“A barrel of gold!” she whispered. Then, in a hoarse exclamation, “How absurd! And yet, one must dream.”
In the meantime Greta, impelled by memory of a strange vision seen in the cavern of fire, had started out in search of her companion. She found little to guide her on her way. Florence had gone away to the right of their camp. This much she knew; nothing more.
She had not proceeded far before she discovered that the narrow plateau was a bewildering labyrinth of trees, bushes, and rocks. More than this, its surface was as irregular as the face of the deep in time of storm. Here it rose steep as a stairway, there sloped away to end in a stretch flat as a floor.
“Never find her in such a place,” she grumbled.
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!”