POINT BARROW
We were all aboard the steam whaler “Astrum” in the spring of the next
year, and with us a marvel of compact maritime construction, our naphtha
launch “_Pluto_”. Hopkins suggested the name on the satisfactory ground
that we were likely to have “a hell of a time.” We had worked ourselves
up to the most supreme height of confidence and enthusiasm. The
Professor was in a sort of demented state of expectation; Hopkins
furiously asserted the name of Christopher Columbus would now be
forgotten in the new fame to be allotted to us, “the Arctic Argonauts,”
and finally Goritz and myself succumbed to a peculiar feeling of
predestination.
Captain Coogan of the “Astrum” knew nothing of our proposed destination.
It was a stipulation made by Hopkins that nothing on that point was to
be discussed, until we reached Point Barrow—if we were to reach it—and
the services of Captain Coogan and his selected crew—not the usual
polyglot assemblage of ethnic odds and ends—were unconditionally ours up
to that moment. The temptations of whaling were to be absolutely
eschewed until we had vanished into the fogs and wilderness of the ice
pack, beyond whose trackless waste lay Krocker Land. Of course a sea dog
like Captain Coogan, a clever and hardy mate like Isaac Stanwix, a
pertinacious thinker like the engineer Bell Phillips, and such an
experienced and avaricious reader as the carpenter Jack Spent (he had
made ten trips to Point Barrow) could make pretty shrewd guesses as to
our intentions. The stores and supplies, the sledges and kayaks,
splendid vehicles of travel made under Goritz’s supervision, were
informing enough, had it not been for the disconcerting secrecy of the
actors in this strange new ice-drama. I think we were regarded as a
“parcel of wild devils or fools,” though I think too, with the exception
of perhaps the Professor, our physical constants were impressive.
Our departure did not escape public notice. We were besieged by
reporters, but we were impenetrable, and yet we were genially
communicative too. It was the Arctic or bowhead whale we were interested
in; we were naturalists, the Professor was hoping to introduce the
bowhead whale into European waters; just now a preliminary study of its
habits, habitat, food, breeding grounds, and commercial availability was
indispensable. That fiction sufficed. The remarkable launch prepared for
us was made into a skillful adjunct to our investigations. We were
honored by several columns of interviews in the dailies, and the splash
of our adventure spread its circle of disturbance even to Washington,
whence official offers of assistance and participation were received
which—were never answered. Among our visitors, for we did not escape the
invasion of sightseers, was that Goliah, Carlos Huerta, from whose
branding iron you saved me.
(Erickson spoke this measuredly and calmly to be sure, but his hands
covered his face, and I saw his body sway, convulsed by his emotion.)
“This man somehow appealed to me; perhaps it was his herculean
dimensions. He was familiar with launches and machinery, and was very
intelligent; forceful, too. His suavity disarmed suspicion, and his
robust, seemingly ingenuous interest pleased me. Almost his last words,
before we sailed, invited me to come to see him—he handed me his
card—and to tell him “all about it.” It was a curious, inexplicable
divination on his part that I should have much to tell. That man, Mr.
Link, was the most ruthless scoundrel I ever met; he was my first
scoundrel; because I had never met a scoundrel before I fell into his
net.
(Again a pause. It lasted so long that I feared some complication of
feeling had robbed him of his memory. I said “And Mr. Erickson, you left
San Francisco?” His consciousness returned, and he turned to me
smiling.)
Yes, we left San Francisco about the end of April, a dull day with fog
banks lifting and falling over the Golden Gate, while a rising storm
outside was turning the ocean into water alps, smiting the clouds. Our
course was almost a direct line to Behring Straits; we were to pass
through the channel between Unalaska and Uninak Islands, then coast the
Pribylof Islands for the benefit of the Professor, reach Indian Point,
on the Siberian side of the strait where some of the natives, Masinkers
(_Tchouktchis_), could be seen, then cross to Port Clarence on the
Alaskan shore for an inspection of the Nakooruks (_Innuits_); then two
stops for the benefit of Hopkins and Goritz. We also intended to secure
at the latter place dogs for our dash over the ice to the Krocker Land
shore from Point Barrow. Captain Coogan recommended a stop at Cape
Prince of Wales where further ethnological notes might be gathered, but
this was overruled as both the Professor and Hopkins expected to visit
the coal beds beyond Point Hope, and Cape Lisburne in the Arctic Ocean.
We came abreast of Pribylof about May sixth, stalled off St. Paul’s
Island in a still sea, light southwest winds and rising tide. The
Professor was pulled off to the island in the morning; his eagerness to
visit these famous fur-seal rookeries being irrepressible. He had talked
of little else, in the intervals when we were not discussing our
momentous enterprise, but the marvelous stories which old navigators,
Captain Scammon and Captain Bryant had told, and the fascinating studies
of Elliot. He told us that formerly, in the middle of the nineteenth
century and later, these pelagic mammals had swarmed in millions up to
these islands, rising from the ocean like a veritable mammal inundation.
