Roy J. Snell

“ LUCILE’S QUICK ACTION GAS
You must not imagine (and you might well be forgiven for doing so, if you have read the preceding chapters) that the experiences of the three girls whose lives are pictured here were a series of closely crowded thrilling adventures. It was not the case that no sooner was the curtain run down on one mysterious happening than the stage was set for another. Few lives are like that. Adventures do come to us all at times and we face them for the most part bravely. Some amuse and entertain, others startle and appall, but each teaches in its own way some new lesson of life. ”

“ Florence had little fear for the outcome of this rather amusing adventure. She had been trailed over the ice by possible admirers before. She did not care to allow this one to catch up with her, that was all. She would skim along down to the far end of the lagoon where, a mile and a half away, the dome of the old museum loomed, a black bulk in the dark. She would then make the broad turn which this end of the lagoon afforded. She would have a clear mile and a half in which to put forth her best efforts. ”

“ Florence and Lucile strolled the campus as other girls strolled. They cut classes at times. They passed difficult examinations with some credit. They reveled in the grandeur of the architecture of the buildings of the university. They thrilled at the thought that they were a part of the great throng that daily swarmed from the lecture halls, and were somewhat downcast when they came fully to realize their own insignificance when cast into such a tossing sea of humanity.
Marian, the artist, also had her everyday rounds to make. ”

“ Then with a startled exclamation she leaped to the door of the cabin crying:
“Girls! Marian! Lucile! Look! Land! Land ahead of the ice-floe.”
Marian came racing out on deck, followed more slowly by Lucile. For a moment they all stood there looking.
“It’s land all right,” said Marian at last, “but not much land. A little sandy island with a great many small evergreen trees growing on it, I should say.”
“Or perhaps a point,” suggested Lucile hopefully. “You see, if it’s a point we can go back just a little way and find people, people with plenty of food and—and everything.” ”

“ Florence had placed herself between Marian and the candle. No light fell upon Marian to betray her presence. When one is in a dark room at night, he may peer into the moonlit outer world without being seen. Marian had poised there motionless for a full moment when, without altering her position other than turning her head, she whispered:
“Lucile, bring me that bottle of gas.”
Understanding at once what bottle was meant, Lucile tiptoed down the length of the room, managed to open the laboratory door without noise, then put her hand to the shelf where the “Quick Action Gas” was kept. ”

“ Good!” exclaimed Lucile, dropping down beside her.
“But where did you get the odd candlestick?” asked Marian as she followed Lucile. “What a strange thing it is; made of some almost transparent blue stone. And see! little faces peer out at you from every angle. It is as if a hundred wicked fairies had been bottled up in it.”
All that Marian had said was true, and even Florence stared at it a long time before she answered:
“Found it in the old museum. Probably left behind when the displays were moved out. I ought to take it down to the new museum and ask them, I guess.” ”

“ The beach, the ice, the black lines of breakwaters seemed as silent and forsaken as the heart of a desert.
[125]
“And yet it is swarming with men,” she breathed. “I wonder what they wanted?”
Suddenly she started. A figure had come into sight round the nearest prow. For an instant her hand gripped a round of the ladder, a preparatory move for upward flight. Then her hand relaxed.
“Oh!” she breathed, “It’s you!”
“Yes, it is I, Mark Pence,” said a friendly boyish voice.
“I—I suppose I should be afraid of you,” said Lucile, “but I’m not.”
“Why? Why should you?” he asked with a smile. ”

“ THE O MOO RIDES THE STORM
Florence and Marian lay clinging to the bare springs of a berth. They had made that point of safety before the avalanche of furniture, books and bric-a-brac had reached their end of the cabin. They were enduring discomforts beyond description. The yacht was now pitching from side to side in an alarming fashion. The wires of the spring on which they rested cut their tender flesh. Their scant clothing was saturated with cold water. The cabin had grown cold. Since the burning of the electric fuses, there was no heat. ”

