SAVED BY A MIRACLE
Serge had noticed for some time that the movements of the tiny craft
in which he and Phil Ryder were navigating the mighty waters of Bering
Sea were heavy and lagging. It seemed to have lost life and buoyancy.
Instead of gliding smoothly through the water, it seemed to drag, as
though its bottom were foul with grasses or barnacles. Serge of course
knew that this could not be the case, and, after puzzling over the
matter for some time, concluded that the fault did not lie so much with
the boat as in its exhausted crew, who no longer possessed the strength
necessary to force it ahead with the same speed as formerly.
All at once he felt a movement of the bidarkie’s skin between its
wide-spread ribs, and heard a peculiar sobbing or sucking sound that
instantly explained the situation. It also filled him with a dread
before which even the fact that they were drifting helplessly over the
vast expanse of the great northern sea seemed insignificant.
A bidarkie, or “bidarka,” as it is often spelled, made of green
sea-lion skins stretched as tightly as possible over a wooden or
bone frame, allowed to dry in the wind until they become taut and
smooth as a drum-head, and then liberally coated with seal-oil, is,
for twenty-four hours or so, one of the swiftest, safest, smoothest,
and most graceful of craft. A few years ago two wrecked sailors made
a two-thousand mile voyage from one of the Aleutian Islands to San
Francisco in a nineteen-foot bidarkie, but they hugged the coast,
took inside passages wherever it was possible, and camped on shore
every night. By so doing they were enabled to lift their frail craft
from the water, and allow it to dry six, eight, or ten hours out of
every twenty-four. Thus it retained its shape and remained serviceable
during the whole of that tremendous voyage. If they had not been able
to do this, their bidarkie would have been worthless by the end of
forty-eight hours, the one great fault of this craft being that after
a while its skin covering becomes water-soaked and will stretch. In
this condition it sags in and out between the ribs with strange sounds,
until the boat becomes wellnigh unmanageable. By-and-by, if the soaking
and stretching process continues, the skins are so softened that the
sinew threads with which they are sewn together pull out and the seams
open. Then in a moment the bidarkie fills and sinks like a lump of lead.
In the present case the softening process had begun, and Serge was
aware of it. Before another day was done their frail craft would have
ceased to float, and they――well, they would be beyond the reach of
human aid or knowledge. Their bodies would be hidden deep beneath the
cold green surface of Bering Sea, while their unknown fate would serve
as a matter for sad conjecture for many a day to the dear ones whom
they should never again see.
All this flashed through the lad’s mind in an instant, with the
bidarkie’s first sobbing intimation that its strength was nearly gone,
and he was on the point of sharing his unhappy knowledge with his
companion. But why should he? Poor Phil was wretched enough already.
No; he would keep the discovery to himself, and his well-loved comrade
should be spared its added terror as long as possible. So, when the
latter laid down his paddle, declaring himself utterly exhausted,
Serge answered, “So am I, and, what is worse, I don’t believe we will
be able to stand watch during the night. Certainly both of us can’t
keep awake all the time, and so, old fellow, I would advise you to get
a nap if you can. Before sleep overpowers me I will wake you, and so we
will keep watch by turn as best we may.”
“What shall we watch for?” asked Phil, in a hopeless tone.
“For the vessel that is to pick us up, to be sure,” replied Serge.
The former uttered a bitter little laugh, as he said: “Then we
might as well watch with our eyes shut. There is no wind to move a
sailing-vessel, even if there were one in all this great awful sea,
which I doubt. As for a steamer, she would have to pass within fifty
feet before any one aboard could either see or hear us. So I am going
to try and forget our troubles in sleep, and would advise you to do the
same. Good-night, old man.”
With this the disheartened lad slipped wearily down into the bottom of
the canoe until his head rested on the hatch-coaming, in which position
he was speedily oblivious of his melancholy surroundings. He dreamed
of his adored father and dear Aunt Ruth, and was once more in his
far-away, well-loved Eastern home. So he smiled as he slept.
As Serge sat there alone amid the immensity of that silent sea, he too
thought of his home in green Sitka, of the mother and sisters who were
watching for him, and he groaned aloud as he realized how little chance
he had of ever seeing them again. Then the brave father, whose memory
had been with him all these years, seemed to appear to him with loving
words. By these he was so soothed and comforted that, after a while,
he too slipped down, and, with his white face upturned to the dim sky,
dropped into a slumber so profound that it seemed as though nothing
could ever waken him from it.
So for an hour, or perhaps more, the bidarkie, still upbearing its
precious human freight, drifted through limitless watery space unguided
and unwatched, save by Him who watches over all and takes note of all
in this His world.
As she drifted, the tiny craft became aware of a sister-ship towering
dim and formless through the mist, but drifting like herself. There
is a bond of sympathy between drifting ships, called by some people
the attraction of floating bodies, that impels the smaller to seek the
company of the larger. So the little ship drew gradually nearer and
nearer to its big sister, and was disappointed when the latter began
to move away. In another minute she would have disappeared, and the
sleeping lads would never have known of her presence any more than she
knew of theirs, had not something so incredible and wellnigh impossible
happened that it might never happen again in all the years of the world.
