The Blue Envelope

At the center of a circular bay, forming a perfect horseshoe with a sandy beach at its center and a rocky cliff on either side, two girls were fishing for shrimps. The taller of the two, a curly-haired, red-cheeked girl of eighteen, was rowing. The other, short and rather chubby, now and again lifted a pocket net of wire-screening, and, shaking a score or more of slimy, snapping creatures into one corner of it, gave a dexterous twist and neatly dropped the squirming mass into a tin bucket.

Both girls had the clear, ruddy complexion which comes from clean living and frequent sallies into the out-of-doors. Lucile Tucker, the tall one of curly hair, was by nature a student; her cousin, Marian Norton, had been born for action and adventure, and was something of an artist as well.

"Look!" exclaimed Lucile suddenly. "What's that out at the entrance of the bay-a bit of drift or a seal?"

"Might be a seal. Watch it bob. It moves, I'd say."

Without further comment Lucile lifted a light rifle from the bow and passed it to her cousin.

Marian stood with one knee braced on the seat and steadied herself for a shot at the object which continued to rise and fall with the low roll of the sea.

Born and reared at Nome on the barren tundra of Alaska, Marian had hunted rabbits, ptarmigan and even caribou and white wolves with her father in her early teens. She was as steady and sure a shot as most boys of her age.

"Boat rocks so," she grumbled. "More waves out there, too. Watch the thing bob!"

"It's gone under!"

"No, there it is!"

"Try it now."

Catching her breath, Marian put her finger to the trigger. For a second the boat was quiet. The brown spot hung on the crest of a wavelet. It was a beautiful target; Marian was sure of her aim.

Just as her finger touched the trigger, a strange thing happened; a something which sent the rifle clattering from nerveless fingers and set the cold perspiration springing to her forehead.

A flash of white had suddenly appeared close to the brown spot, a slim white line against the blue-green of the sea. It was a human arm.

"Who-who-where'd you suppose he came from?" she was at last able to sputter.

"Don't ask me," said Lucile, scanning the sea. Never a mist nor a cloud obscured the vision, yet not a sail nor coil of smoke spoke of near-by craft. "What's more important is, we must help him," she said, seizing the oars and rowing vigorously. Marian, having hung the shrimp trap across the bow, drew a second pair of oars from beneath the seats and joined her in sending the clumsy craft toward the brown spot still bobbing in the water, and which, as they drew nearer, they easily recognized as the head of a man or boy. Lucky for him that he had chanced to throw a white forearm high out of the water just as Marian was prepared unwittingly to send a bullet crashing into his skull.

Realizing that this person, whoever he might be, must have drifted in the water for hours and was doubtless exhausted, the two girls now gave all their strength to the task of rowing. With faces tense and forearms flashing with the oars, they set the boat cutting the waves.

The beach and cliffs back of the bay in which the girls had been fishing were part of the shore line of a small island which on this side faced the open Pacific Ocean and on the other the waters of Puget Sound, off the coast of the state of Washington.

Nestling among a group of giant yellow pines on a ridge well up from the beach, two white tents gleamed. This was the camp of Marian and Lucile. The rock-ribbed and heavily wooded island belonged to Lucile's father, a fish canner of Anacortes, Washington. There was, so far as they knew, not another person on the island. They had expected a maiden aunt to join them in their outing. She was to have come down from the north in a fishing smack, but up to this time had not arrived. Not that the girls were much concerned about this; they had lived much in the open and rather welcomed the opportunity to be alone in the wilds. It was good preparation for the future. They had pledged themselves to spend the following winter in a far more isolated spot, Cape Prince of Wales, on Bering Straits in Alaska. Lucile, who, though barely eighteen years of age, had finished high school and had spent one year in normal school, was to teach the native school and to superintend the reindeer herd at that point. Marian had lived the greater part of her life in Nome, Alaska, but even from childhood she had shown a marked talent for drawing and painting and had now just finished a two-year course in a Chicago art school. Her drawings of Alaskan life and the natives had been exhibited and had attracted the attention of a society of ethnology. In fact, so greatly had they been impressed that they had asked Marian to accompany her cousin to Cape Prince of Wales to spend the winter sketching the village life of that vanishing race, the Eskimo.

