BELOVED ONES,

It's now evening of our second day in this mountain prison. No relief has come, though we continue to expect it every hour. We can't believe that Ed does not know by this time that we are lost. This afternoon we saw a boat, a tiny speck it looked, on the distant lake. We watched it as it made three trips from the head of the lake to the very spot where we saw the fire. At first we were sure it was bringing us help, but as the hours passed by we gave that up and with it goes the hope that Dave got out alive.

And twice to-day we heard voices on some trail over the mountains at our left. We called and called until we could n't utter another sound, but the wind which brought the voices so clearly to us did n't carry ours back, and we had to hear the laughter die away in the distance. Those happy people did n't need to have us hear them, but we needed so desperately to have them hear us! How hope did flare when we heard them — only to up perish as the hours passed, leaving us more lonely and discouraged than before.

We don't understand why no help comes. If there is none by to-morrow we must take any risks in making every effort to get out.

We set up a sort of housekeeping today. The sun worked its way around to our corner for a while this morning and was hot enough for us to shed sweaters and scarfs and make ourselves quite comfortable. Harry had some fishline in his pack that he stretched between two of our sticks for a clothesline, so we changed our clothes throughout and hung them up to dry. The fresh ones from our packs did feel so good! Then we cleared the snow off the ledge that had been so disagreeably damp, and with pieces of rock even paved the part of the snow bank we

rested our feet on. But most refreshing of all were the snow baths. You've no idea until you try it how sudsy snow and soap can be!

Father has been splendid. He has told us stories constantly all day and we've sung all the songs we know. And we've prayed, Boy—I did n't think I could. You know it's five years since I last prayed. I thought I was so wise and I reasoned there was no God. So after five years of ignoring Him it didn't seem sporting to cry for help now. I told this to Father. We've been talking since and I know how far off I've been.

It helps me so to write to you. It brings you near and I need you so. I shall keep on writing until it's all over or I come back to you.

It's seven o'clock now and we're lying on the rocks praying for help.

MY DEAREST ONES,—

Monday Morning July 13, 1925

Now I can write you all that has happened in the last day and two nights. Four of the five of us who started out so gayly from this very chalet in that other era which was four days ago are back here again. Dave is still missing and we've a day of suspense before us while a second rescue party works to get him. They give us no hope, however.

Oh, but it's been a frightful experience! I know that all my life I shall see the picture of Dave crashing over that cliff, nor will the long, dreary hours of waiting soon be forgotten.

Half an hour after I was writing you on Saturday evening Mrs. M— and I started to find a way out. Her boy had lost his nerve, it's hardly to be wondered at, and could n't be relied on, so Father had to stay with him. The situation there was becoming more perilous every hour, as the snow

was melting away from the mountain wall, opening up a crevasse which made staying there impossible.

We were lying there cold and wet and so tired, as close as possible to keep ourselves warm. Father and I were next each other and I could feel every muscle and fibre in him shaking and trembling from the cold. That settled it for me. I knew that twenty-eight years could stand this exposure and fatigue, but that sixty-three could not, in spite of years of mountain climbing. So Mrs. M- and I talked it over once more and decided to try again that night while there still was light. Father rather reluctantly consented, as he did n't want us to take such risk alone and yet someone had to stay with the boy.

So we set out, and after three hours of the most desperate climbing we conquered that beast of a mountain. Mrs. M- would boost me from behind until I could get a foothold and pull her up from above. For a considerable stretch we crawled along a narrow ledge on our hands and knees, digging into the slightest projection with our finger nails. The ledge sloped upward and we were making some progress when suddenly it ended and we found ourselves on a far more perilous place than the rock ledge where we left the others. For the ice wall opposite was higher than our heads above us, entirely cutting us off from the valley and possible help from there. We could not scale the wall; we could not go back down that steep, winding ledge; we could not stay so we had to go on. For a dizzy space we hitched ourselves along with our backs to the mountain, bracing our feet against the snow opposite, which all along there had melted away from the rock, leaving a space that was bottomless below us. Finally we came to a small waterfall that had worn away steps in the rock, by which we

climbed to safety. The chief ranger said afterward, 'The arms of God must surely have been around those two women.' Furthermore he told Father that if we had waited until morning we never could have got out, as a part of the ice wall on which we had to depend had broken off during the night. I do believe in miracles now, my dear, for I have lived one.

I can't tell you the thoughts that flashed through my mind as we stood once more on the mountain topfree! It was Life after Death. The air seemed milder, the wind blew softer, weariness fell away, and strength returned to mind and body. For it was not I who crawled out that narrow way, but some primitive being in me that goaded me on and on, supplying strength I did not possess.

