Where the Sun Swings North
B >> Barrett Willoughby >> Where the Sun Swings NorthThe time and air had changed into something vaguely familiar. . . .
With a glow of pleasure he recognized it,--the lament of the funeral
canoes at Katleean, but with something else added, something that made
him feel the mystery and the weirdness and the elemental call of the
North. It was almost as if she played to him comforting him with
promises of this clean, new land of beginnings.
Abruptly, he remembered, the music had broken off. There was a
moment's silence. And then there had drifted up to him Jean's
invariable good-night to the deepening twilight. Sweet and clear from
a long-drawn singing bow it came--a commingling of love and peace and
beauty he had once heard a great contralto sing:
"In the West
Sable night lulls the day on her breast.
Sweet, good-night! . . ."
He had longed to throw back his head and sing these words to Jean's
music, but he had shaken himself. No. That was a song for a lover. . .
"Son, are you plumb dead to the world?" Kayak Bill's words roused
Harlan from his dreaming. He sprang up and began stacking provisions
inside the tent. He realized as he worked, that today no tempting
thought had come to him of secretly distilling hootch from stores he
might take from this camp. The enormity of such an action struck him
for the first time. This food meant life on Kon Klayu--and there was
little of it. . . .
A few hours later headed down the long stretch of beach toward the
cabin, he squared his shoulders under the heavy pack he bore and joined
in with the voices of Kayak Bill and Boreland who, with lusty
incongruity were singing the whaling song of the trading-post:
"Up into the Polar seas
Where ice is delivered free,
And a man don't have to hustle
Like a blooming honey-bee!"
Work was hard in this country of the last frontier, but men had more
time, more inclination to sing, he thought.
As he swung along the hard sand, in his heart was a sense of
expectancy--for what he did not know.
[1] Old-time Alaskan.
CHAPTER XVI
THE STORM
The following morning was sunless. The air was still and heavy with
foreboding. Leaden-colored waters heaved under a gloomy sky and though
the sea appeared smooth to the eye the hollow roar of distant surf
sounded louder than usual. There was a strong smell of kelp and salt
brine, and a new, wild note in the cries of the gulls.
"I say," Boreland called to Kayak Bill, who was tying back the flap of
the tent in which he slept. "It looks as if there's a storm brewing.
But I never saw the sea smoother. I think, if we're quick about it, we
can get a boat-load of grub down here before she breaks. What you say,
Kayak?"
Kayak spread his legs and leaned back to take a long look at the sky,
just as Harlan came down over the hill and joined them.
"I'm yore man, Boreland," he said at last. "But we'd better be spry
about it, for it'll be Davy Jones' locker for us if we get caught in a
gale off the reefs."
A hasty breakfast over, Ellen joined the men and the four left for the
West Camp to select the most important things with which to load the
whale-boat.
Arrived at their destination they worked swiftly, Ellen making her
selection of necessities while the men skidded the boat down to the
water's edge. It was soon loaded. A small pile of lumber from
Katleean for making sluice-boxes and furniture was made into a raft to
be towed.
"About three more trips with the boat, and we'll have everything down
at the cabin," said Ellen, as she tied the flap of the tent. She had
noted that while he worked, Shane had glanced uneasily from time to
time at the grey sky. It was rapidly taking on a purple tinge, though
the sea was still as oily-smooth as it had been early in the morning.
When the last sack had been stowed away and the raft made fast to the
boat, Ellen saw Harlan call her husband aside. In a low voice she
heard him make some suggestion which Boreland dismissed with a gesture.
"Thanks, old man," he said, "but this is a job for all three of us,"
and he turned to join Ellen who was standing at the edge of the water.
"We'll be home in time for supper, El," he said, with forced
cheeriness. "Don't worry, now--mind!" And he patted her hand
reassuringly before he turned to the boat.
As she watched the craft slip away from the shore she conquered a wild
impulse to reach out and drag it back again. Shane and Harlan shoved
on their oars with long, slow strokes, as they faced the reefs that lay
between them and the open sea; Kayak Bill steered. Ellen watched them
move in and out between the protruding rocks. On the grey slope of the
sullen swells that rose and fell unbroken about them the raft in tow
shone wetly yellow. From time to time she caught glimpses of streaming
tangles of kelp which somehow suggested the floating hair of dead
women. . . .