He told us about the bull seals, how they fought, their tenacity, their
endurance, how a bull will fight fifty or sixty battles for the
possession of his ample harem of twelve or fifteen cows, and last out to
the end of the season, three months perhaps without food, living on his
own fat, covered with scars, eyes gouged out, striped with blood; and
how the jovial bachelors, not so disconsolate as might be imagined, the
“hollus-chickies,” congregate to one side. He said the noise from these
monstrous breeding grounds, where thousands of seals are roaring,
bleating, calling—mothers, fathers and pups—could be heard, with the
wind right, five or six miles to sea. He didn’t expect to see the
households developed then—it was too early—but he might have an
opportunity to find a few advance bulls on their stations. He found the
bulls, and he found an adventure, and _we found him_.
It was almost four or five hours after the Professor had left the ship
in a yawl rowed by two sailors, that Hopkins, Goritz, and myself
followed him in another boat. We saw the yawl on a short beach of sand,
with the men sunning themselves and asleep on the black rocks which
hemmed in the little cove. We ran our boat on the sands, the men came
strolling toward us, rubbing their eyes and recovering from the inertia
of what had been an uninterrupted snooze. When we asked for the
Professor they told us he had disappeared, and had ordered them to stay
where they were while he pursued his investigations. He certainly was
nowhere in sight and a little anxious over his long absence we moved up
to the broken rim of rocks which probably separated this retreat from
some similar beach on either side.
The elevated cones and ridges of the island could be seen towering up
toward the interior in gaunt gray surfaces, on which rested extensive
patches of snow. We surmounted the inconsiderable elevation and found it
was a broader barrier than we had anticipated, a platform of jagged
projecting crests with intervening rocky basins or tables, the whole an
extended spur from a black wall of rock, on whose summit were the
clustering huts of a native village. On the edges of the rocks hung a
few large cakes of ice, and the receding tide had left broken, hummocky
masses tilted at various angles over the inclined faces of stone. The
scene was chilly and desolate and to add to its lugubrious desolation a
fog had slowly drifted in from the sea and was now tortuously rolling
down from the highland on the opposite shore to the island. Our search
for the missing Professor would have to be hastened.
“The Professor must be found,” said Hopkins. “We shan’t know how to deal
with the native Krockerans when we meet ’em, without the Professor. At
present he is the only man alive who understands their peculiarities,
and as an interpreter he’s bound to prove useful.”
“Of course,” said Goritz, “you don’t think the seals can eat him?”
“They might,” answered Hopkins, “but they could never digest him. It
would certainly be a death potion to the venturesome bull who mistook
him for food. Likely as not he is now engaged in explaining to an
interesting family his plans for the preservation and increase of them
and their kindred.”
During this irrelevant badinage I had crossed the rocky flat and reached
another cove or gully, headed towards the land by a slope of broken
boulders, and floored with sand. We had as yet encountered no seals.
Looking beyond this bay I saw on a promontory bounding the distant edge
of the beach what seemed like a human figure, or indeed like a group of
figures. Watching the objects for a short time I could more clearly
distinguish them, and to my astonishment determined that one was a man
and the rest some erect animal forms, doubtless seals. The group was at
an extreme point on the rocks, and, if the solitary human was the
Professor, his only possible retreat from the beleaguering seals would
be the water.
I hallooed to my companions, pointing to the distant objects, and
hastened forward onto the rock-strewn beach. Goritz and Hopkins
struggled over the rough patch of rocks and overtook me.
“Yes, by the lives of all the saints!” cried Hopkins, who had stopped a
moment and with shaded eyes was studying the enigmatical figures
silhouetted against sea and sky. “It’s the Professor and three
_beachmasters_ apparently bent on his capture, or else drinking in
wisdom from his lips. It might just be they’re competing for his
services in teaching their prospective families.”
“I can see him waving his hands, it seems to me, and now he’s shooing
them with his hat,” exclaimed Goritz. “He’s in something of a fix.
Hurry.”
[Illustration:
THE PROFESSOR AND THE PRIBYLOF SEALS
]
We bounded forward, and over the beaten sand raced together, taking
quick glances ahead at the now certain embarrassment of our friend. It
was indeed the Professor, and his predicament was unmistakable.
Amusement however mingled with our anxiety, for as we drew near we could
plainly make out that he had taken his hat between his teeth and was
violently wagging his head, the absurd appendage of his cap flying up
and down producing a very ludicrous effect. It was a serviceable device,
however, for the amazed seals had stopped their approaches; their
barking or snarling, at first quite audible, had ceased, and they were
now attentively regarding the Professor with almost immobile heads.
“Guess,” called out Hopkins between breaths, “they think the Professor
is a little dippy, and are reconsidering his engagement as a domestic
instructor.”
