There are a dozen graves or more on Cape Sunrise; Betty Cruise no longer lies alone out on the windswept point. Crudely chiseled on the rough headstones are names that have not been mentioned in this chronicle, still not the less enduring. One name is there, however, chipped in a great black slab from the face of Split Mountain, that will never be forgotten as long as Trigger Island exists: it is that of Captain Weatherby Trigger.
The master of the Doraine died aboard-ship in the second winter. After his death the ship was abandoned. Mr. Codge and the half-dozen old mariners who had made their home in the dismal hulk came ashore.
Grim and ugly and as silent as the grave, save for the winds that moan through her portholes and corridors, she lies rusting in sun and storm, a gloomy presence that fills the soul with awe. Even the birds of the air shun her barren decks; less fastidious bats have taken up their abode in the heart of her, and spiders great and small are at work on a sickly shroud.
Twenty months have passed. Christmas and New Year's day have twice been celebrated and another Easter Sunday has found its way into the faithful journal of Peter Snipe, and with them two amazing Fourths of July when there was coasting on the long slopes and winter sports on the plains. There has been one bountiful harvest and seed has been sown for yet another. The full length of the sunny plain is under cultivation. The bins in the granaries are well-filled with the treasures of the soil; the gardens have increased and flourished; the warehouse is stacked with fresh and dried fruits, vegetables, honey, and row upon row of preserves! Great earthen jars, modeled with all the severity of the primitive cave-dweller, serve as receptacles. The grist-mill on Leap Frog River is busy from dawn till dusk; the forge rings with the music of hammer and anvil; a saw-mill in the heart of Dismal Forest hums its whining tune all day long. A noisy, determined engine, fashioned by mechanics out of material taken from the engine and boiler room of the Doraine provides the motive power for the saws and the means to produce ponderous, far-reaching blasts on the transferred “fog-horn.”
New and more commodious huts have gone up, roads have been blazed through the forests, a logging ferry plies between the opposite shores of Mott Haven, and a ship is on the ways above the landing “stage.”
At the top of Split Mountain stands a lofty wireless tower. For months it has been spitting vain messages to the four winds. Out of the great silences at rare intervals come faint flickers of radio calls, jumbled, indistinct, undecipherable,—but, for all that, definite pulse beats of a far-off life.
Trigger Island went mad with joy when the first of these aerial mutterings was reported down from the mountain-top. “Only a question of time now,” they cried in their delirium. But weeks went by before another sound was heard. Now the report of feeble, long-separated manifestations, like vague spirit-rappings, no longer caused excitement or enthusiasm,—only a rueful shaking of heads.
Lieutenant Platt's station at the top of the mountain is a rude, elementary affair, notwithstanding the many weary, puzzling, disheartening months spent in its construction. The damaged, almost useless dynamo from the Doraine had to be repaired and conveyed to the crest of the eminence; what seemed to be fruitless ages were consumed in devising an engine with power sufficient to produce even the feeble results that followed. And when the task of installing the plant was completed, the effective radius was far short of a hundred miles. Constant efforts were being made to develop greater sending power, but the means at hand were inadequate, the material unobtainable.
The firing of the Doraine's gun had long since been discontinued. The supply of shells being greatly reduced, Lieutenant Platt decided to waste no more of them, but to wait for some visible evidence that a vessel was within signalling distance: a shadowy plume of smoke on the far horizon or the white tip of a sail peeping over the rim of the world.
Frugality is the watchword. The days of plenty are sternly guarded so that their substance may not be squandered; always there is the thought of the lean year that may come, the year when the harvests fail and famine stalks naked through the land.