We went at once to a saddle between the mountains-a spot we'd been watching from the ledge- and called down to Father and Harry to let them see that both of us had reached the top. Then, as we were above timber line, we crawled down the mountain side until we found a patch of scrub pine, and there we built a fire.

How I wish I might describe that night to you. Oh, the beauty of it and the silence of it! Not a sound except the music of dozens of waterfalls emptying into Avalanche Lake far, far below. I know I shall never forget the sight - the mighty glacier lying so calm, so cold, so treacherous way down at our feet, the dignity of the snow caps all about us, and the magnificence of the stars above. Billy, I've known Mrs. M only one week, but we have had that night together, which means more than a lifetime of acquaintanceship with most people. We built a fire together and lay in each other's arms while we waited for the moon to come up that we might have light enough to go on. At three o'clock

we were on our way, working slowly down the slippery shale until we dropped on to the glacier below.

You should have seen us crossing the glacier. Mrs. M- had lost her stick, so I went ahead to sound each step, as crevasses open up very unexpectedly. She followed — holding one end of a pink silk shirt while I held on to the other. It must have been quite a sight! We had to hurry, as we needed to get back to the chalet before the guides and rangers got out on the trails. We picked up the trail we had made just three days before. What thoughts we had! Both Father's and Dave's shoes were peculiarly hobbed, and often we were able to pick out the footprint of one or the other. And evidently a bear had followed our trail, for we traced his tracks all the way across in just the path we had made before.

At six-thirty we reached here, and from then on it's a tale of the utmost kindness. There was such speedy response from the chief ranger, seven miles away, who immediately organized parties for Dave and for those left on the cliff; such thoughtfulness from everyone here at the chalet, from the guests who brought us fresh clothing to the waitresses who dried and oiled our shoes and packed lunches for us to take back to the others.

In a couple of hours the rangers came and we went back with them, so that no time would be lost in finding the place. They were superb! We skimmed across the glacier we had had to cross with such caution, as they knew all the tricky places. And those men climb mountains as easily as they might cross prairies!

I can't tell you the thrill that came through me when again we stood on the mountain top and the leader of the party fired the shots that told our dear ones waiting below that help was at hand. We had listened, at first with

such eagerness and then with such despair, for just that signal!

Mrs. M and I waited there while the men went down with ropes for Father and Harry. Later they tried to get down into the crevasse where we know Dave must be. But they had n't the right equipment, so marked the spot for the other party. They could only see on a rocky ledge about forty feet down what they thought must be his kodak and a battered tin cup.

When Father joined me once more he breathed into my ear, 'Thank God.' It was a prayer. And he was right.

It's all too fresh for us to unravel now - why it all had to be; why such a man as Dave had to lose his life, as he must have. But out of the jumbled thoughts that confuse my mind these things stand out clearly: that I owe my life from now on to the Power that guided me back to this spot, and that I must somehow carry on for Dave, who was doing such splendid things while he lived.

--

To return without him is unspeakably sad; to see around us chairs on which he sat, the table round which we all ate that last breakfast together, the step just at my feet on which we sat and talked the evening before. This has hurt Father cruelly. Just how cruelly no one - not even I, who am closest to him in this experience — will ever know. We don't leave each other's side, and though he does n't speak, I know. There are no tears in his eyes, but now and then deep from within him there comes a great dry sob, and I know his heart is breaking. Father has known Dave from boyhood, you know, and they have hiked many a trail in the mountains before.

Billy, dear, I'm tired now, so I'll not write any more. It has been an infinite relief to write this all out to you, and you'll never know how thankful I am to post it to you myself.

A DECADE before my birth, and a few miles south of the rope spinnery where I scanned the sea for years, Jens Peter Jacobsen wrote: 'She should be naked like a surge, and the wild beauty of the ocean must haunt within her. There must be some of the summer sea's phosphorescence over her skin, some of the black, entangled horror of the seaweed forests in her hair. Yes, in her eyes the thousand colors of water must go and come in gleaming changes; her pale breast must be cool with a sensuous freshness; the billows murmur their cradle song through all her curves, and there is the suction of the Maelstrom in her kiss, and the bursting softness of the surf in her arms' embrace.' He wrote the truth, for the mermaid and the sea are one.

