Part 7 (1/2)

CHAPTER VI THE BLUE G.o.d

As Florence returned from her lectures the following afternoon she pa.s.sed across the end of the lagoon.

Once she had found her skate, lost on the previous night, and thrust it into the bag with her books, she glanced up at the ragged giant of a building which lay sleeping there on its blanket of snow. She felt an almost irresistible desire again to enter and roam about its deserted corridors.

Walking to the corner beneath the broken windows, she glanced to the right and left of her, allowed her gaze to sweep the horizon, then, seeing no one who might observe her actions, she sprang upon the edge of the wall, scaled the grating with the agility of a squirrel, tumbled over the upper window sill and found herself once more inside.

In spite of the fact that it was now broad daylight and would be for an hour, she found her heart fluttering painfully. The experiences of the previous night were all too freshly burned on the tissues of her brain.

As she tiptoed down the balcony, then dropped from step to step to the main floor below, the unpleasant sensations left her. She found herself walking, as she had some years before as a child, in the midst of a throng, exclaiming at every newly discovered monster or thing of delicate beauty. The treasures had long since been removed to newer and more magnificent quarters, but the memory of them lingered.

She was wandering along thus absorbed when her foot touched something.

Thinking it but a stray brick or crumbling bit of plaster, she was about to bestow upon it only a pa.s.sing glance when, with a sudden exclamation, she stooped and picked it up.

The thing at first sight appeared to be but a bundle of soiled silk cloth of a peculiar blue tint. Florence knew, however, that it was more than that, for when her toe had struck it, she had thought it some solid object.

With trembling fingers she tore away the silk threads which bound it, to uncover a curious object of blue stone shaped like a short, squat candlestick. Indeed, there were traces of tallow to be seen in the cuplike hollow at the top of it.

”Looks like it might be blue jade,” she told herself. ”If it is, it's worth something--”

The whisper died on her lips. A thought had come to her, one which made her afraid of the gathering darkness, and caused her to hastily thrust the thing into the pocket of her coat and hurry from the building.

That night, after the dinner dishes were washed, Florence, who had been fumbling with something in the corner, suddenly turned out the lights.

Scratching a match, she lighted the half of a candle which she had thrust into the candlestick she had found in the museum.

”Gather round, children,” she said solemnly.

Placing the candle on the floor, she sat down tailor-fas.h.i.+on before it.

”Gather round,” she repeated, ”and you shall hear the tale of the strange blue G.o.d. It is told best while seated in the floor as the Negontisks sit, with legs crossed. It is told best by the dim and flaring light of a candle.”

”Oh! Good!” exclaimed Lucile, dropping down beside her.

”But where did you get the odd candlestick?” asked Marian as she followed Lucile. ”What a strange thing it is; made of some almost transparent blue stone. And see! little faces peer out at you from every angle. It is as if a hundred wicked fairies had been bottled up in it.”

All that Marian had said was true, and even Florence stared at it a long time before she answered:

”Found it in the old museum. Probably left behind when the displays were moved out. I ought to take it down to the new museum and ask them, I guess.”

There was something in Florence's tone which told Lucile that she herself did not believe half she was saying but she did not give voice to those thoughts. Instead she whispered:

”Come now, let us have the story of the blue G.o.d.”

”As the old seaman told it to me,” said Florence, ”it was like this: He had been shanghaied by a whaler captain whose s.h.i.+p was to cruise the coast of Arctic Siberia. So cruel and unjust was this captain that the sailor resolved to escape at the first opportunity. That opportunity came one day when he, with others, had been sent ash.o.r.e on the Asiatic continent somewhere between Korea and Behring Straits.

”Slipping away when no one was looking, he hid on the edge of a rocky cliff until he saw the whaler heave anchor and sail away.

”At first it seemed to him that he had gone from bad to worse; the place appeared to be uninhabited. It was summer, however, and there were solman berries on the tundra and blueberries in the hills. There were an abundance of wild birds' eggs to be gathered on the ledges. The meat of young birds was tender and good; so he fared well enough.