stranger began packing the girls' possessions preparatory to putting them on the sled.
"Some careless housekeepers!" he grumbled, as he gathered up articles of clothing from every corner of the room, and, having straightened out Marion's paint-box, closed its cover down with a click.
He arrived at the schooner an hour later. The sled load was soon stowed away in the wireless cabin.
He brought a quantity of food, canned vegetables, bacon, hard-tack, coffee, and sugar from his store below. Then he stood by the door.
Marion was bustling about the cabin, putting things to rights. Lucile, a trifle pale, was sitting in the corner.
Presently Marion caught sight of him standing there. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "you are waiting for your reward?"
"Any time," he smiled.
"You shall have it right now—the blue envelop."
She seized her paint-box, and, throwing back the cover, lifted the paint-tray. Then from her lips escaped one word; "Gone!"
He sprang eagerly forward.
"It can't be!" Lucile breathed.
"Take a good look," the boy suggested.
Marion inspected the box thoroughly.
"No," she said, with an air of finality, "it's not here."
"Your—er—the paint-box," he stammered, "it was a bit disarranged."
"Disarranged?"
"Well, not in the best of order. Letter might have dropped out in the cabin. I dare say it's on the floor back there. Had you seen it lately?"
"Only this morning. I can't understand about the box. The wind must have blown it down, or something."
"I dare say." The boy smiled good-naturedly as he recalled the disordered room. "I'll hop right back and look for it."
It was with a very dejected air that he returned. Marion could not tell whether it was genuine or feigned. Had he been in such haste to secure the letter that he had taken it at once from the box? Was all his later action mere stage-play?
"No," he said, bringing forth a forlorn smile, "I couldn't find it. It's not there."
That evening, when, after a supper served on a small tip-down table in the wireless cabin, the boy had gone to his bunk below and Lucile had fallen asleep, Marion lay awake a long time puzzling over the mysteries of the past and the problems of the future. Where had the blue envelop disappeared to? Did the boy have it? She resolved to search, for herself, the cabin on the beach. She felt half inclined to talk matters over frankly with him. There were mysteries which might be cleared up. She remembered with what astonishing speed he had reached the cabin, once he had sprung upon the shore. She remembered, too, how he had spoken of the disordered paint-box. She prided herself on her neatness. And that paint-box, was it not her workshop, her prize possession? She longed to talk it over with him. But on the other hand, she could not bring herself to feel that her trust in him was fully warranted. She hated, above all things, to be "taken in." If she discussed all these things with him, and if, at the same time he had the letter, wouldn't she be taken in indeed?
"No," she pressed her lips tight shut, "no, I won't."
Morning found the boy in a quite different mood. He laughed and chatted gaily over his sour-dough pancakes.
"Now you know," he said, as he shoved back his stool, "I like your company awfully well, and I'd like to keep this up indefinitely; but I've got to get across the straits."
"We'll be sorry to lose you," laughed Marion; "but just you run along. And when you get there, tell the missionary that breakfast is ready. Ask him to step over and eat with us."
"No, but I'm serious."
"Then you're crazy. No white man has ever crossed thirty-five miles of floeing ice."
"There's always to be a first. Natives do it, don't they?"
"I've heard they do."
"I can go anywhere a native can, provided he doesn't get out of my sight."
"A guide across the straits! It's a grand idea!" Marion seized Lucile about the waist and went hopping out on deck. "A guide across the straits. We'll be home for Christmas dinner yet!"
"What, you don't mean—" The boy stared in astonishment.
"Surely I do. We can go anywhere you can, provided you don't get out of our sight."
"That—why, that will be dandy."
He said this with lagging enthusiasm. It was evident that he doubted their power of endurance.
"We'll have to go to East Cape to start."
"East Cape?" Marion exclaimed in a startled tone.
"Sure. What's wrong with East Cape?"
"Nothing—only, only that's where that strange white man is."
"What's so terrible about him?"
Marion hesitated. She had come to the end of a blind alley. Should she tell him of her experiences with the miner who demanded the blue envelop, and of her suspicion that this man at East Cape was that same man?
She looked into his frank blue eyes for a moment, then said to herself, "Yes, I will."
She did tell him the whole story. When she had finished, there was a new, a very friendly light in the boy's eyes.
"I say!" he exclaimed, "that was mighty good of you. It really was. That man—"
He hesitated. Marion thought she was going to be told the whole secret of the blue envelop.
"That man," he repeated, "he won't hurt you. You need have no fear of him. As for yours truly, meaning me, I can take care of myself. We start for East Cape to-day. What say?"
"All right."
Marion sprang to her feet, and, after imparting the news to Lucile, who had by this time fully recovered from the shock of the previous day, set to work packing their sled.
The recent mysterious disappearance of the blue envelop remained unexplained. Under pretense of missing some article from her wardrobe, when on the beach ready to start for East Cape, Marion hastened to the cabin and made a quick search for the missing envelop; but it was unrewarded.
One thing, though, arrested her attention for a moment. As she left the cabin she noticed, near the door, the print of a man's skin-boot in the snow. It was an exceedingly large print, such as is made by a careless white man who buys the first badly-made skin-boots offered to him by a native seamstress. The college-boy could not have made that track. His skin-boots had been made by some Eskimo woman of no mean ability, who had fitted them to his feet, as she would have done for her Eskimo husband.
"Oh, well!" she exclaimed, as she raced to join her companions, "probably some native who has passed this way."
Even as she said it, she doubted her own judgment. She had never in her life seen a native wear such a clumsily shaped skin-boot.