“And it will crush the O Moo,” said Florence with a gasp.
“Yes, unless,” Marian was studying the situation carefully, “unless we can escape it.”
For a moment she said no more. Then suddenly:
“Yes, I believe we could. There are pike-poles in the cabin. Florence, bring them, will you?”
Florence came back presently with two stout poles some twelve feet long. These were armed with stout iron hooks and points at one end.
“You see,” explained Marian rapidly, “we are much nearer the fore edge of the floe than to either side or to the back, and up there some forty feet there is a narrow channel reaching almost through to the edge. All that is necessary is that we crowd the ice to right and left a bit until we reach that channel, then draw the O Moo through it. If we reach the sandy shore before the floe does, the worst that can happen is that the O Moo will be driven aground but not crushed at all, and the best that can happen is that we will find some sort of little harbor where the yacht will be safe until the wind shifts and the ice goes back out to sea.”
“But can we move that ice?” Florence’s face showed her incredulity.
“It’s easier than it looks. Come on,” ordered Marian briskly. Throwing the rope ladder over the side, she sprang down it to leap out upon a broad ice pan.
Florence shuddered as she followed. This was all new to her.
Marian had said that it was easy, but they did not find it so. True, they did move the O Moo forward. Inch by inch, foot by foot, fathom by fathom she glided forward. But this was accomplished only at the cost of blistered hands, aching muscles and breaking backs.
All this time the ice-floe was moving slowly but surely forward. Now it was a hundred fathoms from the shore, now fifty, now thirty. And now—
But just at this moment the yacht moved out into the open water before the floe. At the same time Marian caught sight of a narrow stream which cut down through the sandy beach some fifty yards from the point where they had broken through.
“If only we can make that channel,” she panted. “If the water’s deep enough all the way to it, we can. Or if the floe doesn’t come too fast.”
Florence, who thought she had expended every ounce of energy in her body, took three long breaths, then, having hooked her pole to the prow of the O Moo, began to pull. Soon Marian joined her on the pole and together the girls struggled.
By uniting their energies they were able to drag the reluctant O Moo length by length toward the goal.
Once Florence, having entrusted her weight to a rotten bit of ice, plunged into the chilling waters. But by Marian’s aid she climbed upon a safer cake and, shaking the water from her, resumed her titanic labors. Twice the hull of the O Moo touched bottom. Each time they were able to drag her free.
At last with a long-drawn sigh they threw their united strength into a shove which sent her, prow first, up the still waters at the mouth of the stream.
There remained for them but one means of reaching shore—to swim.
With a little “Oo-oo!” Marian plunged in. She was followed closely by Florence.
Twenty minutes later they were in the cabin of the O Moo and rough linen towels were bringing the warm, ruddy glow of life back to their half-frozen limbs. The O Moo was lying close to the bank where an overhanging tree gave them a safe mooring.
As Florence at last, after having drawn on a garment of soft clingy material and having thrown a warm dressing gown over this, sank into a chair, she murmured:
“Thanks be! We are here. But, after all, where is ‘here’?”
CHAPTER XIV
“A PHANTOM WIRELESS”
It was night, dark, cloudy, moonless night. Florence could scarcely see enough of the sandy beach to tell where she was going. She had, however, been over that same ground in the daytime, so she knew it pretty well. Besides, she wasn’t going any place; just walking back and forth, up and down a long, narrow stretch of hard-packed and frozen sand.
She was thinking. Walking in the darkness helped her to think. When there is nothing to hear, nothing to see and nothing to feel, and when the movement of one’s feet keeps the blood moving, then one can do the best thinking. Anyway that was the way this big, healthy, hopeful college girl thought about it. So she had wrapped herself in a heavy cape and had come out to think.
They had been ice-locked on the island for thirty-six hours. The ice had crowded on shore for a time. It had piled high in places. Now the wind had gone down and it was growing colder. It seemed probable that the ice would freeze into one solid mass, in which case they would be locked in for who knows how long.
The water in their little natural harbor had taken on something of a crust. It was possible that the boat would be frozen into the stream.
“Not that it matters,” she told herself rather gloomily. “We can’t start the engine and as long as we can’t it is impossible for us to leave the island; only thing we can do is wait until someone discovers our plight or we are able to hail a boat.”
They were on an island; they had made sure of that first thing. She and Marian had gone completely around it. It wasn’t much of an island either. Just a wreath of sand thrown up from the bottom of the lake, it could scarcely be more than three miles long by a half mile wide. The stream they had entered, running almost from end to end of it, drained the whole of it. The highest point was at the north. This point was a sand dune some forty feet high. Their boat was moored at the south end. The entire island, except along the beach, was covered with a scrub growth of pine and fir trees. As far as they could tell, not a single person had ever lived on the island.
“It’s very strange,” Marian had said when they had made the rounds of it. “It doesn’t seem possible that there could be such an island on the lake without summer cottages on it.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Florence had answered. “What an ideal spot! Wonderful beaches on every side. Fishing too, I guess. And far enough from land to enjoy a cool breeze on the hottest day of summer.”