While I turned the wooden wheel, the sea lured me incessantly. At night in the sailor inn the tales of the sailors enticed me. At school the ships in the harbor coaxed me the forenoon long. On Sundays I would borrow a dory from a fisherman and rig it up with mast and lateen sail. And I would skip out of the harbor and cruise along the coast, through the surf and over the sand bars, from dawn to dusk. And the sea bewitched me as a charming woman would a man. I was in love with the sea, mad in my reveries of the sea, reckless in my escapades on the sea.

I have often wondered that I never drowned.

Once I went to sea in my dory north of the harbor to sail home a girl who had sprained her ankle during a hike with a group of her school friends. Her name was Marie. A squall came up and drove us seaward. And the squall threw us upon Rocky Dike, where the fishermen went to their grave. Thousands of sea birds were resting upon the huge bowlders that encircled Rocky Dike. In the northern dusk the reef appeared like a funeral wreath thrown down from Heaven.

We kept in shelter behind a bowlder and pulled the dory with us. A gull, flying up from a nest, awoke myriads of birds, which in a moment thickened the air and magnified the roar of wind and breakers. Marie put her hand down in the nest and caressed the downy things that crouched together there. And they opened their beaks and wrestled with her fingers. Then the mother came darting. Above rolled billows of birds, with motions, colors, sounds, like a gale sweeping over the sea. They swung so near that their wings whipped our cheeks. 'I want to go home,' Marie cried. 'I want my mother.' But a surge answered her by carrying a log against the rock, crushing the log in two like a piece of straw.

Her agile body played hide and seek

within my greenish oilskin suit. Wide sea boots sheltered her feet. And she was hooded by a sombre sou'wester. Her lips puckered in wistful reveries. Her eyelashes jutted out in a spray of delicate beauty. She whisked a drop of sea foam from her cheek, assuring herself that it was not a tear. She closed her eyes and snuggled up to me. And I built her a fire of tarred driftwood. Its yellow tongues paled her face against the tar smoke like alabaster on black velvet. Her pupils grew and dilated with the flaring flames. The live coals warmed my blood, until I gasped with an ecstasy that took my breath away. Darkness shrouded us. The glow of coals threw a crimson blush into Marie's face. An ember flew up, uncertain as a butterfly alighting on a flower. It swayed with the air current and fell upon her hand, which I was holding. The ember threw a searchlight into her sleeve. We were stunned and not able to move a finger. Then a shriek and a jerk-and I sat empty-handed.

Two nights later we rowed safely into the harbor in my dory, while the church bells tolled her death. For she was the wealthy grocer's daughter.

One Sunday I was lying in the dying dune grass of early fall, drying my naked body in the afternoon sun and gazing at the sea. Such fawning homage did I pay the sea before I stirred that the wealthy Baron, the very ruler of the good land beyond the dunes, stole upon me on his thoroughbred and touched his whip lightly to my buttocks. 'Kid!' he said. 'Give my mare a swim. It'll do her good.'

With a single leap I mounted the horse, straddling her girth and neck like a jockey, pressing my face into her mane, and with hissing delight inhaling her odor. I jerked my heels into her flanks, annoyed by her timidity in getting off. She slid down the fallow

bluff, wincing at the fungus-covered flotsam of the shore. Fear drove a vapor from her body and made her heart thump through her shoulders and withers. She neighed with cutting dismay, like the siren of a ship in distress.

I lashed her hip with the flat of my palm. In springy curvets she vaulted through the shallow water, prancing through seashells, dipping her feet in shoals of gamboling shrimps and minnows, until the seaweed brushed her thighs and loins. She whinnied like a cooing dove, turned her head in the air, sniffed the breeze into her nostrils, and stopped. I swung a fist into her ribs, until she bounced and rebounded through purple sea verdure, through a sea of depth and motion. Her nose, poking into the peak of the swell, snatched stridulous whiffs of air. And she voiced her fears with a snort.

I clung to her neck. My hand clasped her windpipe; my fingers bored themselves into her jugular vein. I jerked my heels into her flanks. My right hand held the reins. Out into rough water I steered her. Between my own grunts and savage yells I swallowed and spat up the eddies, and in my wild delight forgot the danger. Dusk enveloped us in its gray, mongrel shadow when we began to sink. The horse listed, sank, came up, and sank again. Once more she reached the surface, but her head and neck remained submerged. She rolled over on her side languidly. Luckily we struck a sand bar, where she revived. I jerked her nose to the surface with the reins and cheered her. Then for the first time did I realize how far out we were.

II

I was twelve when I climbed aboard a Swedish schooner that was ready to leave the harbor. I crawled in hiding