Ellen, slowly recovering her strength now that sea-parrot broth had been added to the daily fare, had become painfully intuitive in the matter of all those phases of the situation which Shane and the others clumsily tried to keep from her. Though apparently asleep, she knew the instant that Shane crept from his bed in the very early mornings before the sun had dried the dew on the tundra. She could hear him tip-toe into Lollie's bunk and with forced lightness call softly:
"Come, Loll, son. Hop up now. We must be after the birds this fine morning!"
"Oh, dad! I don't want to kill any more—I can't do it, dad! . . .
Let this morning go by . . . please!" . . .
"Whist, lad! Your mother'll hear you. Come along now, son, we'll talk it over on the outside."
"Oh, please, please . . ."
Quickly Ellen would put her fingers over her ears that she might not hear the beseeching little-boy voice, but she knew the moment Shane lifted the reluctant child from his warm bunk, and she knew, too, that Shane's heart must be aching with the pity of it, as was her own.
One morning, thinking they had gone, she raised her head to note the hour. There was the sound of a quick step on the porch outside.
"Oh, dad!" came Lollie's pleading tones, and Ellen knew just how his grey eyes, big now in his small thin face, were raised to his father's, "dad, if you could see them down there under the leaves, strutting so cute-like and innocent in front of their little tunnel nests getting ready for their babies!" Then with passionate intensity: "Today . . . couldn't you just let me off for to-day, dad?" Inspired, perhaps, by some shade of feeling in Shane's eyes he went on with hurried, promising emphasis: "An' tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, dad, I'll feel like getting lots of 'em! Honest, maybe I will!"
Ellen, with a moan of mental anguish, buried her face in her pillow and covered her ears to shut out the rest. That her boy, friend and lover of all wild things, was obliged, against his will, to slaughter birds in order that they might live seemed more than she could bear.
And as if to add to the hopelessness of the situation, daily now steamers and sailing vessels passed far out on the North Pacific, but none swerved in its course. There was nothing to hinder the Hoonah's coming—nothing but the word of the White Chief of Katleean. Ellen chafed inwardly as the long, light days and nights dragged by. Help must come soon, and for some time she had been counting the hours until the pigeon's wing-feathers should grow out again. As soon as the bird could fly she was going to take it to the Lookout and speed it on its way with her message of capitulation to Paul Kilbuck.