The Blue Envelope Part 21

The second day's tramp to the rubbish pile brought them a great surprise. They were busily searching through the piles of cans for a possible one that had not been opened, when Lucile, happening to hear a noise behind her, looked up. The next instant, with a startled whisper, which was almost a cry, "Marian! Quick!" she seized Marian by the arm and dragged her around an ice-pile.

"Wha--what is it?" whispered the startled Marian.

"Bear!"

At this very moment, on another section of that same vast floe, Phi lay flat on his stomach, his eye traveling the length of his rifle barrel.

His brow was wrinkled. He moved uneasily, as a gambler moves who would risk all on one throw of the dice but does not quite dare.

He shook the benumbed fingers of his right hand, then gripped the rifle once more. His forefinger was on the trigger. He had arrived at a crisis. He was half starved and freezing. For three days now he had wandered over the vast expanse of ice-pans that covered the waters of Bering Straits. During that three days he had secured only two small birds, dovekies they were, birds who linger all winter in the Arctic.

These he had shared with Rover.

From the moment the snow-fog had settled down upon him and the break in the ice-floe had blocked his way so effectively, he had wandered about without knowing where he was going. The ice-floe constantly drifting, first this way, then that, may have carried him east, west, north, south. Who could tell where? Who could guess his position on the surface of the ocean at the present moment?

A brown seal was the cause of his excitement now. The seal, lying asleep upon the ice-pan before him, must weigh something like seventy pounds. This was meat enough to last him and his dog many days.

He was not a good shot and knew it. He had wandered over the ice-floes of the ocean at times with a rifle under his arm, yet never before had he stalked a seal. Only the grimmest necessity could have induced him to do so now. There was something altogether too human in those bobbing brown heads as they appeared above the water or lifted to gaze about them on the ice. But now his need and the need of the dog demanded prompt action.

Two things made a perfect shot a necessity: The seal was sleeping beside his hole; if he was not killed instantly he would drop into the hole and be lost to the hunter. And this was the last cartridge in the rifle. The two birds had cost him four shots. The seal must be secured by his last one. There seemed a certain irony about a fate which would allow him to waste his ammunition on small birds, then offer him such a prize as this with only one shot to win.

He knew well enough how to stalk a seal; he had watched the Eskimos do it many times. Lying flat on your stomach, you cautiously creep forward. Every moment or two you bob your head up and down in imitation of a seal awakened and looking about. If your seal is awake, since his eyesight is poor he will take you for a member of his own species and will go back to sleep again.

Knowing all this, Phi had dragged himself a hundred feet across the ice, without disturbing the seal. Only fifty feet remained, yet to his feverish brain this seemed too great a distance. Seeing his seal bobbing his head, he bobbed in turn, then, when the seal had dozed off again, continued his crawl.

He had made another six yards when, with a sudden resolve, he slid the rifle forward, lifted it to position, glanced steadily along its barrel, then pulled the trigger.

There followed a metallic snap, then a splash, The rifle had missed fire; the seal had dropped into its pool.

For a moment the boy lay there motionless, stunned by the realization that he was still without food and was now powerless to procure any.

"Well, anyway it was luck for the seal," he smiled uncertainly. "It sure was his lucky day!"

Rising unsteadily, he put two fingers to his mouth and uttered a shrill whistle. From behind a towering ice pile, Rover, gaunt and miserable yet unmistakably a white man's dog, and, by his bearing, a one time leader of the team, came limping toward him.

"Well," the boy said, patting the dog, "it's hard luck, but we don't eat. It's harder for you than for me, for you are old and I'm young, but somehow--somehow, we'll have to manage. If only we knew. If only--"

He stopped abruptly and his eyes opened wide. Off to the left of them, like a giant fist thrust through the fog, there had appeared the dark bulk of a granite cliff.

"Land, Rover, land!" he muttered hoa.r.s.ely.

