Caribou Island is about three miles long from north to south and about a mile wide from east to west. Its eastern shore runs almost straight, the western is more broken, but there is no natural harbor on the island.
Ganawa and his boys steered for a hill, about a hundred feet high, in the southeastern part of the island, and they rowed and paddled with all their might, for the [[253]]haze was gradually changing to the dreaded Lake Superior fog. For a little while the top of the hill remained visible, while the near-by shore was lost in the fog. By this time the sailors had turned the southeastern point of the island, and they could hear the white-throats and thrushes sing in the woods of the island, although for a few minutes they could see only the gray fog around them. But guided by the song of a white-throat, as by the whistle of an invisible pilot, they carefully used oars and paddle until the bow of the Pirate grounded on the reddish-yellow sand of the island. Then they laid down three short birch logs in front of the boat and using the logs as rollers, they pulled the heavy boat up on land, and secured their canoe, while each man silently offered a prayer of thanks to Him Who had delivered them from the night of the fog and the perils of the sea. [[254]]
CHAPTER XXXII
CARIBOU ISLAND
No place in the heart of North America could be more suited for a real game of Robinson Crusoe than Caribou Island; but books were scarce in most American homes of the Colonial period and neither Ray nor Bruce had ever heard of Crusoe and his island. Nor did they know that the famous trader Alexander Henry had visited this island only a few years ago, attracted by the strange name, for Henry had at that time caught the “mining fever,” and he thought that the “yellow sand” of which the Indians spoke might be gold. Henry and his companions found the island well stocked with caribou and provided themselves with plenty of meat; and since Henry’s time, the island became known as Caribou Island and as such it appears on all modern maps.
The fog lasted all night and all next day, [[255]]and the lads felt as if they and Ganawa were the only people on earth and that they had been cast away on an island in the sea. Even Ganawa, who was no stranger to solitude, confessed that he would be afraid without his white son that could make and sail a white man’s boat, and as the white boys sat and listened to the lapping of the waves, for Lake Superior like the ocean is never entirely quiet, and as they tried in vain to peer through the fog, the words of the Bible ran through their minds: “And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
The second morning broke clear and warm, and as the lake was quiet, the three sailors launched their canoe and started to paddle around the small island. The first thing that attracted their attention was the host of big rocks, as Ray called them, that they found scattered over the shallow water south of the island. If they had struck one [[256]]of them they might have been wrecked within a stone’s throw of the island.
With eyes and ears keenly alert and with throbbing hearts, the lads peered toward the land for signs of human beings. Unless they found some sign of Jack Dutton on this island, they would have to give up the search. Once Bruce thought he saw a man slip out of the spruce timber, but it was an animal, a deer. No, it was a caribou, Ganawa told them.
And then Ray spied something that made them all stop. “Look there! Look!” Ray cried, and pointed to the top of the hill. “There is a rag tied to a pole. Some man must have been there.”