The boat crept off-shore to get outside the most dangerous of the
reefs, and once free, Boreland, small now in the distance, looked back
to wave a hand at her. At last, having seen the craft swing and move
slowly southward on the home stretch round the Island, Ellen sighed
with relief, and turning away from the sea, started down the beach
toward the cabin.
Across the dark pall of the sky in the southwest clouds were beginning
to form in heaving sombre masses. A breeze, coming at first in
scarcely perceptible breaths, freshened almost in a moment, until the
glassy surface of the sea was wrinkled and streaked far out with black.
It was impossible to see the whaleboat now because of the barrier
reefs. Ellen's heart grew heavy with foreboding. The wind . . .
Remembering the tales of quick-rising wind and sea, she prayed that
these fitful puffs might not be the first breaths of a borning gale.
She found Jean and Loll on the beach below the house. They had felt
the danger of the coming storm and were looking out anxiously for a
first glimpse of the boat.
Only rearing waters and lowering sky bounded their vision.
The wind increased.
Silence grew upon them.
The cloud banks in the southwest separated into weird-shaped masses
which detached themselves and began to travel swift and low toward them
across the sky. Some menacing quality in this relentless, headlong
rush increased Ellen's fears, and in growing alarm she watched the tiny
white-caps that were beginning to form on the waves.
As they hurried down to the point off the bluff to command a wider view
of the waters, the wind whipped their skirts about them and tore at
their hair.
Three grey gulls flew swiftly overhead with plaintive, long-drawn cries
quite different from their usual raucous screams. In her anxiety Ellen
remembered that these wild birds of Kon Klayu had as many moods as the
sea, and were prophetic of them. Loll, holding tightly to his mother's
hand, looked up at her with grave eyes.
"Mother," he said, "Senott told me one time that sea-gulls are the
souls of little dead Indian babies and they always cry for their
mothers before a storm. Hear them now?"
Immeasurably sad and longing the bird call struck through the sound of
increasing surf. Above, the whole sky was a mass of swiftly moving
clouds. The wind increased steadily.
Another dragging hour went by with no sign of the whale-boat. With the
incoming tide the wind had risen until Ellen's heart quaked with a
great fear for the men who must row against it. Her senses tingled
with the welter of torn, tempestuous sea and clouds that seemed to
mingle and snatch at her with stinging, salt fingers. Her straining
eyes smarted from the high-flung spray of increasing combers.
Bracing against the gale, she suddenly found herself aching from the
stress of trying, by sheer will, to keep back the force of the storm.
Some pagan thing within her had endowed the elements with a godlike
personality. She caught herself praying, beseeching the sea to rise no
higher; to be kind to her loved ones tossing somewhere on its seething
bosom. Both wind and tide were against the whale-boat now, and looking
out across the rearing waters it seemed to her that no small craft
could live in such a sea.
A few drops of rain stung her face. Afar off from the southwest more
was coming. . . . She turned hopelessly from it, then almost at once
her dull misery was changed to joy.
Half a mile out a blurred, dark thing rose for an instant on the crest
of a billow. She started to point it out to Jean, but simultaneously
the rain-squall struck her, drenching, stinging, cutting off for a
moment her view of the sea. From under the grey curtain of the driving
rain combers of muddy green raced in, spouting high in wind-torn fury
against the rocks and rolling swiftly toward her to fling themselves
roaring at her. . . . Again in a lull she caught a glimpse of the boat
tossing skyward . . . dropping from sight . . . rising again and
creeping slowly, slowly onward. . . .
Hatless and coatless Boreland and Harlan were standing in the bottom of
the boat shoving on the oars with every ounce of their strength. Twice
she saw the younger man take the oars alone while her husband bailed.
Kayak Bill, rigid, watchful, sat in the stern his hand on the tiller,
ready with the instinct that comes of long experience for every motion
of the sea.
Inch by inch they battled their way around the point in the face of
flying spray and driving rain. Behind them, like a live thing tugging
on the rope the raft rose and fell on the combs of the dark swells.
Pathetic and tear-compelling was the courage of these three men pitting
their puny strength against the pitiless violence of the elements.
Once the little boat seemed to stand still a long time, swashing up and
down in the hollows of the waves, while over it the chop of the sea
splashed in spiteful fury. . . . At last it advanced again slowly and
Kayak swung broadside, turning in towards the beach on which the
anxious woman stood.
