The Island of Yellow Sands: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys

In the meantime Ronald had been cutting fuel. The wood was wet and coated with ice. Even the Indian might have striven in vain for a blaze had he not been lucky enough to find a small, dead birch, that contained, within its protecting bark, dry heart wood that crumbled to powder. With this tinder he succeeded in kindling bark and fine shavings. Then he added dead limbs split into strips, and finally larger birch wood and resinous spruce. On one side of the fire, which had been made within the lodge, Ronald piled the wood he had cut, and on the other the three crouched to dry their soaked clothes and warm their chilled bodies. They had nothing to eat, and no way of getting anything in the bitter, driving storm, which was continually growing worse.

A miserable night they spent in that rude shelter, huddled together on damp evergreen branches, under their one remaining blanket, which they had dried before the fire. Surf lashed the beach, and the wind roared in the tree tops, that swayed and clashed together, the trunks creaking as if they must snap off and be hurled down on the wigwam. Sleet and frozen snow rattled on the bark covering. It was lucky indeed for the treasure-seekers that they had been cast ashore before the storm reached its height. Long before nightfall it had grown so violent that there was not one chance in a thousand for a canoe to live through it.

The northeaster continued to rage with varying degrees of fury for two more days. Rain, sleet and snow did not fall constantly, but came in showers and squalls, with intervals between, while the gale blew unceasingly, though not always with equal violence, and the sun never showed itself. In the quieter intervals Nangotook and the boys cut fuel for the fire and sought for food, but during the more furious spells they were compelled to remain under shelter. Even if the canoe had not been too badly damaged to float, they could not have gone on the water to fish, and all efforts to catch anything from the shore failed. If there were any animals in the vicinity, they were not abroad in the storm, but remained snug in their holes and lairs, and, the ground being covered with icy snow, no tracks revealed their hiding places. Nangotook dug down through snow and ice for some roots he knew to be edible, and the boys found a few hazelnuts. It was too late for berries; they had all fallen or been eaten by birds and animals. So little could the castaways find that was eatable that they were even glad of alder seeds. Under-nourished as they were, they felt the chilling cold all the more severely, and both boys agreed that they had never put through so miserable a period as those three nights and two days.

It was no wonder that Nangotook felt this to be the final and unmistakable warning of the manito that they must give up the search for the treasure that belonged to him. On the second night of the storm he had a dream that strengthened his conviction. Very seriously and impressively he related the dream to the lads in the morning.

“While my body slept,” he said, “Amik, the Great Beaver, appeared to me. He was larger than the greatest moose. His body filled the wigwam. There was no room for his tail, so it stuck out of the door. He looked at me sternly, and in a voice that drowned the clashing of the trees in the wind and the rattling of the sleet against the bark, he asked me why I had not heeded the warnings. I tried to answer, but could not, for my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Then he spoke again, and forbade me, and the white men with me, to go farther out into the lake. We must turn back to shore, he said, and again he asked why I had not gone back when I had been warned the first time, and the second time, and the third time. Then I loosened my tongue from the roof of my mouth, and answered that the white youths were young and rash and would not turn back. ‘The manitos of the waters and the islands are angry with you,’ Amik replied. ‘If the white youths will not turn back, they must be destroyed. I warn you because you are of my blood. Leave them to their fate, and return to the shore before it is too late.’ But I gathered up my courage and answered Amik. ‘Grandfather,’ I said, ‘I cannot leave them. It was I who led them on this adventure, and if I should leave them and go back without them, I should be a coward and dishonored. If they must perish, I too must perish.’ The Great Beaver looked at me, and was silent a long time. ‘If you will not leave them, make them turn back,’ he said, and his voice was like thunder rolling in the wigwam and his look was even sterner than before. ‘Make them turn back. The manitos are angry. They lose patience. I have warned you.’ And then he disappeared and I woke, and the flesh stood up in little points all over my body, and my tongue was dry, and my hair prickled at the roots, and I knew I must heed Amik’s warning. Turn back, my brothers, before it is too late!”

