Chapter XIII: Light on the Water

“My island home,” the girl said musingly. “How can I tell you about it so that you will love it as I do?

“This is Isle Royale.” She spread her arms wide as if to gather its miles of wide expanse into one embrace. “Beautiful bays and tiny lakes where the loon and the wild duck come to build their nests.

“A hundred enchanted islands where gulls soar and scream at sundown, where the sea hawk soars above you to complain in his shrill voice of your intrusion.

“Deep dark pools beside the shelving rocks where black shadows play and spotted trout dart away.

“This is Isle Royale.” Her eyes were dreamy as she stared at the fire, that petite, vivacious little lady, Berley Todd. “This is the place where I have always played my summer away.

“And to think—” Her tone changed. “To think that those men might have killed me. Then I would have played no more.

“To think,” she mused, “never again to feel the lift of my boat as I danced along in Tobin’s Harbor or out on the open lake. Never again to skim along before a gentle gale. Never to climb the low mountains and look away, away, away to where the blue begins!

“You know,” her tone became confidential, “we were always children on this island. Sometimes we’d take blankets and a grub box, boys and girls together, four, six, ten, a dozen of us, and tramp away to the top of Mount Franklin. There, beside a fire on the rocks, we watched the twilight fade and counted the stars as they came out one by one.

“Then, rolling up in our blankets, we slept beneath those stars. Playing all summer long. Don’t you love to play?”

“I don’t know,” said Red slowly.

“But you have played! Football. You play football. That’s a game.”

“Is it?” He smiled a curious smile. “Well, perhaps. But it’s work, too, if you win. You have to keep everlastingly at it. And the thing you keep everlastingly at is pretty sure to seem like work.

“Play,” he mused, “play all summer. Play all winter would be good enough for me.” Football had taken its toll of his young life. He was weary, desperately weary; not the weariness that comes from a day of sudden, arduous toil, to be dispelled by a night’s repose, but the dull, dragged-out weariness experienced by an Arctic dog team after a five hundred mile trek over the frozen snow.

“Tell me,” the girl demanded suddenly, “what do you like?”

“What do I like?” Red spoke slowly. “I can’t tell you that. I can only tell you what I have liked in the past.”

“Tell me.” She laid her hand on his arm.

“This,” he said slowly, as if recalling some scene in the remote past, “this is what I have liked: to stand before an open hearth in the steel mill where twenty tons of scrap-iron, together with limestone and tungsten, boil at white heat; to reach in a long ladle and sample it as the New England farmer samples his maple syrup; to watch the sample cool, to crack it with a hammer, to study its gleam; to do this again and again until at last you make a motion that says, ‘The batch is done.’

“Then to throw a lever and watch that white hot metal, twenty tons of it, pour into a massive brick-lined pot of steel that hangs suspended from a crane.

“Then—” He paused to take a long breath. The girl was staring at him with all her eyes. “Then to stand beneath that twenty tons of molten steel and make the gesture that sets flat cars in motion, flat cars loaded with forms to receive the steel. Then to watch the white hot steel pour once more; to follow its course until the forms have been lifted off and the billets of steel stand, red hot, sizzling in the snow, row on row.”

He looked at her as if uncertain whether or not to go on.

“Yes—yes. Please?” whispered Berley Todd.

“To climb a steel stairway—” He took a fresh start. “To seize a lever that swings a crane. To lift a red hot billet of steel into its place before heavy steel rollers, then to lift it and toss it, to turn it and bump it, to roll it here and roll it there, to press it and cut it, then slide it to one side, a long, perfect steel rail over which rich and poor, presidents and princes may ride in safety. That,” he ended, “has seemed to me a very large sample of life.”

“Oh!” she breathed. And again, “Oh!”

She said never a word. For all that, he sensed the fact that she had grasped the meaning of all this and was glad.

“You’ll go back to that,” she said after a time.

“When studies and football are things of the past. I hope so.”