So this month of camping, hunting and fishing was but a preparatory one to fit them the more perfectly for the more important adventure.

When they reached the mysterious swimmer they were surprised to find him a mere boy, some fourteen years of age.

"What a strange face!" whispered Marian, when they had assisted the dripping stranger into the boat.

They studied him for a moment in silence. His hair and eyes were black, his face brown. He wore a single garment, cleverly pieced together till it seemed one skin, but made of many bird skins, eiderduck, perhaps. This garment left his arms and legs free for swimming.

He said nothing, simply stared at them as if in bewilderment.

"We must get him ashore at once," said Lucile. "He must have swum a long way."

Fifteen minutes later, after tying up the boat, Lucile came upon Marian picking the feathers from a duck they had shot that morning.

"Goin' to make him some broth," she explained, tossing a handful of feathers to the wind. "Must be pretty weak."

Lucile stole a glance at the stranger's face.

"Do you think he's oriental?" she whispered.

"Might be," said Marian. "You don't have to be so careful to whisper though; he doesn't speak our language, it seems, nor any other that I know anything about. Very curious. I tried him out on everything I know."

"Chinese, trying to smuggle in?"

"Maybe."

"He doesn't seem exactly oriental," said Lucile, looking closely at his face.

With his eyes closed as if in sleep, the boy did not, indeed, seem to resemble very closely any of the many types Lucile had chanced to meet. There was something of the clean brown, the perfect curve of the classic young Italian; something of the smoothness of skin native to the Anglo-Saxon, yet there was, too, the round face, the short nose, the slight angle at the eyes which spoke of the oriental.

"He looks like the Eskimos we have on the streets of Nome," suggested

Marian, "only he's too light-complexioned. Couldn't be, anyway."

"Not much likelihood of that," laughed Lucile. "Come two thousand miles in a skin kiak to have his craft wrecked in a calm sea. That couldn't happen."

"Whoever he is, he's a splendid swimmer," commented Marian. "When we reached him he was a mile from any land, with the sea bearing shoreward, and there wasn't a sail or steamer in sight."

The two of them now busied themselves with preparing the evening meal, and for a time forgot their strange, uninvited guest.

When Lucile next looked his way she caught his eyes upon her in a wondering stare. They were at once shifted to the kettle from which there now issued savory odors of boiling fowl.

"He's hungry all right," she smiled.

When the soup was ready to serve they were treated to a slight shock. The bird had been carefully set on a wooden plate to one side. Their guest was being offered only the broth. This he sniffed for a moment, then, placing it carefully on the ground, seized the bird and holding it by the drumsticks began to gnaw at its breast.

Marian stared at him, then smiled. "I don't know as a full meal is good for him, but we can't stop him now."

She set a plate of boiled potatoes before him. The boy paused to stare, then to point a finger at them, and exclaimed something that sounded like: "Uba canok."

"Do you suppose he never ate potatoes?" exclaimed Lucile in surprise.

"What sort of boy must he be?"

She broke a potato in half and ate one portion.

At once a broad smile spread over the brown boy's face as he proceeded to add the potatoes to his bill of fare.

"Guess we'll have to start all over getting this meal," smiled Lucile; "our guest has turned into a host."

When at last the strange boy's hunger was assuaged, Lucile brought two woolen blankets from one of the tents and offered them to him. Wrapping himself in these, he sat down by the fire. Soon, with hands crossed over ankles, with face drooped forward, he slept.

"Queer sort of boy!" exclaimed Lucile. "I'd say he was an Indian, if Indians lived that way, but they don't and haven't for some generations. Our little brown boy appears to have walked from out another age."

Night crept down over the island. Long tree shadows spread themselves everywhere, to be at last dissolved into the general darkness. Still the boy sat by the fire, asleep, or feigning sleep.

Not feeling quite at ease with such a stranger in their camp, the girls decided to maintain a watch that night. Marian agreed to stand the first watch until one o'clock, Lucile to finish the night. In the morning they would take their small gasoline launch, which was at this moment hidden around the bend in a small creek, and would carry the boy to the emigration office at Fort Townsend.

