The Isle of Retribution/Chapter 12
XII
None of the other three in the lifeboat could make out the little, gray line on the horizon that Captain Knutsen identified as land. Ned, who had been wide awake, prayed that he was not mistaken, yet could not find it in his heart to believe him. Bess and Lenore both started out of their sleep, and the former turned her head wearily, a wan smile about her drawn lips.
“Row, man, row!” Knutsen called happily to Ned. “The only way we can save that girl from collapse is to get her to a fire.” His own oars dipped, and his powerful back bent to the task.
So the issue had got down to that! Ned knew perfectly well that Lenore was the girl meant; in spite of the added blanket, she had fared worse than Bess. Perhaps she had less vitality: perhaps she had not met the night's adversity with the same spirit. Ned was not an expert oarsman, but it was ever to his credit that he gave all his strength to the oars. And he found to his joy that the night's adventure had left it largely unimpaired.
With the waves and the wind behind them, Knutsen saw the gray line that was the island slowly strengthen. The time came at last, when his weaker arms were shot through with burning pain, that Ned could also make it out. It was still weary miles away. And there was still the dreadful probability—three chances out of four—that it was uninhabited by human beings.
And death would find them quickly enough if they failed to find human habitations. For all Knutsen's prowess, for all that he was so obviously a man of his hands, Ned couldn't see any possibility of sustaining life on one of the barren, windswept deserts for more than a few days at most. They had no guns to procure meat from the wild: their little stores of food would not last long. The cold itself, though not now severe, would likely master them quickly. Even if they could find fuel, they had no axe to cut it up for a fire. In all probability, they couldn't even build a fire in the snow and the sleet.
The stabbing pain in his arms was ever harder to bear. He was paying the price for his long pampering of his muscles. The time soon came when he had to change his stroke, dipping the oars at a cheating angle. Even if it were a matter of life and death to Lenore he couldn't hold up. He couldn't stand the pace. Knutsen, however, still rowed untiringly.
Soon the island began to take shape, revealing itself as of medium size in comparison with many of the islands of Bering Sea, yet seemingly large enough to support a kingdom. The gray line they had seen first revealed itself as a low range of mountains, bare and wind-swept, extending the full length of the island. What timber there was—meager growths of Sitka spruce and quivering aspen—appeared only on some of the south slopes of the hills and in scattered patches on the valley floor.
In the gray light of dawn the whole expanse was one of unutterable desolation. Even the rapture that they had felt at deliverance from the sea was some way stifled and dulled in the brooding despair that seemed to be its very spirit. They had passed many bleak, windy islands on the journey; but none but what were gardens compared to this. Ned tried to rouse himself from a strange apathy, a sudden, infinite hopelessness that fell like a shadow over him.
Likely enough it was just a mood with him, nothing innate in the island itself. Probably his own fatigue was playing tricks on his imagination. Yet the solid earth seemed no longer familiar. It was as if he had passed beyond his familiar world, known to his five senses and firm beneath his feet, and had come to an eerie, twilight land beyond the horizon. It was so still, lying so bleak and gray in the midst of these endless waters, seemingly so eternally isolated from all he had known and seen. The physical characteristics of the island enhanced, if anything, its mysterious atmosphere. The mossy barrens that comprised most of the island floor, the little, scattered clumps of timber, the deep valleys through which the shining streams ran to the sea, the rugged, shapeless hills beyond, each real in itself, combined to convey an image of unreality. Over it all lay the snow. The whole land was swept with it.
It was evidently the kingdom of the wild. It was the home of caribou and bear, fox and wolverine rather than men. And the dreadful probability was ever more manifest that the island contained not a single hearth, a single Indian igloo in which they might find shelter.
The place seemed to be utterly uninhabited by human beings. The white shore was nearing now, the craft had reached the mouth of a large harbor formed by the emptying waters of a small river; and as yet the voyagers could not make out a single roof, a single canoe on the shore. Knutsen peered with straining eyes.
“It looks bad,” he said tonelessly. “If there was a village here it ought to be located at the mouth of that river. It's the logical place for a camp. They always stay near the salmon.”
Straining, Ned suddenly saw what seemed to him a manifestation of human inhabitants. There were clearly pronounced tracks, showing dark against the otherwise unbroken snow, leading from the sea to a patch of heavy forest a quarter of a mile back on the island. He pointed to them, his eye kindling with renewed hope.
