“You are going to Isle Royale in an airplane,” she repeated slowly. “Then I shall tell you all about it—but on one condition!”
“Name it.” Sandy smiled.
“That you take me with you.”
A little cry of surprise ran round the room. For a space of seconds Sandy was silent. Then, with a look of sudden decision on his face, he said, “It’s a go!”
“And now, Jeanne,” Miss Mabee arose, “when our good friend Tum has put another log on the fire and we have all drawn up our chairs, suppose you tell us all about this very wonderful isle.”
So there, with the lights turned out, with the glow of the fire playing over her bewitching face, Jeanne told them of Isle Royale. She spoke of the deep, dark waters where lake trout gleam like silver; of the rocky shore where at times the waters of old Lake Superior come thundering in, and of the little lakes that lay gleaming among the dark green forests.
She told of wild moose that come down to the shores at sunset to dip their noses in the bluest of waters, then to lift their antlers high and send a challenge echoing away across the ridges. She told of the bush wolves who answered that challenge, then of the slow settling down of night that turned this whole little world to a pitchy black.
“And then,” she whispered, “the moon comes rolling like a golden chariot wheel over the ridge to paint a path of gold across those black waters. And you, not to be outdone by a mere moon, touch a match to your campfire and it blazes high to meet the stars.
“That,” she exclaimed, springing to her feet and executing a wild dance before the fire, “that is summer! What must it be in winter? All those tall spruce trees decorated with snow, all those little lakes gleaming like mirrors. And tracks through the snow—tracks of moose, bush wolves, lynx and beaver, mysterious tracks that wind on and on over the ridge. To think,” she cried, “we are to see all this!
“But Sandy!” Her mood changed. “You said they were trapping moose. Why should they trap any wild thing? That—why that’s like trapping a gypsy!”