A gust of wind caught viciously at the tarpaulin spread over provisions
in the stern. It carried its fluttering blackness straight back into
the white and green of a giant comber directly behind. The onrushing
breaker reared its cruel head . . . then just as another rain-squall
broke, hiding it from view, it curled down swift, terrifying, and the
whale-boat disappeared in its foaming maw. . . .
With a cry of despair Ellen rushed to the very edge of the surf,
straining her eyes over the wild sea. Had the force of the breaker
swept everyone from the whale-boat? Had the canvas stretched tightly
over the provisions been sufficient to keep the water from filling and
swamping the boat? Would the violence of the tide and wind bring them
in if--if--Kayak Bill had not been torn from his post? Suddenly she
knew that on Kayak depended everything: Kayak Bill who had once been a
pilot at surf-bound Yakataga; Kayak Bill who had run the raging bars of
the delta-mouthed Copper River. Would he be equal to the surf of Kon
Klayu? Could he keep his hold on the tiller? . . . Oh, if the
rain-curtain would only lift! If she could but see out there in that
foaming, roaring swelter of water!
She dashed a hand across her face tearing aside the wet hair that
flattened itself against her eyes. . . . The squall was letting
up. . . . She could see now, but there was nothing--nothing but
breakers. . . . A sob tore itself from her throat. She started to
turn away. Then dimly, she saw. . . .
Low in the water, veiled by flying white-caps, they came--Boreland and
Harlan bailing desperately, and in the stern Kayak Bill, his hand still
on the tiller, keeping the oarless boat steady a-top the swift, rushing
wave that was sweeping them on to the beach!
With outstretched, welcoming arms Ellen waded out into the foam of the
spent breaker that grounded the whale-boat almost at her feet. . . .
That evening the adventurers sat in the warmth of the crowded cabin
living over again the events of the day. Every available corner was
piled high with the wet provisions that had been unloaded from the
whale-boat that afternoon, but contrasted with the gale outside the
place was satisfyingly snug and comfortable. Still lingered the savory
aroma of the duck mulligan that had been their supper. In the Yukon
stove the fire roared and crackled as if in defiance of the terrific
blasts that shook the cabin. The sense of kinship that comes to those
who have fought their way together through some great danger was strong
upon them all tonight.
"Holy Mackinaw, boys!"--Boreland emphasized his remarks with the stem
of his pipe--"I wouldn't have given a hoot in Hades for our chances
when that wave broke! Thought it was all day with us then. Kayak,
Harlan, a fellow never realized what small potatoes he is until he
looks _up_ from the hollow of a wave!" He stretched his long arms
comfortably and laughed. "But . . . after you've been up against a
proposition like that, and come through, it certainly makes a man feel
like a _man_!"
"It certainly does, Skipper!" Harlan's eyes glowed. He appeared more
alive than at any other time since his landing, beginning to
understand, evidently, something of the hard freedom of the North, for
which men must either fight or die.
Of the three men Kayak Bill alone had been silent concerning his
sensations. Ellen thought that the praise of the others had smitten
him with a strange shyness. Loll was sitting astride the old man's
knees, questioning him about that moment when the giant breaker had
engulfed the boat.
Determined on an answer, the boy was urging for the fifth time:
"But, Kayak, what did _you_ feel like?"
"Wall, son,"--Kayak's hazel eyes twinkled--"I just couldn't' figger out
for a minute whether I was a clam . . . or a pond-lily."
In the laugh that followed Harlan took up a roll of blankets and went
into the other room. There was no thought of his crossing the Island
tonight. Kayak Bill's tent had blown down during the afternoon and he
was, as he put it, "forced to seek better anchorage." He and Harlan
were to spread a bed on the floor of the adjoining room.
Kobuk, with appealing whines and tentative pawings at the door, had
finally won an entrance and was curled up in front of the stove. Just
before supper Shane had come in lugging the pigeon's cage, which he
placed carefully on top of a tall packing box. Ellen felt the bird's
presence in a way that was beginning to trouble her. Tonight it seemed
to wear a sullen and dejected look, unlike its usual bold air. All
evening it had sat motionless in the bottom of the cage. The only sign
of life it displayed was in the deep orange pupils of its eyes which,
she was sure, followed her about wherever she went.
She forced herself to look away from the cage. A hush had fallen on
those in the room. The shrieking of rising wind challenged attention.