We were now near enough to attract the Professor’s sight; he hailed us
with swinging arms but did not venture to desist from his mandarin-like
wig-wagging. The approach to his position was a little difficult, and we
suffered some falls. Our advent had attracted the notice of the bulls
and they swerved about to receive us, humping their backs, leaping
forward on their flippers, and renewing their truculent miauling or
barking. We attacked them with stones but their defiance was unchanged,
and they lunged and rushed, quite unappalled by our onset. They would
retreat almost immediately to their former positions, holding the poor
Professor in chancery with an apparent unanimity that kept Goritz
laughing, for with every retreat, the Professor would renew his violent
gesticulations.
At length Goritz and Hopkins armed with an armful of stones drove in on
the biggest of the bulls, and assailed him with such a shower of
missiles that his reserve was overcome, and he plunged forward,
following them for twenty feet or more. I ran to the Professor and
caught his arm, and we got out of the zone of danger, while the
momentarily allied _beachmasters_, frustrated from their imprisonment of
him, suddenly resented each other’s proximity and after a miscellaneous
“mix-up,” as Hopkins called it, shuffled and loped away to their former
stations, the chosen spots for their future _seraglios_.
With the liberated Professor we sat down on some stool-like fragments
inserted in the sand of the beach and heard his story. It was laughable
enough and added an unusual trait to the recorded conduct of the big
bull seals, usually indifferent to the approach of men. These three
indolent, unoccupied forerunners of the great herds that might soon be
expected, had actually chased the Professor and, having cornered him on
the promontory, had hopelessly besieged him. The Professor had been too
much interested or too imprudent. His amiability perhaps had brought him
into this unexpected dilemma, for he had gathered up seaweed from the
rocks at the edge of the water, and attempted to feed the bulls. They
followed him, and their disappointed expectations developed later into
the pugnacity that had made him a prisoner.
While he was talking a few more seals emerged from the ocean, lazily
hauling themselves on the rocks with that ill-assured clumsiness of
motion so strikingly replaced in the water by the greatest grace,
agility and speed.
“But Professor,” interrupted Goritz, “what were you doing with your
hat?”
The Professor, who had been much ruffled and excited over his encounter,
welcomed this inquiry with a restored equanimity.
“Ah! Goritz, that is a contribution to science. On our return I shall
call the attention of Lloyd Morgan and other animal psychologists to
this novel observation. Antoine, it has long been known that the
rhythmical oscillation of a flexible substance, a rag, hat, towel,
banner, exercises a peculiar influence on animals. It will allay the
ferocity of a mad dog or alarm him. Color has something to do with it,
as instance the red rag which irritates the bull. Now—” here the
Professor looked critically at his steamer cap, and may have mentally
noted that it was a green and brown Scotch plaid. “Now this influence
seems curiously reinforced if the substance or garment is taken in the
mouth and shaken.”
The incorrigible Hopkins had again buried his face in his cupped palms.
“No reason that is incontrovertible has been assigned for this, but I
assume that it is an appeal to a latent _demonism_ in animals, which in
its later evolution appears as _devil-worship_ in aboriginal people. I
most fortunately recalled this, and at a critical moment, when I was
threatened with the necessity of retreating into the sea—” The poorly
repressed vibrations in Hopkins’ body might have been referred to
sympathy or—something else. “A quite unnecessary ablution, let us say,”
and the Professor smiled benignantly at me, as perhaps the one most
gravely interested in his narrative. “I thought of this remarkable
device, which I believe has something of the nature of an incantation.
The effect was miraculous. This simple gesture held the seals at bay; I
think it is quite demonstrable also that there is a physiological basis
for their evident stupefaction—the optic nerve. These animals you know
have very poor sight—the optic nerve is disturbed and a cerebral vertigo
is induced which, like—”
“That settles it,” cried Hopkins, stumbling to his feet with a very red
face and hurrying across the sands. “Professor, there’s something worse
than seals on this island; there are the U. S. officials, and—I guess
they are charmproof.”
“Exactly,” assented the Professor in an absent-minded way, “exactly, but
had you gentlemen restrained yourselves a little, I believe I could have
advanced an interesting corroboration to a hitherto dimly—”
A gun shot was heard. It evidently came from our men in the adjoining
cove and we smothered the Professor’s scientific homily with a shout,
and accelerated our departure.
When we reached the boat we found some natives and two resident
officials surrounding our men, the former somewhat excited and
demonstrative. The officials questioned us and were informed of our
purely accidental visit, and with that explanation, as the fog had
increased and there were threatening symptoms of a blow, we manned our
boats and got away.