Even Ronald felt no inclination to laugh at Nangotook’s vision. While he had no faith in such a creature as the Great Beaver, the dream itself impressed him deeply. Belief in the mysterious character and meaning of dreams was common among all men at that time. The boy was not less superstitious than the average man of his period and race. From childhood he had heard the Scottish tales of dreams and warnings and second sight, and to these old world superstitions had been added others native to the new world. He had refused to regard the northern lights or the sudden appearance of the Sleeping Giant as a warning, but such a dream as this was a different matter. In spite of its fantastic form he felt, with the superstitious feeling of the time, that it might be a real warning or foreshadowing of disaster to come. He strove to shake off the impression the dream had made upon him, but found he could not. Indeed it affected him even more than it seemed to affect Jean.

The storm could not last forever, and when, on the third morning, the castaways found that the wind had abated and the sun was breaking through the clouds, they were encouraged to believe that the worst was over. They had thought themselves on a point of the main island, but soon discovered that their refuge was in reality a narrow island about two miles long. Other land lay close by, but before they could reach it or even fish successfully, they must repair the canoe. So Etienne set about the task, replacing the broken ribs and sheathing, sewing on patches and gumming the strained seams. During the storm it had been impossible to do such work in the open, and the hut had been too small to hold both the canoe and its crew.

While Etienne worked on the canoe, the boys made another search for food. Through the icy snow, which was disappearing rapidly wherever the sun could reach it, they tramped and scrambled about among the trees and along the pebbly beaches, rocks and boulders, but obtained nothing except a few hazelnuts and one squirrel that Ronald killed with a stone.

Jean caught sight of the glossy brown, rat-like head of a mink swimming near shore, saw the head go under suddenly, and waited to see if the small fisher would secure its prey. In a moment the head reappeared, and the slim-bodied little animal swam to shore, a small fish in its mouth. It laid the fish down to kill it by biting it through the neck, but at that instant Jean sprang forward. A mink is very fierce and brave for its size, and this one stood over its catch for a moment snarling, then, with an almost incredibly swift movement, seized the fish, turned and took to the water. Farther along the bank it landed again, and, like a brown streak, it was away and out of sight, long before the boy had gone half-way to its landing place. His plan to frighten it, so it would leave its catch, had failed completely.

The canoe having been repaired, and a slender meal of squirrel broth and hazelnuts eaten, the three set out from the south shore of the little island. To the southwest, separated by a very narrow channel, was more land. The water was quiet, and they paddled slowly along, fishing lines out. Soon they discovered that they were in a bay, the land closing in ahead of them. Lake herring were jumping about them, and, with a bark scoop attached to a pole, Ronald succeeded in taking a few to be used as bait for larger fish. The fishermen circled the bay, and rounded a point almost opposite the southern end of the island where they had been storm-bound. They found themselves in a very narrow cove, scarcely a quarter of a mile broad in its widest part and perhaps two miles long. In that narrow harbor they caught in quick succession, with the herring bait, three large pickerel, each one giving them a lively fight before it was landed. Another they lost when it snapped the line. Elated over their good luck, they returned to their camp to clean and cook their fish.

The hearty meal put new strength into the boys, and for the first time since they were cast ashore in the storm they felt equal to making plans for the future. The prospect was serious enough. October, “the moon of the falling leaf,” as the Ojibwa called it, had come, and the storm and snow of the last few days had given the wanderers a foretaste of winter. There might be, probably would be, many good days before winter set in in earnest, but on the other hand, they knew that genuine winter might come at any time, for the autumn season on Lake Superior is a very uncertain one. Real winter might hold off until well into November or December and give them time to reach the Sault in safety, but it had been known to arrive in October. They could put little trust in the weather, and the way back to the River Ste. Marie was long. Moreover if they were to make the journey with any show of speed, they must be provisioned for it. The first necessity was a supply of food.