“But you’ll learn to love my island just a little, won’t you? And you will come back here when summer has come and the loons are nesting in Tobin’s Harbor?” There was pleading in her voice. She loved Isle Royale. How could others fail to love it?

“I feel,” said Red with a curious smile, “I sort of feel that I will come, too.

“But look!” He sprang to his feet. “The clouds are here. The moon has vanished. Time to be going!”

He did not now say: “Where shall we go?” He knew they were to row up the bay half a mile, then climb over a ridge to her family’s summer home. He was more than eager to reach that home. Curiosity regarding that home entered into that desire. But more than that was the feeling that there she would know of many places of hiding. And hide they must until they could leave the island.

“I’ll bring the boat around.” He vanished into the outer darkness.

Closing the door softly behind her, Berley Todd stepped out upon the short platform which served both as doorstep and dock. What emotion surged through her being as she stood alone there in the dark? Only she could answer that.

Soon came the low dip-dip of oars, and they were away.

“We’d better cross straight over,” she said in a low tone. “Then we can follow the shore. We’ll come at last to a small landing. Better try to keep in the shadows if the moon comes out.”

That this was wise counsel he was soon enough to know.

Just as they reached the opposite shore the moon, breaking through the clouds, painted the channel with a million spangles of silver.

Swinging the boat about quickly, Red drew it into the shadow of an overhanging cedar.

Resting there for a moment, they allowed their eyes to wander back. There, lighted up by the silver moon was the cabin that had offered them sanctuary for a day. Would they ever forget it? How could they?

And who would wish to forget so lovely a picture? Great spruce trees towered toward the sky. Half hidden by the lesser growth of birch and balsam, the cabins stood. There were three in all, yet in this uncertain light they seemed but one.

“It is one of the loveliest spots on earth!” The girl took one long deep breath that came near being a sob. “It is so beautiful it seems like a dream. Like a southern home beside a river in a moving picture.

“A man built it years ago. He built into it all his love for nature and the great out-of-doors. He had planned it that those he loved might be happy there. And they have been very, very happy.

“Wouldn’t this world be wonderful if all men were like that? If we lived for others more than for ourselves? If no one were greedy or ambitious for power? If we all lived the life God has given us for the pure joy of living?” Then again she murmured, “It’s like some southern home.” Her voice trailed off into silence.

Then, after a moment, she began again, only this time she was singing, singing so softly that she would not waken a sleeping bird:

“Carry me back to old Virginia,
The place where I was born.”

And then, as if the island home were but a beautiful dream, the moonlight faded, leaving all in darkness.

Once again Red Rodgers took up the oars and they glided onward over the dark mysterious waters of the night.

It was strange, this passing on and on into the unknown. Water and air seemed to meet. Did they ride in air or on water? What could it matter?

Only the rough outline of tree tops served to guide him. Off to the right a tiny island loomed for a time, then faded into the night.

Before them some wild creature swam. Was it duck or beaver? Who could say? Nothing appeared to matter. All was swallowed up in the mystery of the night.

Then, by a sudden flash of light, all was changed.

“There!” the girl whispered. “There, to the left, is the dock!”

A moment more and they glided silently alongside the narrow platform.

“Tie up here.” The girl stepped from the boat.

Until this time they had not flashed a light. Why did the girl flash Red’s light now? Who can say? She did throw it on for a second. Instantly a low cry escaped her lips.

“Look! Footprints!” Dismay was registered in her tone. “They—they have gone before us!”

It was true that the narrow circle of light revealed the prints of a very large boot in the snow. To the right of the dock a boat was tied.

The girl snapped off the light. For a moment they stood there in silence side by side, a moment only, then the girl gripped Red’s arm until it hurt.

“Look! Look! Light on the water! They are behind us and before!”

Some distance away, on the black surface of the water a pale light shone.

“Come!” she whispered. “I know a hundred hiding places! We can best escape them here!” She led him to the foot of the hill, then began to climb, leaving him to follow in the dark as best he could.