Aladdin OBrien | Page 5

closed, the tickling gave place to a sudden imperative ultimatum, and,
when all was over, Margaret had waked.
They talked for a long time, for she could not go to sleep again, and
Aladdin told her many things and kept her from crying, but he did not
tell her about the awful bird or the more awful eyes. He told her about
his little brother, and the yellow cat they had, and about the great city
where he had once lived, and why he was called Aladdin. And when
the real began to grow dim, he told her stories out of strange books that
he had read, as he remembered them--first the story of Aladdin and
then others.
"Once," began Aladdin, though his teeth were knocking together and
his arms aching and his nose running--"once there was a man named
Ali Baba, and he had forty thieves--"

III
Even in the good north country, where the white breath of the melting
icebergs takes turn and turn with diamond nights and days, people did
not remember so thick a fog; nor was there a thicker recorded in any
chapter of tradition. Indeed, if the expression be endurable, so black
was the whiteness that it was difficult to know when morning came.
There was a fresher shiver in the cold, the sensibility that tree-tops were
stirring, a filmy distinction of objects near at hand, and the possibility
that somewhere 'way back in the east the rosy fingers of dawn were
spread upon a clear horizon. Collisions between ships at sea were
reported, and many a good sailorman went down full fathom five to
wait for the whistle of the Great Boatswain.
The little children on the island roused themselves and groped about
among the chilled, dripping stems of the trees; they had no end in view,
and no place to go, but motion was necessary for the lame legs and
arms. Margaret had caught a frightful cold and Aladdin a worse, and
they were hungrier than should be allowed. Now a jarred tree rained

water down their necks, and now their faces went with a splash and
sting into low-hanging plumes of leaves; often there would be a slip
and a scrambling fall. And by the time Aladdin had done grimacing
over a banged shin, Margaret would have a bruised anklebone to cry
about. The poor little soul was very tired and penitent and cold and hurt
and hungry, and she cried most of the time and was not to be comforted.
But Aladdin bit his lips and held his head up and said it all would be
well sometime. Perhaps, though he still had a little courage left,
Aladdin was the more to be pitied of the two: he was not only
desperately responsible for it all, but full of imagination and the
horrible things he had read. Margaret, like most women, suffered a
little from self-centration, and to her the trunk of a birch was just a
nasty old wet tree, but to Aladdin it was the clammy limb of one
drowned, and drawn from the waters to stand in eternal unrest. At
length the stumbling progress brought them to a shore of the island: a
slippery ledge of rock, past whose feet the water slipped hurriedly,
steaming with fog as if it had been hot, two big leaning birches, and a
ruddy mink that slipped like winking into a hole. The river, evident for
only a few yards, became lost in the fog, and where they were could
only be guessed, and which way the tide was setting could only be
learned by experiment. Aladdin planted a twig at the precise edge of the
water, and they sat down to watch. Stubbornly and unwillingly the
water receded from the twig, and they knew that the tide was running
out.
"That's the way home," said Aladdin. Margaret looked wistfully
down-stream, her eyes as misty as the fog.
"If we had the boat we could go now," said Aladdin.
Then he sat moody, evolving enterprise, and neither spoke for a long
time.
"Marg'ret," said Aladdin, at length, "help me find a big log near the
water."
"What you going to do, 'Laddin?"

"You 'll see. Help look."
They crept along the edge of the island, now among the close-growing
trees and now on the bare strip between them and the water, until at
length they came upon a big log, lying like some gnarled amphibian
half in the river and half on the dry land.
"Help push," said Aladdin.
They could move it only a little, not enough.
"Wait till I get a lever," said Aladdin. He went, and came back with a
long, stiff little birch, that, growing recklessly in the thin soil over a
rock, had been willing to yield