But Knutsen shook his head. “I can't tell from here. They might be animal tracks.”
The canoe pushed farther into the harbor. The roll of the waves was ever less, and the boat rode evenly on almost quiet water. They would know soon now. They would either find safety, or else their last, little hope would go the way of all the others. Surely they could not live a day unaided in this bleak, desolate land.
But at that instant Bess, who had sat so quiet that her companions had thought her asleep, uttered a low cry. For all its subdued tone, its living note of hope and amazement caused both men to turn to her. Her white face was lifted, her blue eyes shining, and she was pointing to the fringe of timber at the end of the trail in the snow.
“What is it?” she asked in a low tone. “Isn't it a man?”
Her keen eyes had beheld what Knutsen's had missed—a dark form half in shadow against the edge of the scrub timber. For all that it was less than a quarter of a mile distant, both men had to strain to make it out. The explanation lay partly in the depths of the surrounding shadows; partly in the fact that the form was absolutely without motion. It is an undeniable fact that only moving figures are quickly discernible in the light and shadow of the wild places: thus the forest creatures find their refuge from their enemies simply by standing still and so remaining unobserved. The thing at the timber edge had evidently learned this lesson. In its dimness and obscurity it suggested some furtive creature native to the woods.
Yet, for all its lack of motion, this was unmistakably a living being. It was not just an odd-shaped stump, a dark shadow under tree limbs such as so often misleads a big-game hunter. The brain seemed to know it, without further verification by the senses. Bess had said it was the form of a man, and the more intent their gaze, the more prob able it seemed that she was right. The fear that had oppressed Knutsen that it might be merely the form of some one of the larger forest creatures— perhaps a bear, standing erect, or a caribou facing them—was evidently groundless. It was a man, and he was plainly standing motionless, fully aware of and watching their approach.
Yet the atmosphere of vagueness prevailed. He was so like a woods creature in the instinctive way he had taken advantage of the concealment of the shadows. It was a wonder that Bess had ever observed him. And now, drawing closer, his proportions seemed to be considerably larger than is customary in the human species. Now that his outline grew plain, he loomed like a giant. There is nothing so deceptive, however, as the size of an object seen at a distance in the wilderness. The degree of light, the clearness of the atmosphere, the nature of the background and surroundings all have their effect: often a snow-hare looks as big as a fox or a porcupine as large as a bear. Ned, sharing none of Knutsen's inner sense of unrest, yielding at last to the rapture of impending deliverance, raised his arms and shouted across the waters.
“I want to be sure he sees us,” he explained quickly.
Knutsen strove to rid himself of the unwonted dismay that took hold of him. A deep-buried subconsciousness had suddenly manifested itself within him, but the messages it conveyed were proven ridiculous by his own good sense. It was the first time, however, that this inner voice had ever led him astray. Surely this was deliverance, life instead of what had seemed certain death, yet he was oppressed and baffled as he had never been in his life before.
It was soon made plain that the man had caught Ned's signal. He lifted his arm, then came walking down toward the water's edge. Then Knutsen, who until now had rowed steadily, paused with his paddles poised in the air.
“It's not an Indian,” he breathed quickly. Ned turned to look at him in amazement, yet not knowing at what he was amazed. “It's a white man!”
“Isn't that all the better?” Ned demanded. “God knows I'm glad to see any kind of a man.”
After all, wasn't that good sense? Trapping, fox-farming, any one of a dozen undertakings took white men into these northern realms. Conquering his own ridiculous fears—fears that partook of the nature of actual forewarnings—Knutsen drove his oars with added force into the water. The boat leaped forward: in a moment more they touched the bank.
Their deliverer, a great blond man seemingly of Northeastern Europe, was already at the water's edge, watching them with a strange and inexplicable glitter in gray, sardonic eyes. He was a mighty, bearded man, clothed in furs; already he was bent, his hands on the bow of the boat. Already Ned was climbing out upon the shore.
Partly to remove the silly dismay that had overwhelmed him, partly because it was the first thought that would come to the mind of a wayfarer of the sea, Knutsen turned with a question. “What island is dis?” he asked.
The stranger turned with a grim, meaning smile. “Hell,” he answered simply.
Both Ned and Knutsen stood erect to stare at him. The wind made curious whispers down through the long slit of the river valley. “Hell?” Knutsen echoed. “Is dat its name”
“It's the name I gave it. You'll think it's that before you get away.”