Captain Coogan resumed our course, making northwest for Indian Point,
amid heavy ice, whose leads were carefully followed until they liberated
us in open water, and the immediate danger of being nipped was past. The
next morning I was awakened—my room adjoined Hopkins’—by hearing the
American reciting in a voice loud enough to justify forcible
remonstrance:
“_I met my mates in the morning (and Oh, but I am old),
Where roaring on the ledges the summer groundswell rolled,
I heard them lift the chorus that dropped the breakers’ song,
The beaches of Lucannon—two million voices strong,
The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons,_
_The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes
The song of midnight dances that charmed the sea to flame
The beaches of Lucannon—before the sealers came!_”
We made Indian Point, or Chaplin, as the settlement is called, in five
days, held back by floes and fogs, narrowly escaping a collision with an
adventuresome and premature whaler making its way to the same
destination. These sailors often get caught in the ice, when they are
helpless, and if the pack tightens on them, they are likely to come to
grief with a cut stem or a stoved side. We assisted one poor fellow out
of such a plight. His vessel was shipping water fast, and we helped
shift his load, giving the boat a stern list that lifted its broken nose
and allowed him to make repairs.
Chaplin is a small settlement of natives on the Siberian coast, the
largest along the line to Behring Straits. There may be some forty huts
there, and the whale men find it a convenient place to do a stroke of
trade. Indeed, if it were not for their visits the unfortunate Masinkers
might resign the job of trying to live at all, as the whales are more
scarce than formerly, or more cautious, and walrus and seal scarcely
turn in closer than St. Lawrence Island. The village is on a projecting
tooth of land—a mere sandpit—and back from the village along the
foothills is the curious, disconsolate looking graveyard where the dead
are buried in rudely excavated holes and covered with stones and earth,
some with deer antlers stuck about as gravestones.
The natives were not slow in coming aboard, and as we had outrun the
whalers who are annually expected, their reception of us was, so to
speak, enthusiastically hearty. I thought it was a trifle overdone. The
entire population tried to get aboard, and assumed possession of
everything with such unsophisticated satisfaction that it strained the
limits of our hospitality and tired our patience somewhat. They were a
jocular, spontaneous and chattering crowd, of all ages, many hues, and
some diversity of dress. Each canoe had received from Captain Coogan a
bucket of bread, but their appetite for tobacco would have made a
tremendous contribution to the income of the United Cigar Company.
Everyone wanted it—men, women and children, and it stood first in the
commercial schedule of trade. We rejected their whalebone ivory and
foxskins, but boots, skin shirts and coats were acceptable.
Our very generous demeanor towards their needs elicited the stormiest
approval, but we regretfully learned that it prolonged their occupation
of the ship which, so far as fragrance was considered, had seriously
declined from its former estate of habitability. Articles of all sorts
come handy to these people, but as we were not prepared for their
omnivorous demands, tobacco formed the staple of our barter.
Now in our little library, whose usefulness the sustained succession of
long days of suspense or idleness had fully demonstrated, we had read in
a small light blue book by Herbert L. Aldrich, called “Arctic Alaska and
Siberia,” of the author’s visit to this very place. In the book a man,
Gohara by name, was designated as “_the Masinker of the Masinkers_,” a
man forty years of age, tall, commanding, and “by far the best specimen
mentally and physically of his people.”
We discovered him. He was yet vigorous, though approaching seventy and
his remarkable spouse—his third wife then—_Siwurka_, maintained a
supreme position in his household, which the advent, since Aldrich’s
visit, of two younger women had not disturbed. One of these later
accessions to Gohara’s domestic felicity was a person of becoming
rotundity, with a distracting tousle of hair that almost covered her
eyes. The inexpugnable scientific curiosity of the Professor led him
into his second predicament with this young person, which, for a moment,
promised to be more serious than his inquisitional visit to the fur
seals.
It was the last day of our stay at Indian Point which had been prolonged
by the viewless stretches of ice moving out of the Arctic into Behring
Sea, and we were all ashore. As usual the Professor deserted us,
following out some preconcerted scheme of observation or experiment in
which our participation was unnecessary or even resented. It was some
hours after we had missed him, and our inspection of the _tupicks_, the
dogs, the children, and the industrial products of the Masinkers was
completed, that a large boy, prodigiously magnified by his big boots,
rushed upon our trailing group crying:
“Doghter! Doghter! He out of head. Hoopla!”
The fellow was excited and out of breath with running, and his
excitement became reflected in the faces of the natives around us, who
were helplessly bewildered and looked so.
“It’s the Professor—another row. Hold back the crowd. I’ll go with this
screaming lunatic and extricate our distinguished friend. Some
scientific escapade, you can bet your hat on it,” whispered Hopkins.
To inquiries of his acquaintances the boy kept up an unintelligible
jabber and pointed to the farther side of the village. Apparently the
assemblage were on the point of bolting for the spot, in deference to
the boy’s ejaculations. Hopkins handed us a package which he had been
reserving for some sort of a valedictory to Chaplin and its unsavory
population. It was a liberal assortment of quids, smoking tobacco,
cigars and snuff, and its exhibition and immediate distribution quelled
the flight of the rabble around us, whose inclination to stay where they
were instantly hardened like adamant.