Even Ronald had given up hope of finding the Island of Yellow Sands that year. They could spend no more time in seeking for it. The risk of the search, in the autumn storms and rough weather, had become too great even for him. The adventurers had been almost miraculously saved three times, from thunder storm, fog and northeaster, but surely it would be tempting Providence to undertake any more such rash voyages. He did not admit that Nangotook’s dream had anything to do with his decision, but in reality the dream had not been without influence. Had conditions been favorable, the warning alone would not have turned him back, though it might have made him apprehensive and uneasy, but all the conditions were unfavorable, and common sense and superstition both urged abandonment of the search.

Nangotook emphatically declared that he would have nothing to do with any further search for the island that autumn. He could never look Jean’s father in the face again, he said, if he did not take the boy back safe. The Indian showed such determination that the boys realized nothing could move him from his decision. He would find some means of preventing the others from making another attempt, if they showed any disposition to do so. “He would knock us over the head to keep us quiet, and paddle off with us in the opposite direction, if he could not handle us any other way,” Ronald confided to Jean later.

So, with reluctance, but from a necessity they could not blind their eyes to, the boys postponed the search for the golden island, and turned their thoughts to getting back to the Sault. To strike out directly for the north shore seemed as perilous as seeking the island. Yet they must reach the mainland some way. Nangotook counseled that, instead of traveling to the north, they try to reach the northwest shore, Grande Portage, if possible, by going west. They were now somewhere on the northwest side of Minong. A number of years before, Nangotook, with others of his tribe, had crossed to the island from a point on the shore a little to the north of Grande Portage. They had steered southeast, he said, and making the journey between sunrise and noon, had reached Minong at its lower end. From there they had gone northeast along the shore of the island to a cove with a narrow entrance, where they had obtained a store of copper. The band or bracelet, decorated with a pattern of incised lines, which he wore on his arm, was made from that copper, he said. Returning the same way, they had again crossed safely. The leader of the party had said that his tribe, from times long past, had always taken that route to Minong, because the distance from the shore was shortest that way. If the weather turned bad, the trip from the lower end of the island to the cove, where copper was so plentiful, could be made overland. The Ojibwa advised accordingly that the three try first to make their way along shore, by water if they could, by land if necessary, to the southwest end of the island, and then across to Grande Portage. There they could get a supply of food and ammunition, blankets and other things for the long trip to the Sault, or, if winter came early, they might remain at the Portage until spring. His plan seemed a wise one, and the lads readily agreed to it. There was something cheering in the thought that the trading post at the Grande Portage lay no farther away. Surely there was a good chance of reaching it before winter set in. The Sault de Ste. Marie seemed terribly remote.

XXII

THE INDIAN MINES

Because of the necessity of obtaining food, it was not likely that the trip to the southwest end of Minong could be made continuously, but Nangotook and the boys agreed to start in that direction on the following morning and go as far as they could. They paddled up the bay they had named Pickerel Cove, but the fish were not biting. The head of the cove was separated from the open lake by a narrow bit of land, so they went ashore and carried the canoe across. Jean remarked that there was one advantage in having no food or equipment. Portaging was made easy.

When they reached the lake they found the water rough, but they managed to go on along the shore, and across the mouth of a small bay. Rounding a point beyond, they came to the entrance of another larger bay. After one swift glance about him, Nangotook gave a grunt of satisfaction.

“Know this place,” he said over his shoulder. “Place where copper is. We get some for arrow-*heads.”

The boys were ready to agree to the proposal, especially when the Indian explained that beyond the bay lay a stretch of steep, continuous cliffs, affording no shelter and perilous to skirt in the increasing north wind. Entering the bay was difficult enough, for treacherous reefs and rocks surrounded and extended into its mouth. Nangotook picked the channel wisely, however, and piloted the canoe safely through the dangerous entrance. He had said that copper stones could be picked up from the beaches, so a landing was made on a stretch of gravel protected by the point they had just rounded.

The beach was disappointing. Bits and grains of pure copper were strewn about, both above and below the water line, but they were all so small that a great many would have to be melted together to make one arrowhead. After searching for larger pieces and failing to find them, the Ojibwa shook his head, muttered the one word “Ka-win-ni-shi-shin,” “no good,” and turned back to the canoe.