Just as the steamer began to move away, for the ship that had come
so silently drifting through the fog was no other than the steamer
_Norsk_, which had left St. Paul that very afternoon, something small
and sharp struck Serge Belcofsky’s face with stinging force. He started
up with a piercing scream of pain and fright, but instantly wide awake.
His scream was answered by a loud “Hello! Who’s there?” uttered in a
clear, manly voice from the stern of the vanishing ship.
“Help! Help! Don’t leave us! Help! Help!” yelled Phil and Serge,
wild with excitement, hope, and fear. At the same time they tried
with desperate energy to paddle after the vision of safety that
had so suddenly come to them, and now seemed about to disappear as
mysteriously as it had come. It did indeed glide out of sight in the
all-enshrouding fog; but ere they lost hearing of the many sounds now
arising from it, a ship’s boat, manned by lusty oarsmen who uttered
cheery shouts of encouragement, shot out of the mist and, guided by the
voices of the lads, came towards them. In the bow stood the sturdy,
well-balanced figure of a man of thirty, holding a flaring torch above
his head. The closely-bearded face thus revealed was to Phil and Serge
as the face of an angel, and one they would never forget.
This man was Gerald Hamer, a Western Yankee, and leader of the Yukon
Trading Company, that the _Norsk_ was taking to Fort St. Michaels.
It was he who, leaning over the after-rail of the ship, just as
her engines were started, after being stopped for an hour for some
slight repairs, heard and answered the despairing call for help, that
apparently came from the very waters beneath him. The captain lay
ill in his cabin, and the first officer, a thick-headed fellow, who
understood English very imperfectly, was in charge of the ship.
When Gerald Hamer ran forward, told him of what he had heard, and
begged him, in the name of humanity, to stop his ship and send a boat
to the relief of those who were crying for help, the fellow refused to
do so.
“Ids some of dem nadives,” he said; “ve cannod vaste dime on dem.”
“Natives nothing! you thundering blockhead!” roared Gerald Hamer. “If
they were, you’d stop and see what trouble they were in, or I’d know
why. But I tell you they are white men, and Americans. I know the
Yankee tongue when I hear it, if you don’t; so stop your ship, and stop
her quick, too, or, by Hookey, I and my men will stop her for you!”
Thick-headed as he was, the mate realized in a moment that he could
not safely refuse to obey this command, backed as it was by a score
of sturdy Americans who, at the sound of their leader’s voice, were
gathering about him like a swarm of angry hornets. So he gave the
requisite order in a surly tone, and the recently-started engines were
again stopped.
“Bud I shall nod risg my mans for dot dirdy nadives,” he said. “If a
boad goes, den musd you dake it yourselluf.”
“Take it myself! Certainly I will!” cried Gerald Hamer. “Do you suppose
I’d let you or your lubberly crew have the honor of rescuing one of my
countrymen? Not much! Here, men, I want half a dozen volunteers for
dangerous boat-duty. Now don’t all speak at once.”
But they did, and, as though with the voice of one man, raised a mighty
shout of “Aye, aye, sir!”
Their leader smiled as he detailed six men to lower a boat and go with
him in it. To the others he said: “You fellows stay here, and see that
this ship doesn’t move an inch till I come back. Not an inch, if I’m
gone a year. Do you hear?”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“And keep the ship’s bell ringing eight bells till I get back, too, so
that I can locate her if we get out of sight.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” and for the next fifteen minutes it seemed as though
the clangor of that brazen-throated bell might have been heard from
Bering Strait to Oonimak.
“White men, as I said; and Americans, I’ll be bound!” cried Gerald
Hamer, as the light of his torch fell on the object of his search.
“Great Scott! they’re only boys, and their craft is a water-logged
bladder! How in the name of the good and the great―― But there,
lads! no matter――you are safe now. Your troubles are all over.”
[Illustration: “‘WHITE MEN, AS I SAID; AND AMERICANS, I’LL BE BOUND!’”]
As he spoke these last words the strong man’s voice grew husky, and his
eyes moistened, for poor Phil’s overstrained nerves had given way, and
he was sobbing hysterically, while Serge also seemed on the very point
of breaking down.
Very tenderly were the rescued lads lifted from the frail little craft,
that had upheld them so bravely, into the ship’s boat. They were too
stiff and numbed to stand. They could not even sit up, but sank limply
into the bottom of the boat, their heads pillowed on coats gladly
offered by members of the crew.
Then, with the bidarkie in tow, the boat was headed back through the
fog towards the clanging bell. Ten minutes later, Phil and Serge,
each surrounded by a group of rough but willing nurses, were between
warm blankets, their bidarkie had been hoisted on deck, and the good
ship _Norsk_ was cleaving the waters of Bering Sea, on her way to the
distant port of St. Michaels.