The Isle of Retribution

by Edison Marshall

They consumed great quantities of food,—particularly Bess and Ned. What would have been a full day’s rations in their own home, enough concentrated nutriment to put them in bed with indigestion, did not suffice for a single meal. Never before had Ned really known the love of food—red meat, the fair, good bread, rice grains white and fluffed—but it came upon him quickly enough now. Before, his choice had run toward women’s foods, exotic sauces, salads and ices and relishes, foods that tickled the palate but gave no joy to the inner man; but now he wanted inner fuel, plenty of it and unadorned. He cared little how it was cooked, whether or not it had seasoning. The sweet taste of meat was loved by him now,—great, thick, half-done steaks of nutritious caribou. He didn’t miss butter on his bread. He would eat till he could hold no more, hardly chewing his food; and as he lay asleep, the inner agents of his body would draw from it the stuff of life with which was built up his shattered tissue.

The physical change was manifest in a few days. His spare flesh went away as if in a single night, and then hard muscle began to take its place. His flesh looked firmer; sagging fat was gone from his face; his skin—pasty white before—was brownish-red from the scourge of the wind. Now the manly hair began to mat about his lips and jowls. A hardening manifested itself in his speech. The few primitive sentences, spoken in the tired-out sessions about the stove, became him more than hours of his former chatter. He no longer gabbled lightly like a girl, his speech full of quirks and affectations: he spoke in blunt, short sentences, with blunt, short words, and his meaning was immediately plain.

He was standing the gaff! Every day found him with greater physical mastery. Yet it was not altogether innate strength, or simple chemical energy derived from the enormous quantities of food he consumed that kept him on his feet. More than once, as the bitter night came down to find him toiling, a strange, wan figure in the snow, he was all but ready to give up. The physical side of him was conquered; the primitive desire for life no longer manifested itself in his spirit. Just to fall in the snow, to let his tired legs wilt under him, perhaps to creep a little way back into the thicket where Doomsdorf’s lantern would fail to reveal him: then he would be free of this dreadful training camp for good! The sleep that would come upon him then would not be cursed with the knowledge of a coming dawn, as gray and hopeless as the twilight just departed! He would be safe then from Doomsdorf’s lash! The Arctic wind would convey his wretched spirit far beyond the madman’s power to follow; his aching, bleeding hands would heal in some Gentleness far away. The fear of which psychologists speak, that of the leap into darkness that is glibly said to be the last conscious instinct, was absolutely absent. Death was a word to conjure with no more. It was no harder for him to think of than the fall of a tree beneath his axe. The terror that surrounded it was ever only a specter: and in the clear vision that came to him in those terrible twilights, only realities were worth the effort of thought. The physical torture of staggering through the snow back to the cabin was so infinitely worse than any conception that he could retain of death; the life that stretched before him was so absolutely bereft of hope that the elemental dread of what lay beyond would not have restrained him an instant. The thing went deeper than that. The reason why he did not yield to the almost irresistible desire to lie down and let the North take its toll had its fount in the secret places of the man’s soul. He was beyond the reach of fear for himself, but his love for Lenore mastered him yet.

He must not leave Lenore. He had given his love to her, and this love was a thousand times more compelling than any fear could possibly be. He must stand up, he must go on through,—for the sake of this dream that counted more than life. Was not her happiness in his whole charge? Did he not constitute her one defense against Doomsdorf’s persecutions? He must live on, carrying as many of her burdens as he could.

Bess too knew an urge beyond herself; but she would not have found it so easy to get it into concrete thought. Perhaps women care less about cause and more about effect, willing to follow impulse and scarcely feeling the need of justifying every action with a laborious thought process. In her own heart Bess knew she must not falter, she must not give up. Whence that knowledge came she had no idea, and she didn’t care. There was need of her too on this wretched, windy island. She had her place here; certain obligations had been imposed upon her. She didn’t try to puzzle out what these obligations were. Perhaps she was afraid of the heart’s secret that might be revealed to her. Her instinct was simply to stay and play her part.

The only one of the three to whom the fear of death was still a reality was Lenore, simply because the full horror of the island had not yet gone home to her. She thought she knew the worst; in reality, she had no inkling of it. So far Ned had succeeded in sheltering her from it.

How long he could continue to do so, in any perceptible degree, he did not know. In the first place he had the girl herself to contend with: now that she was recovering, Lenore would likely enough insist on doing her own share of the work. Besides, the problem was greatly complicated, now that the winter’s supply of fuel was laid by, and the real season’s activities about to begin. Could he spare her such bitter, terrible hours that he and Bess must endure, following the trap lines over the wild? Must she be cursed and lashed and tortured by the cold, know the torment of worn-out muscles, only to be rewarded by the knout for failing to bring in a sufficient catch of furs? Doomsdorf would be more exacting, rather than more lenient, in these months to come. He had been willing enough for Ned to do Lenore’s share in the work of laying in winter fuel; but the size of the fur catch was a matter of greater moment to him. It was unthinkable that Ned could handle to the best advantage both Lenore’s trap line and his own. Work as hard as he might, long into the night hours, one man couldn’t possibly return two men’s catch. For Lenore’s sake Ned regarded the beginning of the trapping season with dread, although for himself he had cause to anticipate it.

He hadn’t forgotten that the first furs taken would be his, and he needed them sorely enough. Indeed, the matter was beginning to be of paramount importance to his health and life. The clothes he had worn from the Charon, flimsy as the life of which they had been a part, were rapidly wearing out. They didn’t turn the rain, and they were not nearly warm enough for the bitter weather to come. Ned did not forget that the month was only October; that according to Doomsdorf, real winter would not break over them for a few weeks, at least. The snow flurries, the frost, the bitter nights were just the merest hint of what was to come, he said: the wail of the biting wind at night just the far-off trumpet call of an advancing enemy. A man could go thinly garbed on such days as this and, except for an aching chill throughout his frame, suffer no disagreeable consequences; but such wouldn’t hold true in the forty-below-zero weather that impended. Only fur and the thickest woolens could avail in the months to come.

Besides, the trapper’s life offered more of interest than that of the woodchopper. It would carry him through those gray valleys and over the rugged hills that now, when he had time to look about him, seemed to invite his exploration. Best of all, the work would largely carry him away from Doomsdorf’s presence. If only he could spare Lenore, not only by permission of Doomsdorf but by the consent of the girl herself.

The matter came up that night while Doomsdorf was sorting out some of his smaller traps. “We’ll light out to-morrow,” he said. “The sooner we get these things set, the better. The water furs seem to be absolutely prime already—I’m sure the land furs must be too. I wonder if you three have any idea what you’re going to do.”