Hopkins seized the boy, turned him around, and the two vanished in the
direction the boy had indicated. In about half an hour, or less, they
returned with the Professor between them, much upset but calm, and
apparently indifferent to the objurgations and imprecations, delivered
in unvarnished and vigorous _Tchoukchi_, hurled at him by no less a man
than Gohara, followed by his five wives, whose voices querulously
mingled and reinforced their master’s denunciations. The situation was
unquestionably very amusing, very curious, and, except for the fortunate
intervention of Hopkins’ miscellaneous propitiations, might have become
very annoying. We hurried the Professor to the beach, got into our
boats, Hopkins making a stern-wise address to the multitude on the
shore, a most grotesque and tumultuous bunch of long, short, thin, fat,
smiling, frowning, dark and light figures in skins and fur, and reached
the “Astrum,” which that very evening left the offing, and, over a
clear, moon-lit sea was directed toward Port Clarence in Alaska. A hard
blow was on, and the ice packs had been scattered or driven eastward.
Hopkins’ story that night, after the Professor had retired, which he did
unusually early and with a complete resumption of his smile and his good
humor, entertained us until after midnight. I abbreviate its windings
and prolixity, interspersed with Hopkins’ incommunicable reflexions.
The boy, conveniently named Oolah, led Hopkins some way back of the
settlement to a _tupick_ of considerable size, and covered with canvas
(usually walrus hide or skins form these roofings) which was, it so
happened, Gohara’s storehouse, stocked with trading material. Hopkins
restrained his guide’s impatience, and finding a convenient aperture for
the inspection of the interior peered within. To his delighted
astonishment there was the Professor, with notebook and pencil, and near
him in placid wonderment, which occasionally broke in smiles or deepened
into terror, was the last and, with reservations for taste, most
attractive wife of the head trader of Indian Point, _Ting-wah_ by name.
The Professor’s performances were immoderately extravagant. Seen in
their incongruous environment, combined with their novelty, they
compelled Hopkins to retire at intervals and roll on the ground, in
order to control the violence of his merriment, another proceeding which
strengthened Oolah’s conviction in the immanence of the devil among
these strangers.
When Hopkins first descried the Professor, he was standing erect with
his arms raised high above his head, close together, the hands in
contact, flapping and clapping them in an indescribably funny way, while
at intervals he shrank and cowered over as if seized with the
insupportable pains of colic. To these antics the woman returned a
perplexed stare, as the Professor resumed his normal manner, took up his
pad and pencil, and waited apparently for her response, while she,
equally expectant, stood stock still and waited for more explicit
communications.
Then the Professor suddenly extended his arms in front of him, and
wheeled round on his heels, with such commendable agility, that as he
spun, his expansive ears seemed almost obliterated. It was then that
Hopkins resorted to the refuge of the ground to conceal his feelings.
Still the woman was mute, but her face showed a rising fear, and her
hands rose to her neck as if to seize something from the skin pouch made
in her upper garment.
The Professor left off his physical maneuvers and began a series of
grimaces which, as Hopkins expressed it, “would have dimmed the luster
of the best vaudeville star he had ever seen.” They expressed almost
everything, beginning with something that might be called suffering, to
a terrible excruciation of joy, when the Professor exerted his features
to a degree that Hopkins called “the limit of facial agony.” And yet the
girl was silent, but her eyes never left the Professor, and Hopkins, and
Oolah too, saw her quietly draw a knife from her “bread basket.” Hopkins
might not have observed this if Oolah had not grunted, “_Stick ’im_.”
He felt then it was time to intervene, but his interest and
curiosity—“better’n a show” he repeated over and over again—had up to
this point prevented him.
Suddenly the Professor desisted from his rapid play of expression, and
began to moan diabolically, rolling towards the woman with supplicating
arms. The knife flashed, it was upraised, and the girl crouched, her
face darkening with either rage or terror. The next moment she had
sprung at the now observant and terror-stricken Professor, who executed
a flank movement—“side-stepped” Hopkins put it—and was out of the door
and—into the protecting embrace of Hopkins’ arms, while Oolah with
precocious intelligence intercepted Ting-wah. The girl’s pent-up
emotions spent themselves in screams and fervent but barbarous
complaints that brought Gohara and his other spouses to her rescue.
Hopkins, utterly mystified by the Professor’s exhibition, resorted to
the very plausible explanation, suggested by Oolah in the first place,
that the Professor had gone crazy, which indeed he most apostolically
believed himself. This answered the purpose, though it did not repress
Gohara and his family from uttering a string of uncomplimentary epithets
which might have provoked a serious disturbance had it not been for
Hopkins’ tact and the celerity of our retreat. Gohara’s rage followed
our boat with stridulous recriminations.