Jean and Ronald followed him, and they paddled along the beach, rounded another point and landed on the other side of it, on the north shore of a little inlet that opened from the large bay and ran at right angles to it. This place was evidently an old camping ground, for bleached and decaying lodge-poles were standing a little back from the shore. Nangotook was sure they were the remains of the wigwam he and his companions had built on his former visit to the island. After examining the ground carefully, he said he did not think any one had camped there since. The summit of the hill, that rose to the north of the camping ground, had been a good place for hares, he added. He would go and set some snares, while the boys fished.

The lads were disappointed at not being shown at once the rich stores of copper that Nangotook had led them to believe were to be found in this place, but food was always a necessity. When the canoe had been overturned in the surf, they had saved the gun and one bow, but they had no ammunition and no arrows. So they went to fishing cheerfully enough. By the time the Indian returned from setting his snares, they had caught two small lake trout. They cleaned and cooked their catch, but to their surprise Nangotook refused to touch the food. He did not want anything to eat, he said.

After the meal, the three took to the canoe and went on up the bay. It proved to be a long and narrow cove, which cut at an angle through alternating wooded ridges and valleys. The long bays they had visited before had lain between ridges, that stretched parallel with the waters, but this one occupied a break in the hills, as if it had been cut through them. Landing on the west side, the Indian led the boys up a thickly forested ridge. As they neared the top, Jean caught sight of something that aroused his interest. He turned from Nangotook’s trail, and began pushing through a thicket. Suddenly he gave a sharp cry and disappeared. Ronald, who was only a few paces ahead of his friend, turned back at once. Making his way through the underbrush more cautiously than Jean had done, Ronald found himself balancing on the very edge of a deep hole. At the bottom Jean was just picking himself up, more surprised than hurt.

“Tonnerre,” he exclaimed indignantly, “who would have looked for such a pit on the side of a hill? I was going along all right, and then, all of a sudden, I was down here.”

“You are in too much haste to dig for the red metal, little brother,” Nangotook called to him. The Indian had reached the edge of the hole almost as quickly as Ronald, and stood grinning down on Jean.

“What do you mean by that, Etienne?” the lad answered, as he began to climb up the steep and ragged slope. “What has digging for copper to do with my falling into this pit?”

The Ojibwa made no answer until Jean had reached the top. Then with a gesture that embraced the hole and its sides, he asked abruptly: “What think my brothers of this place?”

Puzzled by his question, the boys glanced around. The pit was roughly oval in shape, and perhaps thirty feet deep. Its steep sides were of rock, bare in some places, in others clothed with bushes and moss. In the bottom grew a clump of good sized birch trees, that partly concealed the opposite side of the depression.

“’Tis a queer looking hole to be found on the side of a hill as Jean says,” Ronald remarked, as his eyes took in the details. “It looks almost as if it had been dug by the hand of man.”

“And so it was,” Nangotook replied, “by the hand of man or manito, I know not which. This is one of the pits where, many winters ago, my people took out the red metal that the white man calls copper.”

“Do you mean this is a savage mine?” cried Jean excitedly. “Surely no one has worked it for years. See how the trees and bushes have covered it.”

“That is true, little brother. I can show you many such holes on the hills around this inlet of the waters, and I know of but one where copper has been taken out either in my time or in my father’s. They are very old, these holes, and no one knows surely who first made them. There is a tale that they were dug by the manitos of the island. One of my people, many winters ago, did a service to the manitos, and in return they showed him how to break up the rock and take out the red metal. Then they gave to him and to those who should come after him the right to carry it away. The good fathers say that such tales are not true, but I know not. This I know, only a certain brotherhood of my people has the privilege of breaking off the copper, though any one may gather the pieces that lie about the shores. Of that brotherhood I am a member.”

It occurred to Jean to wonder what the manitos, if there were such beings, would think of Nangotook’s bringing to the copper mines two white men, who according to the Indian opinion had no right whatever to touch the metal. But he did not put his thought into words. If the idea had not occurred to Nangotook, the lad certainly did not wish to put it into his head. Instead he asked: “But how do your people work these mines without tools?”