The next moment, utterly overcome with excitement, he sank weakly to the surface of the ice-pan.

"This won't do," he said cheerily, after a brief period of rest.

"Rover, old boy, we must be traveling. If the ice is crowding that sh.o.r.e, which it must be from the feel of the wind, there's a chance for us yet."

CHAPTER XIV

A LONESOME ISLAND

After fleeing from the great white bear, the two girls crouched behind the ice pile with bated breath. Expecting at any moment to see the long neck of the gigantic beast thrust around the corner of the ice pile, they longed to flee, yet, not daring, remained crouching there.

"Do you think he saw us?" Marian whispered.

"No. He was snuffing around looking for something to eat."

Marian shivered.

Lucile worked her way about the ice-pile to a point where she could see through a crack between cakes, then she motioned Marian to join her.

Together they watched the antics of the clumsy white bear.

"My! Isn't it huge!" whispered Marian.

For a time the bear amused himself by knocking rusty ten-gallon gasoline cans about. At last, seeming to scent something, he began tearing up a particular garbage pile. Presently a huge rat ran out and went scurrying away. There followed a lively chase which ended in a prolonged squeal.

"He got him!" Marian shivered.

The bear had moved out of their view. Cautiously, they turned and made their way from ice-pile to ice-pile, from the rubbish heap toward camp.

"I hope he doesn't get our scent and follow us," said Lucile. "They don't usually bother people much, though."

In spite of her belief that the bear would not harm them, Lucile did not sleep well that night. "You can never tell what a hungry bear might do," she kept saying over and over to herself.

At last, late in the night, she fell asleep and slept soundly until morning. When finally she did awake, it was with the feeling that somehow something had changed.

"Land! Land!" something seemed to be whispering to her. It could have been nothing short of intuition which gave her this suggestion. They had been riding on the surface of a gigantic ice-floe. It was, perhaps, twenty miles wide by a hundred long. There was no sense of motion. So silent was its sweep, one might imagine oneself to be upon land; yet, as she crept quickly out of her sleeping-bag, she saw at once that the motion of the floe was arrested and off to the right she read the reason. A narrow stretch of rocky sh.o.r.e there cast back the first rays of the morning sun.

"Marian! Marian!" she called excitedly. "Land! Land! An island!"

There could be no questioning this great good fortune. The one remaining problem was to reach the sh.o.r.e of that island. They did not dare to abandon their kiak, sleeping-bag, and scanty supplies, for who could tell them that this was not a small uninhabited island? They had traveled many miles with the ice-floe in some direction, perhaps many directions. Who could say where they were now?

"The ice must be piling close to sh.o.r.e," said Lucile, "but we must try it. It's our only chance."

After a hasty breakfast of tea and a last remaining bit of cold duck, they piled all their supplies and equipment into the kiak, then, bidding farewell to the humble ice-pan which had given them such a long ride, they began dragging the kiak toward the island.

This proved a long and tedious task, requiring all the skill and strength they possessed, for the island, though scarcely four miles in length, had appeared to be much closer than it really was. The ice-piles, too, grew rougher and more uneven as they advanced. When they neared the sh.o.r.e, they found themselves in infinite peril, for the ice was piling. Here a huge cake a hundred feet across and eight feet thick glided without a sound, up--up, into mid-air, at last to crumble and fall; and here a ma.s.s of small cakes were thrown into convulsions.

Pick their way as they might with greatest care, they were more than once in danger of being crushed by overhanging ice-pans, or of being plunged into a dark pool of water.

When, at length, in triumph, they dragged their kiak to a rocky shelf well above the trembling ice, Marian, from sheer exhaustion, threw herself flat upon the rock and lay there motionless for some time.

Lucile sat beside her absorbed in thought.

At last Marian sat up. "Well, we're here," she smiled, giving her blistered hands a woeful look.

"Yes," smiled Lucile, "we're here. Now where is 'here' and what's it like?"