I
THE ISLE WITH THE GOLDEN SANDS

“My white brother speaks wisdom.”

The two boys were startled. The red-haired one, who had been lying on the ground, scrambled to his feet. The other, a wiry dark-skinned lad, sprang from his seat on a spruce log and seized the newcomer by the hand.

“Etienne, Nangotook,” he cried, “how came you here?”

“Even as you, little brother, over those great waters.” The Indian made a gesture towards the lake, which gleamed between the long point and the island that protected the bay of the Grande Portage from wind and waves. “I have listened to the words of this other white brother and found them good,” he added, with a grave glance at the surprised face of the red-haired boy. “He would deal justly with my people as with his own.”

“That would he, even as I would,” the dark lad exclaimed. “He is my good friend and comrade Ronald Kennedy of Montreal. And this, Ronald,” he added, completing the introduction, “is Nangotook, the Flame, called by the good fathers Etienne, friend of my father and of my own childhood.”

The greetings over, the Indian seated himself on the log beside Jean. “And will my little brother be a trader to steal the wits of the Indian and take his furs away from him?” he asked.

“Not I, Nangotook, unless I can be an honest one and give the trapper and hunter fair return for his pelts. Though,” Jean added more thoughtfully, “I am eager indeed to gain gold, and I know not how it is to be done except through trade with the savages.”

“Gold,” said the Ojibwa thoughtfully. “White men would do all things for gold. Why is my brother Jean in need of it? What could gold give him better than this?” He stretched out his arm with a sweeping gesture that embraced the water, still glowing with the soft light of the afterglow, and the rocky wooded shores.

“It would give back the land and the house on the beautiful St. Lawrence, the house where my father was born,” Jean answered, his face softening. “You know the place, Etienne, and you know how my father loves it. And now, if he had but the money, he could buy it back, but it is a great sum and he has it not.”

The Indian nodded in silence. After a moment, fixing his dark eyes on Jean’s, he said slowly, “How then if some man should lead my brother and his comrade with hair like the maple leaf before it falls, to a place where they can gather much gold and load with it many canoes?”

The two boys stared at him.

“You are making game of us,” cried Jean indignantly.

“Nay, little brother. I will tell you the story.” And the Indian settled himself more comfortably on the log.

“Among my people,” he began, “a tale is told of an island lying far out in the wide waters. On that island is a broad beach of sand, a beach unlike any other, for the sand is of a yellow more bright and shining than the birch leaf when the frost has touched it.”

“Gold?” queried Jean. “I have heard that there is gold on the shores and islands of this lake, but no white man has found it.”

“As the story is told among my people,” Nangotook continued, without heeding the interruption, “many summers ago three braves were driven by the wind on the shore of that island. They loaded their canoe with the sand, and started to paddle away. Then a man, as tall as a pine tree and with a face like the lightning in its fierceness, appeared on the sands and commanded them to bring back the gold. They did not heed, and he waded into the water, and, growing greater and more terrible at every step, gained on them swiftly. Then they were sick with fear, and agreed to return to the land and empty out the yellow sand they had stolen. When not one grain remained in the canoe, the manito of the sands allowed them to go.”

“That is the story of the Island of Yellow Sands,” said Jean, as Nangotook paused. “I recall it now. I heard it in childhood. Many have sought that island, but none has found it. Do you mean that you know where it is and can lead us there?”

The Ojibwa nodded. “My grandfather saw the island once many summers ago, when a storm had driven him far out in the lake. But the wind was wrong and the waves were rolling high on the beach, so he could not land. He was close enough to see the sands gleaming in the sunlight. He knew them for the same as the piece of yellow metal a medicine man of his clan had taken from a Sioux prisoner. The Sioux had bought it from one whose people lived far towards the setting sun. That metal was what the white men call gold, and are always seeking. I heard my grandfather tell the tale while the winter snow whistled around the lodge.”

“And he told you how to reach the island?” asked Ronald. “Why did he not go back and bring away some of the gold?”

“He had no need of the yellow sands, and he feared the manito that was said to guard them.”

“And do not you fear the manito?” Jean questioned.

The Indian shook his head. “I am a Christian,” he said proudly, “and the good fathers have taught me that I need fear no evil spirits, if I remain true in my heart to the great Father above. Then too,” he added in a lower voice, “I have a mighty charm,” his hand touched the breast of his deerskin tunic, “which protects me from all the spirits of the waters and the islands.”

The two lads were not surprised at this strange intermingling of savage superstition and civilized religion. Such a combination did not seem as contradictory to them, in that superstitious age, as it would to a modern boy. Jean merely replied very seriously that he had heard that the golden sands of the island were guarded, not only by the spirit himself, but by gigantic serpents, that came up out of the water, and fierce birds and beasts which, at the command of the manito, attacked the rash man who attempted to land.