The Ojibwa picked up from the edge of the pit a smooth, rounded boulder and handed it to Jean. It was hard and heavy, weighing about ten pounds. “This is one of the tools,” he remarked briefly.

“You make game of us,” Jean retorted. “How can you mine copper by means of a stone like this?”

“That I will show you to-morrow.”

“To-morrow?” cried Ronald. “Why wait so long, when we need copper for our arrowheads? Isn’t there some place about here where we can dig out or pick up enough at once, so we can be on our way to-morrow?”

The Indian shook his head. “Pieces on the shore all little and no good,” he said. “I will show you more holes like this. Then we go back to camp. I will make ready, and to-morrow we come again for copper.”

The boys knew from his tone that he had made up his mind, and that argument would be of no use whatever, so they followed him silently around the edge of the pit. He led them up the ridge and across the summit, calling their attention to other holes, varying in size and depth. Many were mere shallow depressions almost filled with soil, and all were more or less overgrown with trees and bushes. The boys would not have recognized most of these places as ancient mines, if Nangotook had not pointed them out. In some of them grew spruces of a height and girth to prove that the pits had not been mined for at least a hundred, perhaps several hundred, years. Round boulders, more or less embedded in earth and leaf mold, showed here and there among the underbrush, and the boys dug up several to examine them. They found them all of the same hard, dark stone. Many were broken and chipped, and the lads concluded that they must have been used as hammers to break up the rock.

The pits seemed to run in rows across the ridge top, following veins of metal, and the boys marveled at the patient labor that had been spent on them. With the primitive tools the savages had used, many, many years must have been consumed in excavating the holes, especially if, as Nangotook had said, mining operations had been confined to some one brotherhood or society of medicine men. It seemed unlikely that even the chosen clan had ever spent all of its time in mining. Probably its members only visited the island occasionally and stayed for a few days or weeks, taking out a little of the metal and carrying it away in their canoes. Utensils and ornaments of copper were not uncommon among the Indians, and the metal must have been much more in demand before the white man introduced iron kettles and steel knives.

The explorers did not go down the other side of the ridge, which was steep and abrupt, but turned back and descended the more gradual slope they had come up, finding old pits most of the way to the base. The place was of great interest to the boys and they were reluctant to leave it, but Nangotook seemed to have some urgent reason for getting back to camp. When they arrived there, he borrowed the knife he had given to Ronald, saying he wanted to make something, and then told the lads that he wished to be left alone and that they had better go fish.

Understanding that his preparations for mining, whatever they might be, were of some secret nature, connected undoubtedly with the superstitions and ritual of the mining clan, Ronald and Jean launched the canoe again and paddled up the cove. Their fishing was successful, and, after they had caught enough for supper and breakfast, they decided to explore the cove to its head. A little beyond the place where they had landed with Nangotook, Jean called Ronald’s attention to a big, white-headed eagle perched on a dead limb of a tall, isolated pine near the shore. While they were watching the bird, it suddenly spread its great wings, left its perch and sailed away. As the boys drew near the spot, they could see, far up in the tall tree, a solid mass of something. “An eagle’s nest,” cried Ronald. “I never had a good look at one.” And he turned the canoe towards shore.

“There will be no young. They have flown long ere this,” Jean answered, “and the nest is only a collection of sticks.”

“I’m going to have a look at it though,” was Ronald’s reply. And he did, climbing at least fifty feet up the tall pine to examine the nest of sticks and moss. He found it to be five feet or more across the top and at least as many deep, and he guessed from its construction that it had been used for several years, additions having been built on every year. Before he descended, he took a long look from his high perch over water, shore and woods. As he glanced about, his eye was arrested by something that surprised him greatly. From a clump of birches at the foot of a slope across the cove, a slender thread of smoke was ascending. It was a very faint wisp of white, as if from a small, clear flamed cooking fire, but the lad’s eyes were keen and he was sure he could not be deceived. As soon as he had made certain that it was really smoke he saw, he descended quickly and told Jean of the discovery.