The Blue Envelope | Page 3

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