The Professor was noticeably crestfallen and almost sullenly indifferent
to our questions as to what had happened. It was only a few days later,
when his spirits had become thoroughly restored, that he spoke about it,
with a sudden assumption of confidence that delighted us.
“My friends,” the Professor began one cold, radiant afternoon as we were
ranged round the naphtha launch admiring its adaptation, strength, the
happy conception of structural ice runners let into her keel, the easily
unshipped tiller and screw; “My friends, the theories of the origin of
language have been various; there are the views of Geiger as to its
inception in movement and action, those of Noire as to the importance of
sound, onomatopoetic or imitative, and the value of expression, as with
Darwin.”
“You see,” he continued with a fine indirection of reference, which we
appreciated, “I was before an untutored child of nature. I attempted,
along these various lines of non-verbal intercourse to secure an
illuminative response that might throw some light upon theory. Under the
circumstances, the subject, vitiated I think by contact with European
culture—Ah—”
“_Shied_” suggested Hopkins.
“Well,” the Professor smilingly concluded, “there was certainly
an _hiatus_. Her aboriginal powers of interpretation were
dulled—dulled—perhaps extinguished.”
“But Professor, you woke up a good deal of oratory. In fact, Professor,
you’re nervy and—if I may be permitted the vulgarity of quotation—
‘You would joke with hyenas, returning their stare
With an impudent wag of your head,
And you went to walk, paw-in-paw, with a bear,
“Just to keep up its spirits,” you said.
Without rest or pause—while those frumious jaws
Went savagely snapping around—
You skipped and you hopped and you floundered and flopped
Till fainting you fell to the ground.’”
The Professor passed his hand approvingly over the side of the launch,
ignoring the jibe. We dropped the subject, indeed forgot it, listening
to Goritz’s animated and assuring praise of the little craft that would
introduce us to a new continent, and the incident was never again heard
of.
Our next haven was Port Clarence in Alaska, and we had a lot of trouble
making it. The ice streaming out of Behring Straits was thick, and, as
the Yankee put it, “_numerous_.” The captain and mates were keen to
watch their chances, and we often found ourselves surrounded by blocks
that the wind threatened to pack together to our imminent peril. It was
very early, and whereas the whalers make Port Clarence about midsummer
we expected or hoped to get to Point Barrow about that time. A northwest
wind came up and scattered the ice and gave us an open sea, though we
were compelled to make some long detours around white meadows of
snow-covered ice, that slipped off into the recesses of low, cold fogs
and suggested illimitable barriers ahead of us.
The distant rattling or caking sound of grinding ice was sometimes
constantly heard for hours, and again vast fields, looking almost
motionless, loomed up with the sun shimmering their surfaces into an
endless complexity of mirrors. Along the indented or hummocky edges of
these little continents we would steam serenely and exult courageously
in the thought of crossing just such white ways to the hidden wonders of
a hidden world. We often fell into fits of dreaming, buoyed up by the
calm and glowing vaticinations of the Professor.
We finally brought up at the port and received a tumultuous reception,
having outrun the whaling fleet. The natives, _Nakooruks_, crowded
aboard, and were intently watched but quite passively shunned by the
Professor. Water and wood were taken on here, and about one hundred
selected dogs, whose points were minutely inspected or determined by
Goritz and myself. It was June, and already flowers spun their colored
webs over the inhospitable shores, compensating for their brief life
here in the north by a marvelous abundance. Yellow, white and blue, the
bewitching patches of moss-blue flowering hepatica, forget-me-not,
anemone, phlox and daisy charmed us, and for a moment brought back such
a flood of memories that a surge of homesickness swept over us, the last
tug of the pleasant world we had turned our backs on before the portals
of a stranger world opened and closed on us, perhaps forever.
We bought fish and furs from the natives who had traveled hither with
their pelts and offerings from Norton Sound, Cape Prince of Wales, and
King’s Island. There was confusion and bustle on shore, and on board the
barking of dogs, guttural controversies among the Eskimos, wailing of
babies, orders, the shriek of the donkey engine hauling on cargo,
produced a pleasant excitement which attained its climax on the arrival
of the United States revenue cutter. Visiting of the captains, exchange
of news followed, and we were told that the season was unprecedented;
the ice in the Arctic had broken up early, there was a clear passage in
the straits and an audacious whaler had attempted the passage and
“skinned” through to Point Hope. We were sanguine of reaching Point
Barrow early in July.
On the fourth of July we were under Cape Lisburne, encountering the rush
of the wind that seems harbored by that lofty cliff, and which like a
physical avalanche pushed us over until the water rippled over the lee
rail. Along the shores everywhere there was a broad avenue of open
water, stretching from the skirt of shore ice to the heavy packs,
sheeted with fogs and murmurously moaning, inimitably flooring that
mysterious ocean whose furthest waters beat on the shores of Krocker
Land.
