Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1892-05-11


FAR OFF LAND"
gle and gone to cruising on the chartless
ocean of eternity. But there was still
something to live for. With his men he
gathered up great deal Of the timber,
food and cargo that Uttered the shore, but
against the advice Of the old Frenchman
he went out one day to examine the wreck
in the hope Of saving something more.
But his ill luck followed him. A sudden
storm came up and Captain Chappell and
the last of his men went down with their
swamped boat In the bay and never were
seen again.
"You need not excite your Imagination
to conceive the condition of that poor girl,
Cora Chappell-orphaned, as it were, in q
day, made pauper in an hour and sepa-
rated from all the civilized world by ice
barriers that went not down except for q
few brief months every summer; the only
one Of her race within hundreds of miles,
this old Frenchman; Pinson; no white
women within 800 miles, and only the
dwarfed and bestial Eskimo to assure her
that she and her chivalric protector were
not the only people left in q world that
seemed to be all ice and snow and snow
and ice
If Cora Chappell had been permitted a
choice at that time, she would have pre-
ferred to go into the eternal rest beneath
the ice hills that rose above the frozen sea,
under which her father and mother slept.
But she was as noble as she was beauti-
full, and as brave as she was bright. She
saw that her only hope lay in effort, 30 she
set to work to make the old mans snow
covered house brighter and more comforta-
BILE. The effect of woman's hand was
soon visible in old Pinson's house, and he
came to worship the angel who had
wrought the change.
"Then came the long winter, with its
storms its few hours of midday twilight,
it's long hours of night, when the cold
white moon and the darting aurora bore
alis seemed by their strange light to in
tensify the frigid atmosphere and to crys-
tal1ize the ice.
''During that awful winter the Eskimos,
as was their custom, came down to the
bay to hunt for seals through the blow
holes and to be near the old trader. Cora
Chappel1 became interested in them. She
soon acquired their language. She taught
the women to sew and tried to impress
them with the need of cleanliness.
1.-THE little brown children, like fur COW
cred balls, she gathered in the room Mr..
Pinson used for kitchen and she taught
them to read after q fashion, and she
thrilled them with stories of the far OF
lands where fruit and flowers and bright
plumaged birds were to be found every day
in the year. In return for this they told
her OF the ice spirits and Of the snow god
whose breath makes the northern lights.
'"Tbcy called her the Ice Queen, and
knowing that she was the only person who
had survived the wreck, they believed that
she was immortal and could never die like
other people.
"And SO it was that Cora Chappell lived
and worked till my ship called at Pinson's
bay. / was young man of nine and
twenty then, and not bad looking, as your
grandmother over there will tell you. re-
mained at Pinson's for two weeks, and then
sailed for the south. Cora Chappell? Well,
she came with me, and when we reached
Newfoundland we were married, and she
cruised with me, brave heart, in many q
voyage after that.
And 50 you see you are all princes and
princesses; grandchildren Of the Ice Queen. !"
And the gallant old captain rose, stepped
lightly behind her chair, and bending back
the still lovely head with her crown of
SNOW, he kissed hcr.