“ That was one time when Lucile was right; in this queer old world you never can tell.
When Florence returned from the university the shades of night were already falling. There was, however, sufficient light to enable her to follow the track of the sled she had seen the night before. This track led straight across the park to the beach, then along the beach in the direction of the dry dock. A few hundred yards from the dry dock it turned suddenly to the left and was at once lost among the tumbled masses of ice, where no trace of it could be found. ”

“ Up she went like a monkey climbing the side of a cage. At the top of this grating there came an agonizing second in which she felt herself in danger of toppling over before she gained her balance on the window ledge above. Her splendid training served her well. She threw herself across the stone casing and, for a few seconds, lay there listening.
Hardly had she dropped noiselessly to the floor, some three feet below, than she heard the thud-thud of hurrying footsteps on the hard-packed snow. ”

“ Florence, Marian and Lucile were plain, ordinary, normal girls, yet in one respect they were different from others; at least Lucile and Marian were from the first, and Florence, being the strongest, most physically capable of them all, soon caught their spirit. They had about them a certain fearless outlook on life which is nearly always found in those who have spent many months in the far North—an attitude which seems to say, “Adventure and Trouble, I have met you before. I welcome you and will profit by and conquer you.” ”

“ Soon it would be lashing the waves into white foam to send them crashing high above the breakwaters. She shivered. A storm aboard ship had always frightened her.
Yet now as she thought of the term, “aboard ship,” she shrugged her slim shoulders. Her lips parted in a smile as she murmured:
“The cruise of the O Moo.”
Suddenly her thoughts were broken in upon by the repetition of that mysterious sound of a rat-tat-tat.
“Like a yellow-hammer drumming on a hollow tree,” was her unspoken comment, “only birds don’t work at night. It’s like—like someone driving—yes, driving tacks. ”

“ Lucile was home early that day. Marian had not gone to school at all. She had stayed on the beach making sketches of the ice-jam on the lake front.
“I’ll be going out again to-night,” she told Lucile. “Wind’s shifted. It’s offshore now and rising. There are certain effects of lights and shadows which you get on the rim of a body of fresh water which you don’t in the sea ice. Sea ice is white, dull white, like snow. Fresh water ice is blue; blue as the sky sometimes. I want to catch it before it blows out again. But what brings you home so early, Lucile?” ”

“ She was alone on the O Moo. Tossing her dressing-gown lightly from her she proceeded to put herself through a series of exercises such as are calculated to bring color to the cheek and sparkle to the eye of a modern American girl.
Coming out of this with glowing face and heaving chest, she threw on her dressing-gown and leaped out of the cabin and into the moonlight which flooded a narrow open spot on deck.
Away at the left she saw the ice on the lake shore stand out in irregular piles. Here was a huge pile twenty feet high and there a single cake on end. ”

“ Life is like that. That’s why one should struggle to lay foundations, to prepare one’s self for life. For eighteen years, without education, one may be good enough. Then, like the old museum, one is cast aside, abandoned to decay.”
As these thoughts swept through her mind she resolved more strongly than before, that, come what might, she would continue her battle for a university education. ”

“ Their amazement grew as three other boats put out from shore. Then Lucile, who had been studying the beach exclaimed:
“I do believe that black spot about the dry dock moves. It seems to contract and expand, to waver backward and forward. You don’t think it could be—be people?”
“Why no, of course—yes! I do believe it is!” cried Marian.
“It’s the newspapers,” exclaimed Florence. “They’ve published a lot of nonsense about our silly adventure and all those people have come down to see us come in.”
“And the people in those motorboats are reporters,” groaned Marian. ”

“ Now the wind had gone down and it was growing colder. It seemed probable that the ice would freeze into one solid mass, in which case they would be locked in for who knows how long.
The water in their little natural harbor had taken on something of a crust. It was possible that the boat would be frozen into the stream.
“Not that it matters,” she told herself rather gloomily. “We can’t start the engine and as long as we can’t it is impossible for us to leave the island; only thing we can do is wait until someone discovers our plight or we are able to hail a boat.” ”

