LOST AND DRIFTING IN BERING SEA
When Phil Ryder stepped from the bidarrah, or big open boat, in which
he had made the six-mile trip from St. Paul to Walrus Island, and
clambered up over the slippery rocks of the latter, he was nearly
stunned by the volume of sound that ceaselessly rises from it. The
shrieks of myriads of startled sea-fowl, the rapid beating of their
pinions resembling a low roll of thunder, the gruntings, croakings, and
hissings of sitting birds that refused to leave their splotched and
dirt-smeared eggs, the roar of walrus, and the boom of surf, combined
to form a pandemonium of sound at once deafening and distracting.
“How can I spend a night here?” thought Phil; “and what a fool I was to
come.”
He was standing, bewildered by the awful racket, with arms bent above
his head, to defend it from the whizzing flight of clumsy birds that
shot through the air in every direction; two enraged burgomaster gulls,
whose nests his feet were invading, were pecking savagely at his legs,
and he was just meditating a retreat, when some one pulled his sleeve.
Turning, he was amazed to see the sea-lion hunter, who could speak
English, and whom he had left nearly two hours before on Northeast
Point.
As the latter could not make himself heard above the horrible din, he
was pointing to the tiny cove in which lay the bidarrah. There, to
Phil’s greater surprise, he saw his friend Serge Belcofsky fending off
from the rocks a two-holed bidarkie that tossed, light as an egg-shell,
on the heaving waters.
“What on earth brought you here?” he shouted, as soon as he had
scrambled to his comrade’s side.
“You did,” answered Serge. “The _Phoca_ is about to sail, and I’ve come
for you. So step in quick, and let’s be off. The hunter who came with
me is going to stay in your place, and come back in the bidarrah.”
“All right,” replied Phil; “I’m more than willing to leave this beastly
rookery, and more than anxious to start for Sitka. I must have a few
of those eggs, though, for I promised Miss Matthews some for her
collection.”
Within two minutes as many dozen eggs of all sizes and varieties had
been collected and stowed in the after-part of the bidarkie. Phil
slipped into the forward hatch and fastened his kamleika about its
coaming, while Serge assumed his position aft, and made the second
hatch equally water-tight with the hunter’s over-garment which he had
borrowed.
It was nearly dark, and they could see a fog-bank rolling sullenly in
from the southward. Even the native who held their canoe began to grow
apprehensive. “Me fraid you no get,” he said; “mebbe you stay here
better till morning.”
“Oh, we’ll get!” shouted Phil, confidently. “Anyhow, I’d rather run the
risk than to miss our one chance of a passage to Sitka. So shove off,
Serge. Good-bye!”
Serge himself felt somewhat uneasy, but he had come too far and worked
too hard on this errand to incline towards giving up now. Besides, he
also was very anxious to reach Sitka. So he shoved off, and both the
lads began to paddle with long sweeping strokes. In another minute the
arrowy craft had shot away from the roaring islet, and was lost to view
in the gathering gloom.
They had not covered more than a mile before the advancing fog
enveloped them in its soft, moist folds.
“Whe-e-w!” gasped Phil, breathing rapidly from his vigorous paddling.
“Isn’t this smothering?”
“Yes,” replied his companion, “and I’m getting somewhat dubious about
finding St. Paul.”
“Oh, I guess we’ll find it all right. We’ve only got to keep the wind
at our back. It is blowing from the eastward, you know.”
“But this fog came in from the southward.”
“Do you think so? It seemed to me to come from the east with the
breeze.”
“All right,” agreed Serge. “Perhaps it did. I’m not quite sure of my
compass up here. We’ve got to keep on now, at any rate, for we could
never find Walrus again, while we can hardly miss hitting so big a mark
as St. Paul. If we strike either coast we can cruise along it until we
come to the village. I’m afraid, though, we won’t get there in time to
catch the _Phoca_.”
“Oh yes, we will. Captain Matthews isn’t the man to go off and leave us
when he knows we are going to be back some time to-night. You said you
sent word by Ramey, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then he’s sure to wait. What’s his hurry, anyhow?”
“I believe he has word of some sealer poaching in the sea, and is going
to hunt her.”
“My! won’t it be fun to be on the other side of such an affair? I tell
you, we struck big luck when we met the _Phoca_――in fact, I think this
whole cruise, as I look back on it, has been made up of a series of
lucky events, even though we haven’t had the fur-seal’s tooth to help
us.”
So they talked, in disjointed sentences, as well as their rapid
breathing and relative positions would allow, and all the while
wielded their dripping paddles with the energy of young athletes
striving for a prize.
Finally, Phil stopped paddling, and, half turning, said: “Let us listen
a minute, old man. It seems to me we ought to hear the roar of seals on
St. Paul by this time. I’m sure we’ve been an hour on the way.” So the
lads listened intently, but all they heard was the ceaseless roar and
dash of the wind-swept waves.
