No answer save the long-drawn whistle of a bird.
The silence and loneliness of the place began to oppress her. The memory of that scream in the night remained in her mind as something distinct, sinister.
“Who could that have been?” she asked herself with a shudder. “Why did they scream? What could have happened?”
Her mind was filled with pictures of crimes committed in secret places.
“It’s absurd!” She paused to stamp her foot. “Nothing of importance will come of it. Mysteries fade before the light of day. The sun is shining. Why do I shudder? And for that matter, why am I here at all? A vision brought me here, a dream dreamed out by the fire. I—”
She broke off short to listen. Faint and from far away there came the drone of an airplane motor.
“The amphibian from Houghton,” she told herself. “Wonder if it will come near?”
Every day in summer, sometimes two or three times a day, this great bi-motored plane brings passengers and sightseers to Isle Royale. The moose feeding on grass at the bottom of inland lakes have learned to glance up at its approach, then go on with their feeding.
This girl thought little of an airplane’s approach. Indeed, she had all but forgotten it when, as she reached a rocky space quite devoid of trees and found herself in a position to look down upon another plateau that lay some two hundred feet below, she was made doubly conscious of its presence.
“Why it—it’s not the bi-motor at all!” she exclaimed. “It’s some strange plane, all white, and it—it’s landing!”