One incident stood out clearly in Jean's mind. She had come upon Ellen musing thus beside the cage. Her sister had just washed her hair and it hung about her shoulders in lovely, golden-brown profusion. There was a look on her face—Jean, thinking of it, shook her head to banish the memory of that look. Presently Ellen had reached up and with a trembling hand gathered together the short tresses that marked the place where she had—foolishly, Jean thought—cut off the lock of hair in Katleean. Ellen's fingers slipped over the severed ends, then flattened themselves forcibly over the latch on the pigeon's cage. "No! No!" Passionately the words had escaped her as she turned her back on the cage. Meeting Jean's questioning eyes she had flushed and gone on into the house without speaking.
Always, at night, as Jean lay thinking, this incident drifted with curious insistency through her mind.
As the storm continued through dreary days, blowing always from the southwest, the strange, reverberating roll from the south cliffs came more loudly than ever before. Listening to it sometimes, Jean would shiver at the hint of the supernatural in its cadence.
The continual thundering of the surf on the beach and the trembling of the cabin in the rainy blasts of the gale finally began to tell on the nerves of those confined in such small quarters. Gradually the talk at the table grew less. Even Kayak Bill ceased his monologues. He and Shane smoked more than ever and buried themselves in the reading of the old magazines and papers. Ellen seemed more affected than any of them. Her face had become drawn and haggard. She was so inattentive to Loll's questions when the daily lessons were in progress that the little boy grew impatient and asked Jean to help him instead. Then, too, Ellen's strange solicitude for the pigeon increased until it was with difficulty that Shane could prevent her bringing the bird into the cabin during the gale.
One night Jean woke from a troubled doze. Everywhere was a strange, arresting stillness. She realized in a moment that the wind had gone down. The roar of the breakers which had been so loud and constant, now sounded muffled. Her first feeling was one of intense happiness and relief. The storm was over at last—the longest storm she had ever known. Surely, now, she thought, the Hoonah would come.
Though she knew it must be after midnight there was a murmur of voices in the living-room. A chair scraped along the floor. Then came Kayak Bill's tones, distinctly and with a gravity that sent a chill through her. He was evidently concluding some argument.
"But I'm a-tellin' you, Boreland, that there's nary a Injine or a white on the Alasky coast that'll venture nigh the Island o' Kon Klayu after November first——"
"Great God, Kayak!" Boreland's protest cut him short. "Kilbuck knows we haven't enough grub for the winter! He wouldn't leave us here to starve, especially two women and a child, after he has put us here himself! He's promised to bring us provisions! Given us his word! To go back on it would be a violation of the law of the cache! Why, the man has my schooner, and he hasn't paid for her yet! No, no, Kayak. Kilbuck will come. . . . By God, he's got to come!"
There was slow finality in Kayak Bill's answer.
"Boreland, he's waited too long. He can't come. It's the thirteenth o' November. No one can come to Kon Klayu now till the breakup o' the winter. . . . The White Chief's staked the cards on us, son. We're up against it."