The Isle of Retribution

by Edison Marshall

He had found the training camp, but it was more bitter than ever his father had hinted that it could be. Indeed Godfrey Cornet, in those brooding prophecies at which his son had laughed, had been all too hopeful regarding it. He had said there was a way through and on, always there was a way through and on; but here the only out-trail was one of infinite shadow to an unknown destination. Death—that was the way out. That was the only way.

It was curious how easy it was to think of death. Formerly the word had invoked a sense of something infinitely distant, nothing that could seemingly touch him closely, a thought that never came clearly into focus in his brain. All at once it had showed itself as the most real of all realities. It might be his before another night, before the end of the present hour. It had come quick enough to Knutsen. The least resistance to Doomsdorf’s will would bring it on himself. Many things were lies, and the false was hard to tell from the true, but in this regard there was no chance for question. Doomsdorf would strike the life from him in an instant at the first hint of revolt.

It was wholly conceivable that such a thing could occur. Ned could endure grinding toil till he died; even such personal abuse as he had received an hour or so before might find him crushed and unresisting, but yet there remained certain offenses that could not be endured. Ned could not forget that both Lenore and Bess were wholly in Doomsdorf’s power. A brutal, savage man, it was all too easy to believe that the time would come soon when he would forget the half-promise he had given them. The smoky gaze that he had bent toward Bess meant, perhaps, that he was already forgetting it. In that case would there be anything for him but to fight and die? No matter how great a weakling he had been, the last mandate of his honor demanded that. And a bitterness ineffable descended upon him when he realized that even such bravery could not in the least help the two girls,—that his death would be as unavailing and impotent as his life.

How false he had been to himself and his birthright! He had been living in a fool’s paradise, and he had fallen from it into hell! Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage: for less return Ned had sold himself into slavery. He had been a member of a dominant race, the son of a mighty breed that wrested the soil from the wilderness and built strong cities on the desolate plains; but he had wasted his patrimony of strength and manhood. A parlor knight, he had leaned upon his father’s sword rather than learning to wield his own; and he had fallen vanquished the instant that he had left its flashing ring of steel.

For in this moment of unspeakable remorse, he found he could blame no one but himself for the disaster. Every year men traversed these desolate waters to buy furs from the Indians; he had been in a staunch boat, and with a little care, a little foresight, the journey could have been made in perfect safety. It was a man’s venture, surely; but he could have carried through if he had met it like a man instead of a weakling. He knew perfectly that it was his own recklessness and folly that set the cups of burning liquor before Captain Knutsen as he stood at his wheel. It was his own unpardonable conceit, his own self-sufficiency that made him start out to meet the North half prepared, daring to disturb its ancient silences with the sound of his wild revelry; and to live, in its grim desolation, the same trivial life he lived at home. He hadn’t even brought a pistol. Sensing his weakness and his unpreparedness, Doomsdorf hadn’t even done him the honor of searching him for one.

Knutsen’s death was on his own head: the life of utter wretchedness and hopelessness and insult that lay before Lenore and Bess was his own doing, too. It wouldn’t compensate to die in their defense, merely leaving them continued helpless prey to Doomsdorf. He saw now, with this new vision that had come to him, that his only possible course was to live and do what he could in atonement. He mustn’t think of himself any more. All his life he had thought of nothing but himself; self-love had been his curse to the end of the chapter,—and now he could not make himself believe but that it had been some way intertwined in his love for Lenore. He would have liked to give himself credit for that, at least—unselfish devotion, these past years, to Lenore—but even this stuck in his throat. But his love for her would be unbiased by self-love now. He would give all of himself now—holding nothing back.

In spite of his own despair, his own bitter hopelessness, he must do what he could to keep hope alive in Lenore and Bess. It was the only chance he had to pay, even in the most pitiful, slight degree for what he had done to them. He must always try to make their lot easier, doing their work when he could, maintaining an attitude of cheer, living the lie of hope when hope seemed dead in his breast.

Ned Cornet was awake at last. He knew himself, his generation, the full enormity of his own folly, the unredeemed falsehood of his old philosophy. Better still, he knew what lay before him, not only the remorselessness of his punishment but also his atonement: doing willingly and cheerfully the little he could to lighten the burdens of his innocent victims. He could have that to live for, at least, doing the feeble little that he could. And that is why, when Doomsdorf looked at him again, he found him in some way straightened, his eyes more steadfast, his lips in a firmer, stronger line.

“Glad to see you’re bucking up,” he commented lightly.

Ned turned soberly. “I am bucking up,” he answered. “I see now that you’ve gone into something you can’t get away with. Miss Gilbert was right; in the end you’ll find yourself laid out by the heels.”