The Blue Envelope | Page 2

She had no sort of notion as to how or when her brother would return. The fact of the matter was that had not her brother had in his possession a note from the captain asking him to come aboard, and had he not known the penalty for not returning a landsman to his port under such conditions, the unprincipled seaman would have carried him to Seattle, leaving Beth to shift for herself. He reached home on a gasoline schooner some ten days after his departure.
This same Beth, when spring came and she wished to go "outside," engaged a white guide to take her by dog team to Cape Prince of Wales, where the mail steamer might be caught. It was late in the spring and the ice was soft. They had been traveling for some time on the rough shore ice when they discovered, much to their horror, that their ice pan had broken loose from the shore and was drifting out to sea. They hurried along the edge of it for some distance in the hope of finding a bridge to shore. In this they were disappointed. Beth could not swim. Fortunately the guide could. Leaping into the stinging water he swam from one cake to the next one, leading the dogs. Beth clung to the back of the sled and was thus brought ashore. After wading many swollen torrents, they at last reached Cape Prince of Wales in safety. This sounds very much like fiction but is fact and can be verified.
As to crossing Bering Straits and living with the Chukches in Siberia. I did that very thing myself--went with a crew of Chukches I had never seen, too. I was over there for only three days but might have stayed the summer through in perfect safety. While there I saw a character known as the French Kid, a white man who had crossed the Straits with the natives late in the year and had wintered there.
Crossing twenty or more miles of floe ice might seem a trifle improbable but here, too, actual performance bears me out. I sent the mail to Thompson, the government teacher on the Little Diomede Island, across 22 miles of floe ice by an Eskimo. This man had made the trip many times before. It is my opinion that what an Eskimo can do, any white man or hearty young woman can do.
Well, there you have it. I don't wish to make my fiction story seem tame, or I might tell you more. As it is I hope I may have convinced you that all the adventures of Lucile and Marian are probable and that the author knows something about the wonderland in which the story is set.
THE AUTHOR.

THE BLUE ENVELOPE
CHAPTER I
A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE
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.
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