BRIMSTONE AND FEATHERS
While they talked, the three drenched and shivering castaways walked
briskly up the beach, through a broad belt of golden-green moss,
crossed a little stream of fresh water, from which they drank eagerly,
and finally reached a wind-swept plateau overlooking both the sea and
the mad waters of Krenitzin Strait. Here they found the ruins of many
ancient dwellings huddled closely together, and marking the site of a
once populous Aleutian settlement. Although the mate and the two lads
knew that Oonimak Island had not been inhabited for many years, they
could not help expecting to see human forms emerge from some of the
ancient dwellings, and fancying that in the shriek of the wind over the
roofless structures they heard despairing human voices.
Phil and Serge had never been there before, but Jalap Coombs had,
though only in the night-time, and he pointed out the ruin that stood
nearest the beach as the one containing the cache of seal-skins.
They did not visit it, but searched among the others for one suited
to their purpose. At length they found an old barrabkie, or primitive
Aleut hut, three walls of which were still standing, though the other
wall and the roof had fallen in, filling the interior with a confused
mass of rubbish.
“My! what a dismal-looking place!” exclaimed Phil, with a shiver. “If
it wasn’t for this terrible wind that seems to blow right through me,
I’d rather take my chances outside.”
“Wait till we get through with it, lad, afore ye pass jedgment,” said
Jalap Coombs. “I never see a place yet so dismal but what a couple
of live Yankees like me and you, one of which is likewise a subjeck,
couldn’t knock the dismalness out of. Now, Serge, my boy, ef ye’ll only
go ahead with that fire scheme of your’n, the rest of us’ll overhaul
this shebang, and see ef we can’t make it a little more ship-shape.”
So Serge departed on his self-imposed mission, while the others began a
vigorous cleaning out of the old barrabkie.
The floor of this ancient habitation, which was of the same style as
those built by many Aleuts of to-day, was of hard-packed earth, and
was sunk about four feet below the level of the surrounding surface. A
stout frame of whale ribs standing about six feet high had been erected
and enclosed in a wall two feet thick of tough, peaty sods. This in
turn had been protected by an outer wall of loose rocks, while the
whole had at one time been roofed with whalebone rafters and a thick
thatch of the heavy sedge-grass that grows on all those islands.
For an hour Phil and the mate worked like beavers to clear this place
of its ruinous litter. Then they returned to the beach and brought
up everything that had been saved from the wrecked boat, including,
of course, its sail. This with great difficulty, on account of the
high wind, they fashioned into a sort of a tent roof, supported by
oars, over one end of the barrabkie. This being finished to their
satisfaction, the mate went to the beach for drift-wood in anticipation
of their promised fire, while Phil gathered a quantity of sphagnum
moss, which he spread thickly over the earthen floor of their shelter.
While the latter was wondering what he should do next, and what had
become of Serge, and if any one else had ever been so hungry as he
without the slightest prospect of supper, Jalap Coombs appeared
staggering beneath an immense load of drift-wood, and greatly excited.
“Come, lad,” he cried, as he seized the long-handled steel gaff, “let’s
go fishing. We may have to eat ’em raw, for I don’t see any sign of
Serge or his fire. But even that’ll be better than starving.”
“Fishing for what?” called out Phil, as he hurried after his companion.
“Salmon!” shouted back the mate. “They’re running in the strait.”
Now Phil had seen salmon-fishing in Canada, where after hours of
wading and patient labor an occasional fish had been lured with a fly,
and finally hooked. Then, after a protracted struggle, in which the
angler had displayed infinite skill and patience, the fish had either
escaped or been brought within reach of a gaff. With this as his sole
experience in salmon-fishing, he could not help thinking that Jalap
Coombs must be crazy to fancy that without rod, line, reel, fly, or
hook he was going to capture one of the wariest and gamest of fish with
a gaff.
Nevertheless, that is just what our young hunter did see done. He also
saw another sight that filled him with wonder. It was a stream of
fresh-water flowing into Krenitzin Strait, and filled from bank to bank
with salmon, thousands and tens of thousands of them leaping, crowding
each other almost to suffocation, and eagerly working their way up
against the swift current to their spawning-beds some miles inland.
In these beds they had been born, and to them they returned as surely
as came the seasons themselves. It is so with every Alaskan river and
stream, from the mighty Yukon southward. Every summer sees them swarm
with uncounted myriads of this noble fish. Millions are caught for
canneries and salteries, whence they are shipped to all parts of the
world, and by the natives, who thus obtain their chief food supply for
the ensuing year, while millions more are never even seen by man.
