The sun went down that evening on a weird northern world. The wind, which had been pressing out of the east all day, had dropped as at some elemental sunset signal; but the great lake, lashed to fury, raced by windrow upon windrow of long, curling “shanty” waves—the terrible seas for which Superior in its wrath is peculiar. Three “mock suns” stood in vertical alignment above the declining orb of day, and the air was filled with a ghostly, brassy light that tinted the wild hills, the forests and the raging sea with its exotic saffron glow.

Nannabijou camp, aglare in the unreal light, its windows flashing like blood-red jewels, stood out against the setting of the sombre mountain ranges like a fantastic painting on the canvas of some mad master. Above the southeastern horizon hung a lowering blackness that presaged the hurricane to come, while up from a hundred lonely bays along the rocky North Shore the flailing waves sent up a thunderous, pounding roar.

From a plateau on Nannabijou Mountain above the beaver dam lake on Solomon Creek, a figure that seemed the genius loci of the fearsome night looked out upon these things. His was a face of evil cunning, dusky almost to blackness except where two red gashes stood out under the black eyes—eyes which alone of all his sinister countenance seemed alive and human. He wore no covering over his long straight black hair save a band of purple which held in place a single eagle’s feather at the back of his head. Round his neck were hung many strings of glistening wolves’ teeth.

Behind the Indian magician were ranged four headmen of the Objibiways, as motionless as he, faces to the setting sun.

For moments they stood thus like statues of bronze, until a lake gull, wheeling with a shrill scream inland, swooped close to their heads. The Medicine Man turned, his gaze sweeping Nannabijou Bay where the great booms of poles lay secure from the assaults of the seas, took in the waterfront where the patrols of police paced back and forward, and travelled to the blackness of the coming storm.

Suddenly he raised his arms aloft and his lips gave utterance to a strange, guttural incantation in which his companions joined—a lugubrious sing-song in the Objibiway tongue. It ended with a leaping, whirling sort of dance. The witch doctor flung out a hand and from it there flew a short cylindrical object that sang through the air like a spent bullet and dropped with a soft “plop” far out in the little lake.

In that cylinder was wrapped the Great Medicine of the North—a charm which once used, the pagan tribes believe, insures the success of any project no matter how beset with difficulties and dangers.

At a low grunting command from the Medicine Man the Indians turned and silently melted into the murk of the forest. And, as they did so, there swept up from the woods a long-drawn, frightful cry that carried far and wide above the surf roar from below.

It was not the call of a timber wolf nor of other beast of the wilderness. In its swiftly rising and falling cadences it was half laughter, half wail; a curious and awesome blending of mockery and lamentations.

The rim of the setting sun flicked out in the gash of the western cloud-banks and starless night dropped over the troubled waters and the sighing woods.

II

The tempest broke over Nannabijou camp in shrieking fury between seven and eight o’clock out of a night of stygian blackness. It came a great gust that screamed and skirled overhead like legions of the damned on a terrestrial rampage. Tents of the Mounties along the waterfront were overthrown by the first blast and pressed flat as before the smash of a giant’s hand. Great trees were bent and twisted until they turned over at the roots or broke at the base like matches.

The rain was flung down with the wind in great drenching splashes that beat through crevices of the windows and doors of the camp buildings in hissing jets of spray. Every path and roadway into the hills was transformed into a miniature torrent racing down to the bay.

It was a night such as mocks the courage of the stouthearted and sends the wonder-fright of children into the beings of men. Every living thing in the camp scuttled to the most convenient shelter, except the patrolling policemen, who maintained their beats like fantastic wraiths of the storm the while their searchlights played feebly into the murk and downpour over the field of pulpwood booms in the bay.

Secure in a stout log cabin, Norman T. Gildersleeve and Artemus Duff sat by a roaring fire in a sheet-iron Queen heater. Duff, twisting his inevitable dead cigar from corner to corner of his mouth, was obviously trying to conceal the nervousness that was upon him. At each succeeding blast of the storm, which seemed to swoop down upon the cabin like a demon bent on pressing it into the face of the earth, and at the intermittent crash of falling timber, he would half start from his chair, his fat cheeks blanching with terror and his chubby knees quaking. Gildersleeve, whose early life had inured him to the savage moods of the North, sat silent, imperturbable, as though engrossed with some irrelevant problem.

