The Ice Queen Part 17

With aching heads bowed under their burdens, and tired limbs, they had returned to within, perhaps, a hundred yards of the beach, when the barking of dogs, mingled with a girlish scream, caused them all to look up in astonishment. Then, without waiting for any one to give the word, each dropped what he was carrying, and began to run as fast as he was able over the broken ice towards the sh.o.r.e.

When the lads had started on the second trip out to the boat, Rex, bidden to watch his mistress, and proud of the duty, had lain down almost on the edge of her blankets. There was no snow upon the sand here, and the warmth of the fire closed the eyes of the f.a.gged-out dog, just as it had those of his mistress. The boys had been gone, perhaps, half an hour, and he had had time to get very soundly asleep, when, suddenly, he was roused by a growl and a rush, and before he could rise to his feet two animals were right upon him, each nearly as big as himself, though short-haired and wofully gaunt. With a yelp of surprise and rage the dog sprang up and tried to defend himself, but the attack of his a.s.sailants was so fierce that he was rolled over in an instant, and felt their teeth pressing at his throat.

Into Katy's dreams of a May-day picnic under the blossoming apple-trees broke this rude hubbub, and before she could understand its meaning she felt the weight of the struggling animals pressing upon her bed. With the piercing scream of fright that had reached the ears of her brothers out on the ice, she struggled out of her blankets, only to be tripped and fall right upon the tumbling, growling, fighting heap. Afterwards she used to tell the story with merry laughter, but then, scarcely knowing what it all meant, she was too frightened to do anything but scream again, and pick herself up as best she could.

Safely on her feet at last, and convinced that this startling adventure was a reality and not some frightful change in her dream, she saw that Rex was being overpowered by two great dogs, lean almost as skeletons, that seemed bent upon killing him without an instant's delay. To see her faithful friend surprised and overcome in this terrible way stirred up all her sympathies and all her wrath. Like a flash she remembered how African travellers had fought lions with firebrands, and, seizing one of the charred sticks from the fire, she began to strike the brute nearest to her.

But what followed was most alarming, for the animal, at the very first blow, left Rex and turned towards her, his jaws wide open, and his haggard eyes glowing with rage. Instinctively she presented the smoking end of her long brand, as a soldier would his bayonet, and was fortunate enough to meet the dog squarely in the face, which staggered him for an instant, and before he could gather himself for a new attack Aleck and Tug and Jim were all beside her, and the two great brutes were in full flight.

Then the brave girl dropped her firebrand, and sank down on the nearest seat, where, perhaps, she might have been excused for fainting had the day been warm, instead of freezing cold. The boys gathered anxiously about her, with such questions as, "Where did they come from?" "Why did they attack you?" "Are you hurt?" and so on.

The story was soon told, and this was fortunate, for everybody had forgotten poor Rex, who lay panting, and licking one of his feet, from which the blood was oozing.

"Well, old fellow," exclaimed Tug, as he went and bent over the dog, "did they try to chew you up? Here, give us your paw. Quiet! Let me feel--so--good dog! No bones broken, I guess, and we'll bandage you up O. K. How about this ear? One hole through it, and--Well, 'twas lucky you had a strong collar? Just look at the tooth-marks on that piece of leather! If it hadn't been for that an' his thick hair, they'd been in his throat, and then good-bye, Rex!"

Chapter XXIII.

EXPLORING THE ISLAND.

When all the property of our s.h.i.+pwrecked crew had been brought ash.o.r.e it made a very small heap, and the biggest part of that seemed to be the bedding. Everybody noticed this, and it added a new gloom to the feeling of discouragement caused by their weariness, by Katy's fright, and, most of all, by the hunger of which their slight breakfast had only taken away the edge.

"Before we do anything else at all," said Captain Aleck, "we must have something more to eat. Do you feel strong enough to help us, Katy?"

"Oh, yes, indeed. I've got quite rid of my foolish weakness."

"That's good. Let us know if we can help you."

n.o.body felt in the mood for talking, and Jim really took a nap between the rock and the fire. Though the air was still cold, the suns.h.i.+ne was bright, and under the lee of the little cliff it was very comfortable; but poor Katy had hard work to keep her fingers from almost freezing.

What she made was chocolate, fried bacon, and "griddle" cakes, the last cooked in the skillet, and consuming every bit of buckwheat flour and a good share of the sugar. When the meal had been eaten to the last sc.r.a.p, and everybody had grown wide awake and cheerful, Aleck rapped on a box, and made a speech:

"Attention, ladies and gentlemen! Though none of us have said much about it, you all know well enough that we're in a regular sc.r.a.pe, and the sooner we discover how we're to get out of it the better. Now, I am going to propose a plan, and if any of you don't like it you can say so."

"We'll do whatever you say," exclaimed Tug.

"But I don't want to _say_ till we've talked it over. I rather think we're on a small island a good many miles from land. I judge so from what I know of the chart of the lake, and what I can guess of where we drifted on that ice-floe. If so, I do not think anybody lives here, or ever comes here in winter."