At that the Indian smiled and, leaning forward from his log, said in a low voice, “Nay, little brother, many tales are told that are not true. May not the red men wish to keep the white men from the islands of this great water, and so tell them tales to frighten them away? Is it not right that we should keep something to ourselves, not the yellow sands only but the red metal that comes from the Isle Minong? My brother has heard tales of Minong, some white men call it the Isle Royale. Yet I have been there and others with me, and after we had sacrificed to the manito of the island, we carried away pieces of red metal, and no evil befell us.”

“My uncle,” remarked Ronald, “told me of a man he knew, Alexander Henry, once a partner in the Company, and even now connected with it, I believe, who went in search of the Island of Yellow Sands. But when he reached it, there were no golden sands at all, only the bones of dead caribou.”

“He never reached the island,” said Nangotook scornfully. “Those who guided him misled him, and let him think he had been to the right place. The true Island of Yellow Sands is many days’ journey from the island where he landed.”

“And you know where it is?”

“I know in what part of the waters it lies, where to leave the shore and how to head my canoe,” the Ojibwa replied confidently. “If my brothers fear not a hard and dangerous journey, I will take them there. I know not whether the charm I bear will protect them also,” he added more doubtfully.

“We are willing to risk that,” Ronald answered promptly. “We’re not fearing a little danger and hardship, if there is chance of reaching the island with the sands of gold.”

“It is not that we fear to go,” put in Jean, “but how can we find an opportunity? We cannot ask for leave from the fleet, for then we must tell our purpose, and that would never do.”

“No,” Ronald agreed, “we must be keeping our plans secret, so we may be the first to land. Then the gold will be ours by right of discovery. ’Tis not likely we could obtain leave anyway, if we asked for it, whatever our purpose, and – ”

He was interrupted by the Indian, who made a gesture of silence. Glancing about, the boys saw several men in the scarlet caps and sashes of canoemen, approaching along the shore. Nangotook rose from the log.

“To-morrow, after the sun has gone to rest, I will speak to my brothers again,” he said in a low voice. “Let them be at this spot.” Without waiting for a reply, he slipped swiftly and silently away among the trees.

Before the canoemen drew near enough to speak to them, the boys were making their way towards the post. They kept back from the shore, in the dusk of the woods, that they might not have to encounter the newcomers, who appeared to be strangers to them.

Jean Havard and Ronald Kennedy had come to the Grande Portage, on the northwest shore of Lake Superior, as canoemen in the service of the Northwest Fur Company. Ronald’s uncle was a partner in the Company, and the boy had been ambitious to follow the life of the fur-trader. Both he and Jean had found the long trip from the Sault interesting and well worth while, in spite of its hardships and strenuous toil. They were outdoor lads, with a plentiful share of the hardihood and adventurous spirit of the outdoor men of their time. Since reaching the Portage, however, they had begun to question whether they really wished to make fur-trading their life-work. Ronald, especially, an honest, straightforward Scot with a strong sense of fair play, had been sickened and roused to indignation by many of the tales told by men from the north and west who had come to the Portage with their loads of furs. It seemed to the boy that most of the traders cared for nothing but gain and were far from honest in their methods. They boasted of giving liquor to the Indians, stealing their wits away, and obtaining their furs, the earnings of a whole winter’s work and hardship, for next to nothing. To the boys this seemed a miserable, heartless way of doing business. Both were eager for the life of the explorer. They longed to push through the wilderness and see strange lands, but the regular work of the fur-trader, carried on as it was by most of these men, had lost its attractiveness.

Ronald, as well as Jean, was poor and had his own way to make. He knew that his uncle had planned to get him into the Northwest Company’s permanent service. From a practical point of view the opportunity would be a good one. He would have a chance to advance. He might even become some day a member of the Company, and make a fortune. But he hated the idea of being compelled to use the methods which seemed a matter of course to most of the “northmen”. He had been vigorously expressing his disgust with the whole sordid business, when Nangotook had interrupted him. The Indian had made it plain that he had been listening to the boy’s remarks and had approved of them.

The Ojibwa’s extraordinary proposition had put the rights and wrongs of the fur trade quite out of the two lads’ heads for the time being. They were fired with a desire to go in quest of the wonderful island. It might be a mere myth indeed, but they were willing to believe that it was not. Nangotook’s grandfather had seen it, and Jean declared that he had never known Nangotook to lie. In those days, even in the last decade of the eighteenth century, very little was known about the islands of Lake Superior. The great central expanse of the lake was unexplored. Who could tell what wonders it might contain?