Suddenly the millionaire, like one awaking from a doze, straightened in his chair and lit a fresh cigar. “Gad, what a night, Duff,” he mused. “What a hell of a night.” He glanced at his watch. “I wonder what in blazes has become of my man, Lynch?”

“If he’s up there—in this—” Duff waved excitedly in the direction of the hills. “If he’s up there—he’s likely got his—by now.”

“The confounded idiot!” stormed Gildersleeve with unfeeling heat. “He ought to have had sense enough to get out of the timber when he saw what was coming. Even a child would know enough to do that.”

“Maybe when he saw it coming he decided to stay in some safe place until it was over.”

“No—not Lynch. He’s scared plain stiff of the bush at night. For a detective who’s done dirty, risky jobs all over the country he’s the veriest coward in the woods after nightfall. He’d sneak into a king’s bed chamber and steal his private papers for a ten-dollar bill, but he wouldn’t go into the big timber after sun-down for a million.”

“Then—what do you think—could have happened to him?” Duff was glad of any diversion, gruesome or otherwise, that might take his thoughts off the raging of the storm outside.

“It’s hard to say, Duff.” Gildersleeve got up and paced the floor. “He must have met with some accident; twisted an ankle in the windfalls, fallen over a cliff, or else—well, it’s hard to say—”

He stopped in his tracks as a scraping thud resounded at the cabin door.

Duff lurched to his feet as the door sprang open and the bedraggled figure of a man thrust itself across the threshold accompanied by a welter of flying rain that spattered across the floor to the wall beyond.

“Lynch!” gasped Gildersleeve.

“That’s me—least—what’s left—of me,” asserted the newcomer between panting gasps as he crowded the door shut.

He was a wiry-looking little man with a face like a rat; beady eyes back of an insignificant nose, high upper lip and receding chin. He immediately proceeded to divest himself of his reefer and boots and stood up a-drip and steaming by the sheet-iron stove.

“That’s right, Lynch,” approved Gildersleeve, “let your clothes dry on you, and you won’t catch cold. Here, have a bolt of Scotch.” He poured out a stout bracer from a silver pocket-flask into a metal cup and handed it to Lynch who downed it neat at a gulp, his beady eyes glittering. “There,” said Gildersleeve, “that’ll make a new man of you, Lynch. How is it you didn’t strike out for camp before it got dark and the storm came up?”

“Got lost,” explained Lynch. “Didn’t notice it was getting late until it was near sun-down. Tried to make a short cut through the bush to the creek and lost my bearings in that rotten mess. Couldn’t see the sun or a blessed thing to guide me out. Struggled in all kinds of circles through windfalls breast-high and every time I’d stop for breath I’d hear sneaking sounds all round me like things watching for me to fall so they could jump me while I was down.

“Then—then—I heard a horrible yell. No, it wasn’t a yell either; it was like wailing and laughing all mixed up. It made my blood run cold. I can hear it yet.

“Ugh!” He shuddered. “I don’t know which was the worst—floundering round in the windfalls or coming down the trail in the hurricane with deadfalls smashing down in the wind everywhere. I nearly got mine with falling timber a dozen times, and every ten steps or so I’d go flying on my face in the muck. I wouldn’t go through it again for a hundred thousand.”

III

“But you’re safe—it’s all over now,” reminded Gildersleeve handing the detective a cigar. “The question is did you find out anything worth while?”

“I found out something that ought to be worth a whole lot.”

“Good!” urged Gildersleeve. “I told you there was a fifty-dollar bonus in it if you got a line on the North Star’s secret layout and their wireless plant up there. That promise holds.”

“I don’t know what’s up in that devilish place,” remarked Lynch, “but I did find out how they get in and out of the Cup of Nannabijou.”

“What!” Both Gildersleeve and Duff were tense. “It’s a creek-bed that dries up when you touch a button.”

His companions stared blankly as though he had suddenly gone crazy.