Under circumstances such as those in which the occupants of the little
bidarkie found themselves, there is no sound more depressing and
awe-inspiring than this, nor one that conveys more clearly an idea of
the immensity and terror of oceans. When it is accompanied by darkness
and fog, the effect is so heightened as to be wellnigh unbearable.
As our lads listened to it and felt the chill breath of the wind-driven
mist on their cheeks, they shivered, and a great fear began to creep
into their hearts.
“This won’t do!” cried Phil. “We must keep at work or we’ll never get
there. It is strange, though, that we don’t hear anything. We ought to
be almost on the beach by this time. Do you notice how big the waves
are? It’s lucky that our course is with them, for they’d be tough
fellows to work against, and make an ugly sea to cross.”
For an hour longer they paddled steadily and in dogged silence. Then
both paused in their labor as though moved by a single impulse.
“We’ve gone wrong somehow,” said Serge, without an attempt to conceal
his anxiety.
“Do you mean, old man, that you think we have missed the island
altogether?”
“I am afraid we have.”
“Then may God help us, for we can no longer help ourselves.”
“Amen,” responded Serge, solemnly.
“I suppose we had better continue paddling, if only to keep her headed
with the sea.”
“And to keep from freezing,” said Serge. “I’m chilled to the bone now.”
So they resumed their labor, but they worked listlessly and without
heart.
At length the short night came to an end, and daylight, dim and
shadowy, began to steal over the tossing waters. Occasionally the round
head of a seal rose above the surface close at hand, and the animal
stared at them for a moment with great wondering eyes before again
sinking silently from their sight.
“We could get one of those fellows if we wanted him,” said Serge, his
glance resting on the slender shaft of the native spear that was lashed
on deck.
“What good would it do us? I thought we lost our interest in seal-skins
some time ago,” said Phil, bitterly.
“Seal-meat would save us from starving.”
“How could we cook it?”
“We couldn’t,” replied Serge, significantly.
“Well, I must confess that I’m hungry, but I don’t think I care to eat
raw seal-meat just yet. I say, old man, do you suppose two fellows
ever had such an unlucky trip as ours? We seem to have jumped from one
trouble into another ever since we started.”
“And this is the worst of all,” answered Serge, despondently.
“Yes, I suppose it is; and starving to death does seem a very dreadful
way of dying. I don’t know but what I’d rather drown and done with it.”
“Suppose we try an egg,” suggested Serge, with a sudden inspiration.
“That’s so! we have got eggs. I’d forgotten them entirely. Raw eggs
aren’t half so bad as raw meat. I’ve eaten them before, and when I
didn’t have to, either.”
“So have I,” replied Serge, as, unfastening his kamleika, he reached
behind him and drew forth a couple of the eggs Phil had brought along
as specimens.
“H’m!” ejaculated the latter, as, after carefully removing a portion
of the shell to see that the contents were fresh, he swallowed them
at a gulp. “A little fishy, but not so bad as I expected. Let’s have
another.”
After eating half a dozen eggs apiece, the lads felt decidedly better,
and even a little more cheerful.
“It warn’t much of a breakfust, but even a poor breakfust tastes good
to a hungry man, as old Kite Robinson uster say,” remarked Phil, and at
the picture thus called up both lads actually smiled. Then, too, they
caught a glimpse of the sun, which was a slight comfort, though not
so great as it might have been, had it not shown them that they were
headed due north, instead of west, as they had supposed.
“We are headed for the north-pole,” said Phil. “Do you know of any
place on which we might fetch up, short of it?”
“Yes,” replied his companion, “there are islands somewhere to the north
of here, though I don’t know exactly where. I don’t believe they are
more than a hundred miles or so away, though.”
“Let’s make a try for them,” cried Phil, with sudden energy. “Anything
is better than lying still, and we are not done for yet, by a long
shot.”
So all that long, weary day the plucky lads tried to cheer each other
as they alternately paddled, rested, and made melancholy pretence of
enjoying their raw, fishy eggs. At length, however, their supply of
these was exhausted, they were too utterly wearied to paddle any
longer, and night was again coming on. The fog had thinned during the
day, but only so as to disclose a wider expanse of chill waters, and
with the coming of night it closed in again as dense as ever. The only
comfort was that the wind had gone down with the sun, leaving a smooth
sea.
“I’m beat out, old man!” said Phil, at length, as he laid his paddle on
deck.
“So am I,” answered Serge, “and, what is worse――” Here the lad
suddenly checked himself. He would not add to his comrade’s misery by
disclosing, any sooner than he could help, the new source of dread
that had just been revealed to him by a peculiar motion of their frail
craft.