Though they had constantly strained their eyes in an endeavor to discover other land in the distance, they had not succeeded.
“Probably belongs to someone who will not lease it,” said Florence at last.
So here she was trying to think things through. There was danger of a real catastrophe. The food in their pantry could not possibly last over ten days. Then what? As far as she knew, there was not a thing to be eaten on the island. It was possible that fish could be caught beneath the lake ice or in their stream. She meant to try that in the morning.
“What a plight to put one in!” she exclaimed. “Who could have done it and why did they do it?”
This question set her mind running over the mysterious incidents which, she could not but believe, had led up to this present moment.
There had been Lucile’s seeing of the blue face in the old Mission, her own affair with the stranger in the museum; the blue candlestick; the visit to Mr. Cole in the new museum; Lucile’s frightful adventure on the lake ice; the incident of the two men with the sled on the ice of the lagoon and the single man sitting on the ice; then the spot of blue ice discovered next day.
“Blue ice!” she exclaimed suddenly, stopping still in her tracks. “Blue! Blue ice!”
Florence frowned, as she considered it.
A new theory had come to her regarding that spot of blue ice on the lagoon, a theory which made her wish more than ever to get away from this island.
“Ho, well,” she whispered at last, “there’ll probably be a thaw before we get back or those men will come back and tear it up. But if there isn’t, if they don’t then—well, we’ll see what we’ll see.”
She was still puzzling over these problems when a strange noise, leaping seemingly out of nowhere, smote her ear.
It was such a rumble and roar as she had heard but once before in all her life. That sound had come to her over a telephone wire as she pressed her ear to the receiver during a thunderstorm. But here there was neith
er wire nor receiver and the very thought of a thunderstorm on such a night was ridiculous.
At first she was inclined to believe it to be the sound of some disturbance on the lake, a sudden rush of wind or a tidal wave.
“But there is little wind and the sea is calm,” she told herself.
She was in the midst of these perplexities when the sound broke into a series of sput-sput-sputs. Her heart stood still for a second, then raced on as her lips framed the word:
“Wireless.”
So ridiculous was the thought that the word died on her lips. There was no wireless outfit on the yacht; could be none on the island, for had they not made the entire round? Had they not found it entirely uninhabited? Whence, then, came this strange clash of man-made lightning? The girl could find no answer to her own unspoken questions.
After a moment’s thought she was inclined to believe that she was hearing the sounds created by some unknown electrical phenomena. Men were constantly discovering new things about electricity. Perhaps, all unknown to them, such isolated points as this automatically served as relay stations to pass along wireless messages.
Not entirely satisfied with this theory, she left the beach and, feeling her way carefully among the small evergreens, came at last to the base of a fir tree which capped the ridge. This tree, apparently of an earlier growth, towered half its height above its fellows.
Reaching up to the first branch she began to ascend. She climbed two-thirds of the way to the top with great ease. There she paused.
The sound had ceased. Only the faint wash-wash of wavelets on ice and shore, mingled with the mournful sighing of the pines, disturbed the silence of the night.
For some time she stood there clinging to the branches. Here she caught the full sweep of the lake breeze. She grew cold; began to shiver; called herself a fool; decided to climb down again, and was preparing to do so, when there came again that rumbling roar, followed as before by the clack-clack-clack, sput-sput.
“That’s queer,” she murmured as she braced herself once more and attempted to pierce the darkness.
Then, abruptly, the sound ceased. Strain her ears as she might she caught no further sound. She peered into the gloom, trying to descry the wires of an aerial against the sky-line, but her search was vain.
“It’s fairly spooky!” she told herself. “A phantom wireless station on a deserted island!”
Ten minutes longer she clung there motionless. Then, feeling that she must turn into a lump of ice if she lingered longer, she began to climb down.
“I’ll come back here in the morning and have a look,” she promised herself. “Won’t tell the girls; they’ve troubles enough.”
She made her way back to the yacht and was soon in her berth fast asleep.
It was with considerable amusement that she retraced her steps next morning. There could not, she told herself, be a wireless station of any kind on that island. A wireless station called for a home for the operators and there was no such home. She and Marian had made sure of that.
“But then what was it?” she asked herself, “What could it have been?”
She climbed the tree, this time up to its very top, then, turning, shaded her eyes to gaze away the length of the island.
“Just as I thought,” she murmured. “Nothing. Just nothing at all.”
It was true. There could be no wireless tower. If there had been she could have seen it. What was more, there certainly was no house on the island. Had there been, she could not have failed to detect its roof from her point of vantage.
There was no house and no wireless station, yet, as she looked her lips parted in an exclamation of surprise.
She was witnessing strange things. Toward the other end of the island something was moving in and out among the drifting ice-cakes. This, she made out presently, by the flash of a paddle, was some sort of a boat.
“And it is,” she breathed. “No—no it can’t be! Yes, it is, it’s an Eskimo kayak!”
At once she thought of the Negontisks. Could it be possible that they had stumbled upon a secret home of some of these people?