Ellen listened with a feeling strangely compounded of delight and
terror. Never before had she known such a wind. It swept down on the
roof of the cabin in woolies, threatening to blow it in, and then
seemingly sucking it out again. The log walls quivered. Every joist,
and board creaked and strained. The box on which the lamp stood
vibrated, and the flat yellow flame flickered. The air reverberated to
the thunder of surf that crashed against the hundred reefs on Kon
Klayu. Ellen had a feeling that the little Island trembled in the
splendid abandon of wind and sea--trembled, yet exulted in the freedom
of the elements. She found herself paradoxically fearing, yet hoping
that the next blast of the gale might be heavier.
Harlan had finished spreading the blankets in the other room.
"Skipper," he said, "I've been wondering how the whale-boat is. Before
we turn in I think I'll go down and see that we made the old girl
fast." He took up his oilskins from the floor and slipped into them.
When the door had closed behind him, Kayak Bill looked at Boreland and
nodded.
"I make affirmation," he drawled, "that there's a paystreak in any man
who looks first after his hoss--or his boat."
While the significance of the old man's remark was dawning on Ellen,
there was an odd lull in the storm. Surprisingly a new sound came to
them. It was a sound blown from the south cliffs; a sound that was,
yet was not of the storm; a hollow reverberating roll that was deep and
mellow, thrilling and strange. Boreland and Kayak rose simultaneously
and looked questioningly into each other's eyes.
"What--" Boreland's words were cut off by the flinging open of the
door. White-faced and dripping Harlan staggered in, slamming it to
shut out the driving rain. He leaned heavily against it.
"God--Skipper," he gasped. "The whale-boat-- It's gone!"
At that moment, like a happening in a sinister dream, Ellen was aware
that the pigeon perched high on the packing-box, had suddenly come to
life. It was flapping its wings diabolically, exultingly.
CHAPTER XVII
THE MYSTERIOUS PRESENCE
The loss of the whale-boat was a calamity staggering in its magnitude.
It meant that every pound of provisions left at the West Camp must be
packed on the backs of the men to the cabin. Not only that, but they
were now without any means whatever of leaving the Island. Nothing but
the direst necessity could have forced Boreland to seek the mainland in
the frail craft, but, remembering that the Indians of the coast had
been known to journey the hundreds of miles from Sitka to Kodiak in
open canoes, there had been a certain feeling of assurance in the
thought that with the whale-boat there was at least a chance of
bringing help to the Island should it be necessary.
Boreland was the first to recover from the blow. The morning following
the loss the three men were discussing it.
"Well, these post mortems get us nowhere," he said at last as he rose
and prepared to stow the provisions away in the loft. "We'll tackle
the job on hand now. After all, Kilbuck will be here with the _Hoonah_
soon, and we can get another boat from him."
All that afternoon while the gale tore at the corners of the little
cabin and the sea beat with increasing violence on the beach and reefs,
the men worked with hammer and saw, putting up shelves, making a table
and a bedstead, and erecting two bunks for Jean and Lollie, one above
the other in the adjoining room. Because he would so soon be leaving,
Kayak Bill decided to pitch his tent again in the lee of the house as
soon as the storm permitted, and occupy it until the _Hoonah_ came.
The storm lasted three days. The second day the roof began to leak.
The third day the rickety little porch blew down on one end and much of
the chinking came out from between the logs of the cabin.
When, on the fourth morning, the wind died away and the sun burst out
brilliantly upon a tumbling, muddy sea and rain-drenched landscape,
Boreland's first thought was of repairing the house.
"We're in a devil of a stew here," he exclaimed after breakfast.
"We'll have to get this place fixed up right now. Still, some of us
ought to go down to the West Camp and take a look at the cache.
Luckily there are no animals on the island, so we have nothing to fear
from that source."
"Why can't Loll and I go down to the camp, Shane?" broke in Jean.
"Then all you men can get busy on the house. The poor, little old
thing looks as if it had a black eye, with the porch battered down over
the door."
Boreland was at first not in favor of the idea, doubting that it was
safe for them to go alone. At last, however, he consented.
"Keep to the upper beach line," he cautioned, as the two started out,
"and remember, if the sea is breaking near the bluff when you come
home, wait on the other side until the tide drops before you attempt to
cross."
After the long confinement in the crowded cabin Jean was as delighted
as her capering little nephew to feel again the freedom of the beach.
In spite of all the hardships--perhaps because of them--she was growing
to love the sands of Kon Klayu, and to look upon this incalculable
ocean as a sort of fairy god-mother, who, with every tide, brought up
something different to lay at her feet. She never started out for a
walk along the sea without experiencing that delightful, childish sense
of expectancy which is so keenly a part of the life of Alaska.
