The Isle of Retribution

The story naturally falls into two parts. The first deals with a wasteful young American who is induced to take charge of a trading expedition to the Aleutian Islands. He hopes to exchange silk dresses for valuable furs. Together with him go his fiancee, his fiancee's mother and a poor but honest seamstress who is to alter the dresses for the Indian buyers. So far the tale is fantastically improbable. Then, through the hero's intemperate habits, the yacht is wrecked on a lonely island, and the younger members of the party are rescued to become the slaves of an escaped Siberian exile whose mind is diseased through his past sufferings. With almost unbelievable suddenness the hero reforms and becomes a strong man, able to cope with his captor. The descriptions of the wild scenery of the Arctic island, the fight with the wolf, the experiences of the trappers, are all well done and redeem the story from being merely commonplace.—The Goblin, Vol. III, May 1923.