“S’help me,” insisted Lynch, “that’s just what it is. I found it out by pure accident. Was poking around in a sort of tunnel that opens out on the rapids of the creek when my foot caught in something, and, in trying to stop myself from falling, I swung up a hand against a piece of rock jutting from the wall. In my business I keep my fingers as sensitive as a combination lock expert. I guess if it hadn’t been for that I wouldn’t have felt that little round hole in the rock. I got out my pocket-flash and examined it. It was only about the size of a nail, drilled into the rock about an inch and a half. I could see then that that knob of rock had been cleverly cemented into a hole in the wall. ‘A’ha,’ thinks I, ‘this is a spring that opens some secret entrance through the rock.’ I wasn’t at all expecting what it really turned out to be. So I gets a match, inserts it in the hole and presses down on it just to see what would happen.

“There was a flash like lightning, and a queer, soft sound like a gong came from up above somewhere. Then in a minute it seemed to me the creek rapids just down the tunnel got awful quiet.

“I went down to investigate, and sure enough there was no water running down, and if it hadn’t been for the wet at the bottom and sides of the channel I wouldn’t have believed there ever had been. I slipped back and pressed the match against the concealed button again. The bell rang and almost right away the water came roaring down like it was before. Now I think that was pretty good scouting for one day.”

“You didn’t try going up the creek bottom to see where it led to,” Gildersleeve pressed him.

“Not much. I up and beat it. Something mighty queer about it all that sort of got my goat, and besides I was scared that bell ringing would bring some one round that might use me rough. I didn’t know it had got so late until I was out in the daylight again.”

“So that’s it,” mused Gildersleeve, “that’s how they get up into the Cup. Well, to-morrow we’ll—” He strode over and stood staring at the circular draft-vent of the little stove.

What he might have said was left unfinished for there came a great crash above the howlings of the storm that made the earth shudder. It was followed by a continuous pounding thunder that grew louder and louder as though the tops had slid from the mountains and were crashing down to the lake. Nearer and more formidable it grew, setting the building a-quiver at each succeeding smash until it seemed to sweep into and through the very heart of the camp.

The three men stood speechless and aghast, staring into each other’s terror-smitten countenances.

IV

Gildersleeve was the first to move. With an inarticulate cry he flung open the door and leaped into the night.

Outside all was pandemonium. With the advent of the new terror the storm had subsided considerably, though rain was still pouring down. Men awakened from their sleep were rushing everywhere through the wet and darkness. There were hysterical shouts and coarse, ugly curses. In another moment scores of lanterns gleamed blearily in the murk and the search-lights of the police sent shafts of light playing up from the waterfront.

Twenty-five feet from the river Gildersleeve found the Mounties holding back the crowd with hoarse commands, their carbines held crosswise before them.

Conjecture ran rife. “Cloud-burst in the hills,” some one cried. And another: “Look, look, the Nannabijou River’s roarin’ full to the top of the banks!”

“The bridge is going!”

There came the wail of great timbers as they were twisted and torn from their places. As Gildersleeve’s eyes became more adjusted to the dim, uncertain light, he saw that the torrent rode almost to the brim of the high banks of the Nannabijou, fully thirty feet above the stream’s normal level. In mad succession on its crest swirled logs, stumps, whole trees and other debris from the hills.

It was a terrifying, majestic sight, this great river moving out like an all-conquering, irresistible host, and carrying captive the things that stood in the way of its might as it swept from the confining hills to the freedom of the lake.

From beyond the mouth of the river, above the din of the storm and the freshet in the hills came a sibilant hissing sound like that when waves break over jagged reefs, only this was intensified a hundred-fold.

Shafts of light from the search-lights were flung over the bay.

“The booms are going out!”

Gildersleeve stood fascinated, dumb before the inevitable. The gorged river flinging itself out into the bay swept over the field of pulpwood an ever-widening tidal wave; then the poles rose through the boiling flood, heaving flat for one instant and the next rolled forward in great jams that again held until the invading torrent, gathering head, swept them before it in tossing, grinding masses.

The unequal struggle lasted but a few brief seconds. Then when the connecting links of the boom timbers beyond gave way the whole field of pulpwood sprang forward with a mighty, grinding roar and crowded out of the bay into the raging lake beyond where wind and wave carried it off in howling triumph.

