While I sought for a way to break the news without any unnecessary alarm to her she continued:
“It’s bad news, of course. I felt that last night. You’d never have been selfish enough to go to sleep without telling me if the news had been good. What is it, Mr. Pitt?”
“I am sorry to say that I didn’t see any one at the cabins,” I replied. “There was no one there. There was nothing there. The cabins were stripped bare. Everything in them was gone—food, everything.”
“Then thank goodness for the bird,” she said quietly. “Where do you think George and everybody, and everything has gone?”
“Oh, Brack’s taken them and all the stuff away some place. But where I can’t imagine. I really don’t believe the yacht’s in the fiord at all, so it doesn’t seem they could be on board. Brack may have headquarters somewhere on shore.”
“But what could be his object in taking everything away from the cabins?”
“To leave us without food or anything to help us.”
“Hm,” said Betty, her chin in her hands. “I was thinking of something else.”
“What?”
“Brack knew you’d go back and have a look at the cabins. He thinks we’re in the open wilderness without a shelter over our heads. Well, when you find that the cabins have been stripped, deserted, apparently abandoned for good, wouldn’t it be natural for us to rush to them for shelter?”