From Cape Lisburne the shore line strikes at a right angle to the Corwin
coal fields, the low shores, except for a few occasional interruptions,
as with Cape Lisburne itself, marking the margins of the higher uplands
in the interior. Salt lagoons, crescent shaped beaches, sandpits, shoal
basins, furnish a monotonous succession of flattened, uninteresting
features, which practically reaches to Point Barrow. At the Corwin coal
beds slate, sandstone and conglomerate overlie each other, and the
Mesozoic age of the beds themselves is established. Here the Professor
emerged from the mental coma which had suspended his pedagogic
enthusiasms since we left Indian Point, and a few fern leaf fossils
unlocked again the storehouse of his learning and loosened his tongue
with eloquent predictions.
Standing up at our mess table with a beautifully preserved fern leaf,
sketched in black interlacings, reticulations and frondy leaflets on an
ashen-colored slate, the Professor spoke to us, and indeed we ourselves
felt the thrill of a reconstructed world in this bleak land, as we saw
this silent token of former warmth.
“My friends,” he held up the fossil leaf, “here is a vestige of the
past, a leaf of a fern. It tells us of hot, moist, heat-oppressed cycles
of years, when marshes densely thicketed with tree fern, swollen with
hot rains, drenched in a perspiration of mists, covered these now arid
snow-blanketed flats; when a reptilian life, the consonant faunal
response to these climatic conditions flourished here also, when,
dropping into the bayous and ponds, leaf upon leaf, branches, spores and
trunks of an expanded filicine flora built up the masses of vegetable
debris in later ages, to become consolidated and transformed into coal
and—” the Professor’s eyes started, his inherent smile became a
portentous stare, and the wide ears seemed almost to converge to catch
his own words of promise; “and—_we shall rediscover a warm or temperate
climate here at the North Pole. WHY?_”
His voice spoke this interrogation in something like a squeal, so that
the answer, in its unaffected profundity, produced a really dramatic
climax.
“_Because we shall be nearer the center of the earth._”
We took on coal at the Corwin mines and resumed our progress northward
in the still unimpeded lane of open water, with porridge ice forming
fast along the outer pack but the shore rim intact, and bucking against
a strong northeast current setting along shore. We passed Point Lay and
Icy Cape the second day, and reached Point Barrow on the tenth of July.
How well I recall our landing on the low beach of this tip-top point of
the continent, and wondering, in a dreary dream of coming hardships and
dangers, at its desolation, a low barren sandbank forty to one hundred
yards across. At Cape Smythe a small promontory raises a faint
remonstrance against the encroachments of the sea in a bluff of about
thirty feet elevation, and here we found the village of Uglaamie, a
cluster of twenty or more huts, inhabited by a boreal tribe, the
_Nuwukmeun_. Life however, in the plants and animals revived our
feelings, and the Professor’s exultation over the traces of old beach
lines inspirited us. Here on the land, in propitious spots, sprang up
buttercups, dandelions and a peculiar poppy; over our heads flew flocks
of eider ducks, a butterfly danced gayly in its wavering flight by our
side, and Captain Coogan reported a school of whale running to the
northeast, “_in a hurry_.”
We found some standing portions of the United States meteorological
station placed here in 1902, and Goritz stumbled upon a dismantled
graveyard where saint and sinner, rich and poor had promiscuously
suffered from the inroads of the Eskimo dog. It offered a mournful
commentary upon the transitoriness of human greatness.
But reflections were out of place; we had reached the point of
departure, and the Great Unknown sternly invited us to begin our quest.
Under such circumstances the long subdued instincts of the primal man
reassert themselves, and an augury of good fortune befell us that was
droll enough, unrelieved by the nervous solemnity of our feelings, but
which so connected itself with these as to give it an absurd stateliness
of meaning.
An angora goat was the queer and unexpected waif we found here, left by
an unlucky whaler the previous year; a long haired, pugnacious billy
goat, whose property or power as a mascot had failed to save the “Siren”
from being “nipped, pooped and swamped,” and lost in the remorseless
ice. The resident Eskimos in Uglaamie had imbibed respect for the goat
(which had been somewhat summarily abandoned by its former devotees) and
its influence with the unseen agencies that control destiny. But they
were logical enough to conclude that its intimacy was with
bad—_tuna_—rather than with good spirits. This omnivorous beast
furnished us with a favorable omen, all the more auspicious because he
embodied the very genius of destruction.
Now this expatriated goat rejected the prostrations and worship of the
Nuwukmeun, like a capricious deity, and perversely clung to us with
embarrassing insistence. The launch had been put in the water; it seemed
almost ideal in its qualities, it shot through the water, it turned at a
suggestion; its mobility, its steadiness, its comfortable size, its
ample deck room, the large capacity of its storage tanks, its strength
and sinewy stiffness delighted us. With this, and with propitious
chances, we could follow leads, narrow and crooked, mount the ice, and
make of it a giant sled, to resume at an instant’s notice its natural
home and so circumvent all treacheries of ice or water, with protean
ease sailing on each.