“ Once Florence, having entrusted her weight to a rotten bit of ice, plunged into the chilling waters. But by Marian’s aid she climbed upon a safer cake and, shaking the water from her, resumed her titanic labors. Twice the hull of the O Moo touched bottom. Each time they were able to drag her free.
At last with a long-drawn sigh they threw their united strength into a shove which sent her, prow first, up the still waters at the mouth of the stream.
There remained for them but one means of reaching shore—to swim.
With a little “Oo-oo!” Marian plunged in. She was followed closely by Florence. ”

“ She remembered the two policemen whom Lucile had seen on the beach that same night. Perhaps those two men had been running from the officers, trying to conceal something. But how had the man come there on the ice? Perhaps—she started at the thought—perhaps this man rode there beneath the sled. The runners had been extraordinarily broad. A man could easily ride between them. The thought gave her a start.
She thought of Lucile’s experience in the old Mission, and of her own with the blue candlestick. Perhaps, she told herself, they dropped the blue god through the ice. ”

“ Their boat was moored at the south end. The entire island, except along the beach, was covered with a scrub growth of pine and fir trees. As far as they could tell, not a single person had ever lived on the island.
“It’s very strange,” Marian had said when they had made the rounds of it. “It doesn’t seem possible that there could be such an island on the lake without summer cottages on it.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Florence had answered. “What an ideal spot! Wonderful beaches on every side. Fishing too, I guess. And far enough from land to enjoy a cool breeze on the hottest day of summer.” ”

“ If we reach the sandy shore before the floe does, the worst that can happen is that the O Moo will be driven aground but not crushed at all, and the best that can happen is that we will find some sort of little harbor where the yacht will be safe until the wind shifts and the ice goes back out to sea.”
“But can we move that ice?” Florence’s face showed her incredulity.
“It’s easier than it looks. Come on,” ordered Marian briskly. Throwing the rope ladder over the side, she sprang down it to leap out upon a broad ice pan. ”

“ No rooms you can pay for, and who would give up a university education without a fight? What have we done? What are these people bothering us for anyway? What right have they? Who are they anyway?”
This cast her into deeper reflections. The face she had seen was not that of Mark Pence. Whether it was one of the Orientals living on the scow, or one of the fishermen living in their fishing smack, she could not tell. She had never seen the fishermen. Even Marian had seen but two of them. ”

“ Yet why had the ice been blue? Why—
[143]
She fell asleep, to listen in her dreams to the lash of ropes, the boom of canvas and to dream of riding a frail craft on a storm-tossed sea.
It would be difficult to determine just why it is that one knows how long he has slept, yet we very often do know. One wakens in the middle of the night and before the clock strikes the hour he says to himself, “I have slept three hours.” And he is right.
When Florence awoke that night she knew she had been asleep for about five hours. It was dark, pitch dark, in the cabin. The storm was still raging. ”

“ The man would be a fair mark. The skate was as perfect a weapon as one might ask. Keen and powerful as a sword, it would do its work well. Yet, after all, did she have the nerve?
[66]
While this problem was revolving in her mind, the pit-pat of footsteps grew more and more distinct. Her heart pounded fearfully. “He’s coming—coming—coming!” it seemed to be repeating over and over.
Then, suddenly, there flashed through her mind the consequences of the blow she must strike. The man must be given no chance to fight; one blow must render him unconscious. Whatever was done must be done well. ”

“ Walking briskly, she covered the remaining distance to the spot on the beach opposite the O Moo.
“Not yet,” she whispered, and climbing over the trestle she made her way on down the beach. Her eyes were always on the ground. Now she climbed a trestle, now walked round an anchor frozen into the sand, but always her eyes returned to the tracks in the snow. Tracks enough there were, footprints of men, but never a trace of a sled leaving the ice. ”

“ The two girls in the cabin of the O Moo had waited an hour. Lucile had fallen half-asleep. Marian had lifted a trap door and had started the small gasoline-driven generator which furnished them light and heat. The engine was racing away with a faint pop-pop-pop, when Lucile sat up suddenly. ”