Phil had known of canned salmon, but had an idea that they came only
from the Columbia River. He had never imagined that in far-away Alaska
these splendid fish outnumbered those of the mighty Oregon stream a
thousand to one. And he had just now been wondering if Jalap Coombs
could catch one with a gaff! Had even laughed at the idea! Now he
smiled as he reflected on his own previous ignorance concerning salmon
and their ways. Why, he could catch them with his hands if he cared to
go into the water; while to hook out any required number with a gaff
was as simple as catching oysters with a rake.
Within three minutes the mate had secured two fine fish, weighing
between ten and twenty pounds each. Then he and Phil went a short
distance down the beach, and inside of fifteen minutes more had
captured half a dozen great paper-shelled crabs, each as large as a
soup-plate. Phil also filled his pockets with mussels, and laden with
this abundant supply of food they again turned their steps towards the
barrabkie.
As they approached it they were overjoyed to see a thin column of smoke
rising above its low walls.
“Hurrah!” shouted Phil. “Serge has got a fire sure enough. But what a
horrible, vile, dreadful smell! What can it be? Phew!”
“Smells like burning feathers,” said Jalap Coombs. “Wonder who’s
fainted?”
Filled with curiosity, they hurried forward, and as they entered the
barrabkie they beheld Serge on his knees before a large flat stone in
one corner. He was bending over it, and blowing with furious energy at
a little bunch of something, from which a dense cloud of smoke and the
most nauseous fumes were issuing.
Hearing the voices of his companions, he shouted joyfully, without
looking up, and hardly pausing in his bellowslike blowing, “I’ve got
it.”
“What?” asked Phil, holding his nose. “The cholera? If so, keep right
on with your fumigating. If not, do take pity on a suffering community,
and feed your flame with leather, or rubber, or bones, or something
else that is sweeter and pleasanter to the smell than the frightful
stuff you are burning.”
Just then the smouldering mass burst into a bright blaze, and Serge
sprang to his feet, jubilant over his success.
“Isn’t it glorious!” he shouted, as he added a few wood shavings to his
blaze. Then lighting a sliver, he thrust it into a previously prepared
pile of small sticks that he had placed directly before the open end of
the tent. These were kindled in a moment. Larger sticks and billets of
wood were carefully added, until in a few minutes more a fine, leaping,
crackling, sparkling, and altogether lovely fire was banishing the last
trace of gloom from the interior of the old barrabkie, and extending
a cheery welcome of glowing warmth to the three castaways, from whose
soaked garments little clouds of steamy fog began to ascend as they
gathered admiringly about it.
At length Serge stood up, and stepped back a pace or two with an
expression of triumphant satisfaction that said as plainly as words,
“Now I am ready for congratulations.” And the others did congratulate
him most heartily. Jalap Coombs said, “I wouldn’t have believed it
could be did ef I hadn’t seen it.”
“It didn’t take seeing to make me believe it,” said Phil. “Smelling
was sufficient. What was the magic compound from which you produced
such a frightful smell, and such satisfactory results?”
“Eider-down and sulphur,” answered Serge, smiling.
“Brimstone _and_ feathers!” shouted Jalap Coombs. “I knowed it. That’s
what old Mis’ Roberson――she that was Kite’s wife, you understand――allus
kep’ on hand for fainting fits. I’ve smelled ’em many a time, and to
this day their parfume carries me back to my happy childhood.”
“It was certainly strong enough to carry one most anywhere,”
interrupted Phil. “But where did you get ’em, old man, and how did you
set ’em afire?”
“I had a long tramp after the sulphur,” replied Serge, “and only found
it in a cañon about three miles back of here, near the foot of the
mountain. As I couldn’t find any dry moss to go with it, I hunted for
feathers as the next-best thing, and was lucky enough to discover an
eider-duck’s nest on the cliffs. Then I came back here and found my
‘fire-stick,’ that flat bit of flint-rock, in one of the old huts,
also my ‘striker,’ that bit of quartz. After that the getting of fire
was simple enough. I spread a layer of eider-down on the flat rock,
sprinkled a little sulphur over it, and pounded the mixture with my
quartz rock until it was set on fire by a spark struck from the flint.”
“Well, if that isn’t one way of getting a fire!” exclaimed Phil. “I
say, Serge, what a wise sort of chap you are, anyway! I am only just
beginning to find it out. Why didn’t you tell us how much you knew back
there in New London?”
“Because the kind of things I know best are only worth knowing in this
country, where I learned them,” replied Serge. “They would not be
appreciated in New London.”
“I suppose not,” said Phil, thoughtfully; “and the kind of things I
have been taught, such as Latin and English literature, don’t seem to
count for much out here. Neither does the thing that I know best of
all seem to be appreciated by the present company. It is that I am as
hungry as sixteen wolves, and want my supper.”
With this startling statement Phil pounced upon an unoffending crab
and thrust him without the slightest compunction into a bed of glowing
coals.