Lost in his admiration of his creation, as it rose and rocked in a low
swell at the side of the whaler, Goritz stood on the shore and forgot
his priceless chronometer which, wrapped in a red flannel rag, he had
for a moment placed on the sand. The rest of us were not far from him,
but might have failed to detect the imminent danger, when suddenly the
Professor clapping his hands together in vigorous whacks, shouted,
“Antoine! Antoine! The goat, the goat; the chronom—”
The sentence remained incomplete. Like a flash Goritz had wheeled about,
to see his hircine holiness, with insufferable assurance, pick up in his
tremulous lips the precious watch. If Goritz turned like lightning, his
attack on the offender was even a trifle quicker. He caught the beast by
the throat, determined to intercept the descent of the timekeeper into
the intricate passages of the god’s intestines. There was a struggle,
the goat falling over on its back and kicking with might and main, while
Goritz inexorably tightened his constricting grip on the animal’s
wind-pipe. There could be but one of two results—a dead goat or the
recovered chronometer, and, of course, it was the latter.
The choking mascot, with an expiring effort, gagged, and shot the
uninjured instrument, still swathed in its red envelope, from his mouth.
The fallen god’s subjects were at hand also, a little bewildered over
their deity’s predicament. When the reparation, on the part of the goat,
was made, Goritz released him, kicked him, and the humiliated tuna
turned tail and incontinently bolted for the nearest igloo, and—tell it
not in Gath—the affair was construed as a “_good sign_.”
It was the eve of the day appointed for our northward advance. Captain
Coogan invited the officers of another recently arrived whaler aboard,
and spread a generous banquet for us, which involved the last resources
of his larder and pantry, and really seemed sumptuous. I think we all
felt a little overawed, or indeed a good deal so, by the tremendous
exploit we were embarking on. That night the midnight sun shone
strangely along the horizon upon the waste of northern ice, illimitable,
roseate, inscrutable, the white cerement of a dead continent, and that
dead continent the one we hoped to reach alive! Would we?
There were speeches, toasts, stories, impromptu songs (Goritz played
well on a mandolin and sang some courage-inspiring ballads of
Scandinavia, and Hopkins could “warble” as he called it, quite
pleasingly) and we were wished “good luck” a thousand times. Still we
felt the restraint of an overhanging mysterious fate, and all that
Coogan or Isaac Stanwix, or Bell Phillips, or Jack Spent, or the newly
arrived friends from Alaska, could contrive to express of cheer and
encouragement—and the verbal part of the contrivance was rather limited
and monotonous—failed to dispel our solemnity or the inner sense of
serious misgiving. We laughed indeed when Hopkins told the story of the
goat, the chronometer and the goat’s abrupt contrition under Goritz’s
forcible persuasion. Hopkins concluded that it reminded him of an
incident “at home” narrated as follows in verse:
“There was a man named Joseph Cable
Who bought a goat just for his stable,
One day the goat, prone to dine,
Ate a red shirt right off the line.
“Then Cable to the goat did say:
‘Your time has come; you’ll die this day’
And took him to the railroad track,
And bound him there upon his back.
“The train then came; the whistle blew,
And the goat knew well his time was due;
But with a mighty shriek of pain
Coughed up the shirt and flagged the train.”
When all was over, and everyone had gone to bed or bunk, and dreams, I
stole out alone on the deck of the “Astrum” and “thought it over.” The
Arctic silence weighed upon me like an ominous portent; the dusky sun
rolling its flaming orb along the western horizon (it was two o’clock
past midnight) sent shafts of bronzy light over the rubbled ice fields
that returned a twilight glow, and along the horizon on either side of
the sun, low down, burned a spectral conflagration. It was clear, the
wind blew, and chafing sounds, that may have been roars from where they
emanated, but came to me as hoarse whispers, rose northward, as if
spirits spoke.
I remembered how Oolah, the Eskimo, explained Peary’s success in
reaching the pole; he said “_the devil is asleep or having trouble with
his wife, or we should never have come back so easily_.” I devoutly
prayed that domestic turmoil in the household of his satanic majesty
might again prove distracting.
But to penetrate that vast icy solidity with a naphtha launch! It seemed
like trying to break one’s way through a glacier with an ice pick. I
recalled the fable of the Pied Piper when at the “mighty top” of
Koppelberg Hill:
“A wondrous portal opened wide
As if a cavern were suddenly hollowed,”
and I remembered too, to a more practical purpose, that Amundsen
navigated the tiny “_Gjea_,” a sailing sloop with a gasoline engine,
from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
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