In less time than it takes to tell the magnificent field, comprising thousands of cords of wood ready for grinding, had vanished all but an insignificant remnant the backwash had flung up on the shores of the bay.

The torrent in the river was gradually subsiding now, but still the crowd hung about in the drenching rain.“What do you think caused it!” some one who had just come up asked of a little knot near Gildersleeve.

“Cloud-burst in the hills most likely,” vouchsafed one of the group.

“Cloud-burst nothing,” derided another. “I could tell you just what happened: The beaver-dam in Solomon Creek has busted and let that lake of water behind it loose.”

“Anyway, it will make more work for the workers,” piped a loose-tongued disciple of Lenin. “We’ll be kept busy salvagin’ them poles up along the shore till the freeze-up comes and all next spring. The North Star won’t let all that good timber go to waste.”

“Salvage!”

The word rang in the brain of Norman T. Gildersleeve like a clang of doom. It meant—it meant that those poles could now never be recovered in time to start the Kam City Mills on the date set by the government.

The crowd was thinning out, but Gildersleeve, soaked to the skin, stood as one in a daze till a police officer came up.

“Costly night’s damage for the North Star Company, sir,” he remarked gravely.

Norman T. Gildersleeve made a strange noise in his throat but no more coherent answer as he stood staring into the blackness over the lake.

“But then they say that timber can be salvaged in due time,” suggested the friendly officer.

“Salvaged—in due time,” echoed the financier vacantly. Then to the policeman’s amazement he let loose a torrent of bitter curses and flung his arms about like a madman.

V

Back at the cabin Duff and Lynch ceased their chatter about the disaster at sight of Gildersleeve’s grim, ghastly face. In silence he made preparations to retire.

Just before he blew out the light, Lynch approached Gildersleeve’s bunk. “Will we be going up into the hills to look over that secret passageway in the morning?” he asked tactlessly.

“You can go where you damned well please—to hell and back, if you like,” came the snarling retort. “Any place will suit me to-morrow—any place outside this cursed country.”

But while Gildersleeve cursed the north country, as others who have failed to conquer its moods and its tremendous difficulties have cursed it, he sensed in this last disaster the hand of an agency that was not the elements—an inscrutable, sinister agency that had thwarted, blocked and bankrupted his projects on the North Shore for two decades—an agency that, however exotic the idea might seem, had in its destructive designs the coordination of the tempest.

As he tossed sleepless between the grey blankets his thoughts kept converging on something Lynch had given utterance to in the story of his flight down Nannabijou Mountain—something that faintly but insistently brought up black memories out of his early youth. He tried to think of other things, to laugh it away as a foolish bit of imagination. It was no use—the face of a youth rose before his tortured eyes, a face handsome and boyish, but very dark of skin. It was the eyes in that face—those terrible, great black eyes where he saw mirrored in turn entreaty, despair—then black, black hate.

“Alexander!”

Gildersleeve breathed it in wretched entreaty. His hands involuntarily went upwards as he felt a stinging smash first under the right eye, next under the left. The points where the two tiny scars were stung like fire.

Then he heard. . . . Great God, he heard out in the night somewhere a cry that made his soul quake.

Gildersleeve sprang from his bunk. With hands that trembled he lit the lamp and shook Lynch into wakefulness.

“Lynch,” he demanded, “that cry you heard up in the hills when you were coming down—just what was it like?”

The detective sat up blinking. “I’m not likely ever to forget it, Mr. Gildersleeve,” he replied. “It was a howl that was half laughter, half wail—like the cry of a loon.”

Gildersleeve started back a-tremble. “And—and did you see anything, Lynch?”

“S’help me the only living thing I saw I didn’t want to tell you of before—you wouldn’t believe it. As heaven is my judge, the thing that gave that terrible cry was in the shape of a man.”

“That’s all I wanted to know, Lynch.”

Gildersleeve stumbled back to his bunk leaving the light burning. Between teeth that chattered he mumbled to himself:—

“The cry of a loon—from a man. At last—at last, I understand.”