While Kobuk trotted on ahead she and Loll, remembering the talk of
beach mining to which they had so often listened, scanned the way for
ruby sand, the carrier of gold. But this morning the beach was untidy
with great masses of fresh kelp and seaweeds from the deep, torn by the
storm and scattered everywhere.
"Oh, look, Jean! The gulls have found something!" Loll's finger,
pointing ahead indicated a cloud of screaming, white-breasted birds
that were rising and falling on slate-tipped wings over some object
below them. "Let's hurry and see what it is."
But Kobuk was before them. Dashing on ahead he plunged into the melee,
frightening the gulls from their find so that they flew shrieking into
the air as the girl and her little companion ran up to discover the
remains of a large fish on the sand. It was a halibut nearly six feet
long. With the exception of the bones but a small portion and the head
remained, for the birds had been gorging on it for some time. The
flesh, however, looked fresh and firm and white.
Jean regarded it thoughtfully. "If we had nothing else to eat, Lollie,
we _might_ eat a fish like this--that is if we got it before the gulls
had been at it." In an emergency even a great storm might be made to
serve, since its very violence flung up from the deep such fare as
this. At any rate, the gulls appreciated it, for even as Loll and Jean
stood there, the birds had flown back, settling upon their find, their
strong, lemon-colored, crimson-splotched beaks tearing greedily at the
flesh. In their eagerness they flew thrillingly close, cold,
gold-ringed eyes staring fiercely into the faces of the two, powerful
wings fanning their cheeks. Loll, seeing Jean shrink away from an
overly bold bird, took her hand and tugged her away from the
discordantly screaming mass.
"Gosh, Jean, if those fellows were very hungry and I was alone, I bet
they'd take a peck at _me_!"
Recalling a day at Katleean, when she had stood by a creek watching the
salmon struggle up through the shallow water, while screeching gulls
swooped exultantly down on the helpless creatures and gouged the eyes
out of the living fish, Jean shuddered and quickened her steps.
They approached the tent cache at the West Camp. It appeared intact.
The wind, being from the southwest had struck with full force on the
opposite end of the Island. Jean untied the flap of the tent and went
inside. The provisions were piled up nearly to the ridgepole at the
back. Lollie, poking about, came upon a piece of rope, which, boylike,
he took outside and wound about his waist. Jean heard him stumbling
over the guy-ropes at the side. Then from the back came his call:
"Jean! Come here!"
The girl ran out and joined him. He was pointing to the back of the
tent. The pegs which had fastened it to the earth were uprooted. The
canvas swung free. But what filled her with momentary conjecture was
that which lay at her feet. A sack of flour evidently had been dragged
out from under the wall of the tent and ripped open, for the sand was
whitened with the doughy mixture resulting from the rain.
At this moment it did not occur to the girl to be frightened. There
were no tracks in the sand other than hers and Loll's. Evidently, she
thought, in the haste to load the boat before the storm, the men had
dropped the sack and it had burst open.
"But how careless of them, Loll, not to peg the tent down again," she
said. Loll, however, was already headed for the first camp-site made
when landing on the northeast side of the Island. Her call brought his
eager answer:
"Aw, come on, Jean, I want to see how drowned we'd be if we'd stayed
there during the storm."
Smiling to herself at the boy's love of dwelling on their narrow
escapes from death, real and imaginary, the girl turned and picking up
a stone drove in a few of the tent-pegs before she followed him.
On each side of the trail great patches of rice-grass had been
flattened from the force of the wind and rain, and the air was filled
with the sweet smell of vegetation drying in the sun. As she
approached the other side, the blue sky curved down to meet the ocean
on a far straight line. The yellow-green of the sea was set off by
astonishing areas of clearest cobalt blue, and the flying spray from
combers breaking for miles out on the North Shoals, caught the sunlight
in a glory of rainbow mist.
"See, I told you, Jean," Loll nodded sagely and pointed ahead as she
overtook him.
A hundred feet above the place where the first camp had been the
rice-grass had been torn out by the roots and whitened drift-logs and
kelp were massed there confusedly.
In silence the girl stood looking at the spot. Emotions of fear,
thankfulness and something of reverence swept her. Lollie, looking
down over the freckles on his nose, vested the lower part of his face
in his hand in a manner reminiscent of Kayak Bill.