When at last the flowers began to bud, Jean and her nephew climbed the gulch trail to the top of the Island where Kobuk lay under the tundra on the crest of the hill. The lone tree, so like a woman with wind-blown hair, had lost one of its branches during the winter gales, but it still stood, as if looking out across Kobuk's grave to the far-away, illimitable skyline; ever looking, Jean thought, as she was, for a ship that never came.
She and Lollie made Kobuk's resting place a bed of transplanted violets and iris and dog-tooth lilies. When the work was finished, Lollie stood leaning on the club he had begun to carry, as his one desire in life at this period was to emulate Robinson Crusoe. He looked thoughtfully down at the grave for some time.
"Perhaps, after all, Jean, it's better that Kobuk died," he said at last. "We'd have nothing to feed him now, poor old Kobuk, and he'd be hungry, like us." He raised his thin little face to watch a sea-parrot flying overhead with a fish in its bill.
Jean leaned against the tree, one of her recurrent floods of hopelessness sweeping her. Far down the tundra toward the north she could see the flag-pole on the Lookout. The tattered home-made flag hung dispiritedly in the still sunny air, and the smoke of the signal fire was a mere straight-rising wisp. The calls of happy mating gulls came to mock her—gulls replete with the bountiful food of the sea. Today she was hungry, so hungry that every atom of her body cried for food, hot, nourishing food which she had not known for months. And Ellen, back there at the cabin, was growing weaker and weaker each day.
The girl's eyes dully followed the low-flying sea-parrots. In a half conscious way she noticed that many of them came toward the crest of the hill and disappeared. Sea-parrots were not as fishy tasting as gulls, as she had heard Kayak Bill say. If only they had some way of killing these birds perhaps the broth and the flesh might bring back Ellen's strength.
"Jean, isn't that the place the old bear came up the hill?" Lollie's voice broke in on her thoughts. He was pointing to the scrubby growth on the brow of the hill where she had first seen the bear of Kon Klayu. "Let's go over and see."
As they walked toward the ridge their feet made no sound on the soft tundra. They peered down hill into the shady recesses under the stunted alder and salmon-berry bushes. Jean's nostrils twitched as there was wafted up to her the strong, acrid odor which lingers about the places of nesting birds. As her eyes became accustomed to the dimness, she ventured a remark which died abruptly as she caught her breath. Beneath the low canopy of branches the ground was bare of vegetation, and on the cool brown earth, packed hard by the patter of webbed feet, a dozen or more sea-parrots were sitting not fifteen slanting feet below!
At the sight of them Loll dropped to his hands and knees and, club in hand, crept cautiously down under the low-growing bushes. Inch by inch he drew nearer to the birds. . . . Then, with a swift movement he was in the midst of wildly flapping wings, clubbing fiercely at crimson-beaked heads.
Jean, fearing that he was in danger, threw herself on the ground and tried to wriggle forward to him, but the low growth made the passage of her larger body impossible. She drew herself back and called frantically to the boy. She could hear the commotion and see the parrots one by one flying clumsily out as they escaped from the spot where he fought. With a shout of encouragement to him she made another attempt to crawl under the brush. At that moment Loll's freckled face was thrust through the undergrowth. He turned to tug at something, grunting and straining as if trying to free it from the tangle.
"Jean! I've got 'em! I've got 'em!" he yelled.