The largest cage held a snowy owl, and when Karen spoke to him he ruffled up his feathers and rolled his head from side to side, his great golden eyes staring at her without blinking.
"He can"t see when the sun shines," Karen explained; "but he seems to know my voice."
"What a good time he must have in the long winter nights, when he can see all the time," said Gerda. "Where did you get him?"
"Father found him in the woods with a broken wing; but he is nearly well now, and I shall soon set him free," Karen told her.
"And here is a woodp.e.c.k.e.r, and a cuckoo, and a magpie," said Gerda, looking into the cages.
"Yes," said Karen, "and last year I had an eider-duck, and I often have sea-gulls. Sometimes, when there is a big storm, the gulls are blown against the windows of the lighthouse and are hurt. I find them on the rocks in the morning with a broken leg or wing, and then I put them in a cage and take care of them until they can fly away. Father and I call this the Sea-gull Light."
"What do you do with the birds in the winter?" asked Gerda.
"The lighthouse is closed as soon as the Gulf freezes over, and then we go to live on the mainland," Karen replied. "One of my brothers built a bird-house near our barn, and if my birds are not strong enough to fly away, Father lets me take them with me in the cages, and I feed them all winter with crumbs and grain."
"How many brothers have you?"
"There are five, but they are all much older than I am. They work in the woods in the winter, cutting out logs or making tar; and in the summer they go off on fishing trips. I don"t see them very often."
"We met a great many vessels loaded with lumber on our way up the coast,"
said Gerda, "and, wherever we stopped, the wharves were covered with great piles of lumber, and barrels and barrels of tar."
"The lumber vessels sail past this island all summer," said Karen. "I often wonder where they go, and what becomes of all the lumber they carry. There is a sawmill near our house on the sh.o.r.e and it whirrs and saws all day long."
"There were sawmills all along the coast," said Gerda. "Birger and I began to count them, and then there were so many other things to see that we forgot to count."
Karen stooped down to open the door of the magpie"s cage, and he hopped out and began picking up the grain which she held in her hand for him. "I think this magpie is going to stay with me," she said. "He is very tame and I often let him out of the cage. Mother says he will bring me good luck," she added rather wistfully.
"It must be lonely for you here, with only the birds to play with," said Gerda. "You must be glad when the time comes to live on sh.o.r.e and go to school again."
For answer, Karen looked at her crutch. "I can"t go to school," she said soberly; "but my brothers taught me to read and write, and Mother has a piano which I can play a little."
Then her face lighted up with a cheery smile. "When your box came this spring, it was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me.
Everything in it gave me something new to think about. I often think how pretty the streets of Stockholm must look, with all the little girls going about in rainbow skirts, and none of them having to walk with a crutch."
"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Gerda quickly; "it is not often that you see a rainbow skirt in Stockholm. I never wear one there."
Karen looked surprised. "Where do you wear it?" she asked.
Then Gerda told about her summer home in Rattvik. "It is on Lake Siljan, in the central part of Sweden, in a province that is called Dalarne,"
she explained. "It is a very old-fashioned place, and the people still wear the costumes which were worn hundreds of years ago."
A wistful look had stolen into Karen"s face as she listened. "I suppose there are ever so many children in Rattvik," she said.
"Oh, yes," answered Gerda. "We play together every day, and go to church on Sundays; and sometimes I help to row the Sunday boat."
"What is the Sunday boat?" was Karen"s next question.
"There are several parishes in Rattvik, and many of the people live so far away from the church that they row across the lake together in a long boat which is called the Sunday boat," Gerda told her.
"And do you have girl friends in Stockholm?" asked Karen, envying this Gerda who came and went from city to country so easily.
"Yes, indeed," answered Gerda. Then she smiled and said shyly, "I wish you would be my friend, too. When I go home I can write to you."
Karen"s face flushed with pleasure. "Oh, will you?" she cried. "But there will be so little for me to write to you," she added soberly. "After the snow comes, and my brothers have all gone into the woods for the winter, there are weeks at a time when I never see any one but my father and mother."
"You can tell me all about your birds," Gerda suggested; "and the way the moon shines on the long stretches of snow; and about the animals that creep out from the woods sometimes and sniff around your door. And I will tell you about my school, and the parties I have with my friends. And I will send you some new music to play on the piano."
But before they could say anything more, Lieutenant Ekman had returned from inspecting the lighthouse with Karen"s father, and was calling to Gerda that it was time for them to start for Lule.
"Good-bye," the two little girls said to each other, and Karen went down to the landing-place to watch the launch steam away.
Gerda stood quietly beside the rail, looking back at the island, long after Karen"s rainbow skirt and the lighthouse had faded from sight.
"I will give you two ore for your thoughts, if they are worth it," her father said at last.
"I was thinking that it will make Karen sad to hear of my good times this winter," Gerda told him.
"She will like to have your letters to think about," replied Lieutenant Ekman cheerfully. Then he pointed to a little town on the sh.o.r.e ahead.
"There is Lule," he said. "You will soon be travelling on the railroad toward Mount Dundret and the midnight sun."
But although Gerda was soon speeding into the mysterious Arctic regions, she could not forget her new friend in the lonely lighthouse.
CHAPTER V
CROSSING THE POLCIRKEL
"Polcirkel, Birger, Polcirkel!" cried Gerda from her side of the car.
"Polcirkel!" shouted Birger in answer, and sprang to Gerda"s seat to look out of the window.
The slow-running little train groaned and creaked; then came to a stop at the tiny station-house on the Arctic Circle.
The twins, their faces smeared with vaseline and veiled in mosquito netting, hurried out of the car and looked around them. Close beside the station rose a great pile of stones, to mark the only spot where a railroad crosses the Arctic Circle. This is the most northerly railroad in the world, and was built by the Swedish government to transport iron ore to the coast, from the mines four miles north of Gellivare.
As the two children climbed to the top of the cairn, Birger said, "This is a wonderful place; is it not, Gerda?"
His sister looked back doubtfully over the immense peat bog through which the train had been travelling, and thought of the swamps and the forests of pine and birch which lay between them and Lule, many miles away on the coast. Then she looked forward toward more peat bogs, swamps and forests that lay between them and Gellivare.
"I suppose it is a wonderful place," she said slowly; "but it seems more wonderful to me that we are here looking at it. Do you remember how it looks on the map in our geography, and how far away it always seemed?"
"Yes," replied her brother, "I always thought there was nothing but ice and snow beyond the Arctic Circle."
"So did I," said Gerda. "I had no idea we should see little farms, and fields of rye, oats and barley, away up here in Lapland. Father says the crops grow faster because the sun shines all day and almost all night, too; and that it is only eight weeks from seed-time to harvest.