They had worked and played hard that day. When Lucile was wakened at one o'clock in the morning, she found herself unspeakably drowsy. A brisk walk to the beach and back, then a dash of cold spring water on her face, roused her.

As she came back to camp she thought she caught a faint and distant sound.

"Like an oarlock creaking," she told herself, "yet who would be out there at this time of night?"

She retraced her steps to the beach to scan the sea that glistened in the moonlight. Not hearing or seeing anything, she concluded that she had been mistaken.

Back at the camp once more, she glanced at the motionless figure seated by the bed of darkening coals. Then, creeping inside the tent, she drew a blanket over her shoulders and sat down, lost at once in deep thought.

As time passed her thoughts turned into dreams and she slept. How long she slept she could not tell. She awoke at last with a start; she felt greatly disturbed. Had she heard a muffled shout? Or was that part of a dream?

Lifting the flap of the tent, she stared at the boy's place by the fire. It was vacant. He was gone!

"Marian," she whispered, shaking her cousin into wakefulness. "Marian!

He's gone. The brown boy's gone!"

"Let him go. Who wants him?" Marian murmured sleepily.

At that instant Lucile's keen ears caught the groan of oarlocks.

"But I hear oars," she whispered hoarsely. "They've come for him. Someone has carried him away. I heard him try to cry for help. We must stop them if we can find a way."

Catching up their rifles they crept stealthily from their tents.

Nothing was to be seen save the camp and the forest.

"Think we better try to follow them?" asked Lucile, as she struggled into her shoes, wrapping the laces round and round her ankles for the sake of speed.

"I don't know," said Marian. "They're probably rough men and we're only girls. But we must try to find out what has happened."

In a moment they were creeping stealthily, rifles in hand, toward the beach. As they paused to listen they heard no sound. Either the intruders had rounded the point or had stopped rowing.

Lucile threw the circle of her flashlight out to sea.

"Stop that!" whispered Marian in alarm. "They might shoot."

"Look!" exclaimed Lucile suddenly; "our boat's gone!"

Hastening down the beach, they found it was all too true; the rowboat had disappeared.

"There weren't any men," exclaimed Marian with sudden conviction.

"That boy's taken our boat and rowed away."

"Yes, there were men," insisted Lucile. "I just saw a track in the sand. There it is." She pointed to the beach.

An inspection of the sand showed three sets of footprints leading to the water's edge where a boat had been grounded. These same footprints were about the spot where the stolen boat had been launched.

"There's one queer person among them," said Lucile, after studying the marks closely. "He limps; one step is long and one short, also one shoe is smaller than the other. We'd know that man if we ever saw him."

"Listen!" said Marian suddenly.

Out of the silence that ensued there came the faint pop-pop-pop of a motorboat.

"Behind the point," said Lucile.

"Our motorboat!" whispered Marian.

Without a word Lucile started down the beach, then up the creek. She was followed close by Marian. Tripped by creeping vines, torn at by underbrush, swished by wet ferns, they in time arrived at the point where the motorboat had been moored.

"Gone!" whispered Lucile.

"We've been deceived and robbed," said Marian mournfully. "Deceived by a boy. His companions left him swimming in the sea so we would find him. As soon as we were asleep, he crept away and towed the schooner down the river, then he flashed a signal and the others came in for him. Probably Indians and half-breeds. They might have left us a rowboat, at least!" she exclaimed in disgust.

With early dawn streaking the sky they sat down to consider. The loss of their motorboat was a serious matter. They had but a scant supply of food, and while their aunt might arrive at any moment, again she might not. If she did not, they had no way of leaving the island.

"We'd better go down the beach," said Marian. "They might have engine trouble, or something, and be obliged to land, then perhaps we could somehow get our boat."

"It's the only thing we can do," said Lucile. "It's a good thing we had our food supply in our tent, or they would have taken that."

"Speaking of food," said Marian, "I'm hungry. We'd better have our breakfast before we start."