"Regular desert island!" Jim was heard to mutter, in a tone that showed his mind busy with the romantic memory of Robinson Crusoe.

"The first thing to do is to find out whether this is so or not. Now I propose that Jim and Katy should stay here--"

"Oh, no, no," Katy interrupted, in an eager appeal. "Those dreadful dogs might come back, and Jimmy is so little! I want you to stay with me, or else let me go with you."

"That's rather rough on the boy," Aleck laughed. "However, I suppose it won't matter. Well, then, Tug, I think you and Jim had better go back in the country, and see what you can find, while I stay and watch over the goods and the sister. What do you say?"

"Good plan," Tug replied. "I'm ready. Are you, Youngster?"

"Yes, siree! But you'll let us take the gun, won't you, Aleck?"

"Oh, yes, you can have the gun. If the dogs, or wolves, or whatever they are, come at us while you're gone, Katy can fight them with firebrands, and I--"

"Oh, _you_ can climb a tree!" said his sister, merrily.

"Yes, I can climb a tree."

While Tug and Jim were gone, Aleck and Katy busied themselves in repacking their goods in snug bundles, and in talking over their strange adventures. They were too anxious to feel very gay, but thought it foolish to give way to fretting until they had lost all hope. Two hours or more elapsed, and the sun had climbed to "high noon" in the sky, before the explorers came back, bringing solemn faces.

"Island!" both called out as soon as they came near; "and a small one at that."

"Any people on it?" asked Katy.

"Not a soul that I could see," Tug said. "I allow they come here in summer, though, for the trees have been cut down, and there's a rough little shanty on the other side."

"Could we live in it?"

"Didn't go inside; don't know. It's half full of snow. Better than no shelter at all, I suppose. It ain't far off. Suppose you all go over there and look at it--Jim can show you where it is--while I guard the grub against those pesky dogs. I don't wonder the brutes are savage, for I don't see how they could get anything to eat here."

When the three had left the rocks at the beach, under Jim's guidance, they found themselves in a brushy wood consisting largely of hemlocks and pines, often closely matted together. A few minutes' walking carried them through this and up to a ridge of jagged limestone rocks, one point of which, a little distance off, stood up like a big monument. This ridge ran about east and west, and they had come up its southern side. Its northern face was very snowy, had few trees, and sloped down an eighth of a mile to the water.

At one place on this northern beach several great rocks rose from the water's edge, and among them stood a small grove of hemlocks and other trees. In that thicket, Jimmy told them, the old shanty was placed.

They thought it must be very small, or else well stowed away, for they could see nothing of it. To get down to it was no easy task, for the crevices and holes in the rocky hillside had drifted full of snow, and they were continually sinking in where they had expected to stand firm, or finding a solid rock ahead when they tried to flounder out.

It was a chilled and ill-tempered trio that finally reached the beach, and sought the shelter of the thicket.

Now it became easier to understand why the hut had been invisible from above, for it was only a shanty propped up between two great rocks that helped to form its walls and support its roof. From the broken oars and many fragments of nets, the old corks and other rubbish lying about, they saw at once that it had been built by fishermen, who probably came there to spend the night now and then, or, perhaps, stayed a week or so at a time in the summer.

The door stood half open, and a snowdrift lay heaped upon the threshold. Edging their way in, they found that the roof and walls were tight, the little window unbroken, and several rough articles of furniture lying about. An old, rusty stove, one corner propped up on stones, and the pipe tumbled down, stood against the chimney of mud and sticks that was built up against one of the rocky walls.

"This is splendid!" Katy cried. "Just look at that dear old stove!"

"Yes, sis; I think we must move over here. But are you sure, Jim--how did you find out?--that this is an island, and not the mainland?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CABIN ON THE ISLAND.]

"From the top of that high point of rocks you can see the whole of it.

I don't believe it is more than a mile up to the farther end, and not half that down to the other. The island is shaped something like a dumb-bell, only one end is a good deal bigger than the other. We are on the little end here."

"Well, Youngster, you're quite a geographer; but we can't stop to talk about it now. Let's go back as quickly as we can, and bring part of our goods over this afternoon; don't you think that's best?"

"Oh, yes." And twenty minutes later, rosy and panting, Katy astonished the sleepy Tug by rus.h.i.+ng into camp, followed closely, not by wild beasts, as he thought would be the case, but by both the brothers she had outsped.

"It's so good!" she exclaimed, catching her breath, "to feel something besides slippery ice under your feet! Now, what shall we take first?"

By hard work and little resting the coming of twilight found them established in their new home. The last journey had been made after the bedding, by Tug and Aleck, while Jim and Katy cleared the snow all away from the cabin door and off the bending roof, straightened up the rickety old stove, and set a fire going. By the time the larger boys came back, raising a whoop far up the hillside as they saw the smoke curling up between the hemlocks, the old hut was warm, and the tin cover of the little iron pot was dancing, in its effort to hold back the escaping steam.

"Ugh!" said Tug, as he pushed the door open and threw down his bundle of blankets; "I'm as hungry as a wolf!"