As if in answer to her question, the strange manipulator of this queer craft drew the kayak on shore, then, skipping hurriedly along the beach and up a sandy ridge, suddenly put two hands on something and the next instant dropped straight down and out of sight.
Florence caught her breath sharply. She clutched the fir boughs in the fear that she would fall.
Then, realizing that she might be plainly seen if anyone chanced to look her way, she began hastily to descend.
“He might come out of his igloo and see me,” she told herself.
That the thing the person had entered was an igloo she had no reason to doubt. Igloos go with kayaks and are built beneath the earth.
“But,” she said suddenly, “the other girls will know a great deal more about those things than I do. I must tell them at once. We will hold a council of war.”
CHAPTER XV
THE ISLAND’S SECRET
Twenty-four hours after Florence’s mysterious discovery, the cabin of the O Moo was pervaded by a quiet and studious atmosphere. Lucile, who was quite herself again, was mastering the contents of a book devoted to the study of the technique of short story writing. Florence was delving into the mysteries of the working of the human mind. Marian was doing a still life study in charcoal.
One might conclude that by some hosts of good fairies the yacht had been spirited back to its place on the dry dock. This was not, however, the case. The O Moo was still standing in the little stream on the sandy island. Its position had been altered a trifle. It had been poled out into midstream and there anchored. This precaution the girls had felt was necessary. In case the Negontisks attempted to board the yacht it would give those on board a slight advantage. It is difficult to board a yacht from kayaks.
That the strange persons who lived in holes beneath the sand dunes were these wild natives they did not doubt. “For,” Marian had reasoned, “who else in all the wide world would live in such a manner?”
“Yes, but,” Florence had argued, “how did they ever get to the shores of Lake Michigan anyway?”
The question could not be answered. The fact remained that there were people living beneath the ground on this island and that the girls were afraid of them, so much afraid that they were not willing, voluntarily, to expose themselves to view.
This was why they were remaining aboard the O Moo and studying rather than attempting to catch fish. “Might as well make the best of our time,” Florence had reasoned. To this the others had agreed but when she went on to say that she somehow felt that they would be back at the university for final exams, they shook their heads.
The food supply was growing lower with every meal. Six cans of the unknown fruits and vegetables had been opened and with all the perversity of unknown quantities had turned out to be fruit, pleasing but not nourishing.
“There’s some comfort in knowing that there are other people on the island, at that,” Lucile had argued. “They’ve probably got a supply of food and, rather than starve, we can cast ourselves upon their mercy.”
“How many of them do you suppose there are?” Marian suddenly looked up from her book to ask.
“Only saw one,” answered Florence, “but then of course there are others.”
“Strange we didn’t see any tracks when we went the rounds of the island.”
“Snowed the night before.”
“But people usually have things outside their igloos; sleds, boats and hunting gear.”
“Not when they’re in hiding. There might be fifty or a hundred of them. Nothing about an igloo shows unless you chance to walk right up to the entrance or the skylight. And we didn’t. We—”
She broke off abruptly as Lucile whispered. “What was that?”
She had hardly asked the question when the sound came again—a loud trill. It was followed this time by a musical:
“Who-hoo!”
“I
never heard a native make a sound like that,” exclaimed Lucile, springing to her feet.
“Nor I,” said Marian.
“Sounds like a girl.”
Throwing caution to the wind the three of them rushed for the door.
On reaching the deck, they saw, standing on shore, a very short, plump person with a smiling face. Though the face was unmistakably that of a white girl, she was dressed from head to toe in the fur garments of an Eskimo.
“Hello there,” she shouted, “Let down the gang plank. I want to come aboard.”
“Haven’t any,” laughed Florence. “Wait a minute. You climb out on that old tree. We’ll pole the yacht around beneath it, then you can drop down on deck.”
“What a spiffy little cabin,” exclaimed the stranger as she entered the door and prepared to draw her fur parka off over her head. “I wasn’t expecting company. When did you arrive?”
“Came in with the ice-floe,” smiled Marian.
“Are—are you a captive?” asked Lucile suddenly. “And—and do they make you live with them?”
“Captive? Live with whom?” the girl’s eyes were big with wonder.
“The Negontisks.”
“The what?”
“The Negontisks.”
“Why, no, child. Of what are you dreaming? I never saw a Negontisk, let alone living with them. Heard of them though. Please explain.”
She bounced down into one of the overstuffed chairs with a little sigh of “Oh! What delicious comfort! You don’t know how strange it is to live like an Eskimo. It’s trying at times, too.”
It took a great deal of explaining for Lucile to make the reasons for her questions clear to the stranger. In the meantime, Florence had an opportunity to study their visitor.
“Very small, not weighing over ninety pounds, very vivacious, decidedly American and considerably older than we are,” was her final analysis.
“Why! My dear!” the little lady cried when Lucile had explained. “You may put your mind quite at ease. Besides yourselves I am positively the only person on the island. What’s more,” she smiled, “I have in my igloo oodles and oodles of food, enough for all of us for six months to come.”
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