THE LITTLE MEN OF THE DIOMEDES
In the unremembered ages it is probable that the extreme end of Asia,
which is East Cape, Siberia, was joined to the extreme western end of
America, which is Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska. No tradition remains of
the time when the sea broke through this slender barrier, yet even now it
is but about thirty miles in a straight line across, and on clear days
from the mountains of one promontory the other can be faintly discerned.
There is a halfway station, too, two storm-beaten islands which lift
rocky crests of grim granite in the very middle of the hurly-burly of the
straits. These are the Diomede Islands, the greater belonging to Russia,
the lesser to America, and the space between the two is so narrow that
it seems in bright weather as if one could almost throw a stone across,
though in reality it is more than a mile—farther than it looks. Across
this slender land path in those forgotten years came one race after
another from Central Asia, which was the birthplace of races, pressing
southward and peopling the Western hemisphere with tribes, of which
scant traces remain in some instances, while in others their degenerate
descendants are still fading before the westward rush of civilization.
Individuals cross this narrow barrier of tempestuous sea still, but
races come no more, and we find on the halfway station of the Diomedes a
remnant of some ancient people that has stranded there and made a home
where it seems scarcely possible that human creatures could live the year
round.
Here during the recent centuries met the Asiatic and Alaskan Eskimos,
to trade and fight; and the bold, bare cliffs have been the scene of
many a bloody battle. Now even this custom has passed, and the men from
one side of the straits rarely meet those of the other; but the little
remnant of an unknown people, who stranded there no one knows how long
ago, still cling to their rocky islets and live as did their forefathers.
You may find among them some who bear the mark of the Chuckchis, some
who are more like the Alaskan Eskimos, but the little folk, while having
the manners and customs of each, have characteristics which belong to
neither. Hardly five feet in height, they are too small to have battled
successfully with their more robust brethren, but they make up in slyness
and ability what they lack in brute strength. They are shy and reticent,
clever workmen, clever thieves, and cleverest of all in trading.
No vegetation save grass and chickweed grows on their cliffs. They build
their dwellings of flat stones banked with scant earth, and the icy sea,
which rims them round and seems to threaten with certain death, is their
father and their mother in that it provides all they have in the world.
In the brief summer an occasional log of driftwood is thrown against
their cliffs, and from this they fashion their canoe frames and their
spear handles. During all the cold and cruel winter the ice-floes which
crash and grind against the worn granite of their islands bring the seal
and walrus and the polar bear. These and the myriad sea birds of summer
are their supplies.
For many days the southerly gale which had driven the Bowhead from
the Siberian shore kept her in much danger. The sea room was narrow,
ice-floes came driving down before the wind, it was impossible to get
sight of the sun to find the ship’s position, and the drift of the
current toward the straits was an unknown factor. Most of the time
the vessel jogged under reefed topsails, with steam up for use in an
emergency, and Captain Nickerson was almost constantly on deck. Thick
clouds made the nights longer, and very dark, and Harry had a chance to
see the full danger of Arctic navigation.
It was in the gloom of one of these nights that he stood on deck. The
vessel heeled to the gale, now and then an icy wave sent a rush of spray
over the windward rail, the wind howled and wailed in the tense shrouds,
and an eerie glow seemed to show in the darkness without lighting it, as
if dull fires burned behind the cloud curtains. It seemed to Harry as
if they were blown about in chaos, a place dreary, ghostly, and lonely
beyond expression. He shuddered and thought of the people at home, happy
in the bright June weather. For the first time he was sorry for himself,
and homesick. He thought with a great longing of the broad veranda
looking out upon the bay, of his mother sitting there, and he seemed
with his mind’s eye to see Maisie, in a pretty white gown, flitting
gayly across the lawn toward the boats. Then out of the night came a
wild, despairing cry, and something fluttered aboard, crashed against
the mizzen rigging, and fell in a draggled white heap at his feet. The
thought of Maisie was so strong that he sprang forward, with a great cry
of alarm, to pick her up where she had fallen, when a sudden tremendous
gust of the gale threw the Bowhead on her beam ends. A wall of white
water roared down upon him, lifted him up with Maisie in his arms, and he
went out into the night with it, still clinging to the limp figure he had
clutched as he went down.
It was well for Harry that the same sea that sent him overboard sent
with him a coil of line from a belaying-pin, where it hung against the
mizzenmast. The whirl of the wave wound this round him, and the great
boatswain, whose watch on deck it was, saw him go out with it, and
finding it taut, and something towing, hauled away at it until he could
reach down and get him by the collar. Then with one big swing of his
enormous arm he landed him aboard. He set him in a heap on the deck, and
with a hand on either knee peered down at him in the gloom.
“Young feller,” he said, with much emotion, “there’s just one thing I
want you to do for me when we get back to Frisco. Do you know what that
is?”
“What?” asked Harry, wholly dazed and half drowned, replying mechanically.
“I want you to take all the money I get this trip and go and bet it
on something for me. A man that can win out the way you’ve just done
couldn’t lose at any game. Great jumping Jehoshaphat! what have you got
here?”
“Is she all right?” asked Harry, struggling to his feet. He was still
dazed, and had forgotten all the events of the last two months. It seemed
to him that it was Griggs speaking, and that he had just pulled him and
Maisie out of the Fore River.
The boatswain took the limp white figure from his arms and looked at
it. It was a great white bird, quite dead, no doubt killed by its crash
against the mizzenmast.
“Go below, my boy,” he said; “and get something hot and turn in. You’ve
had trouble enough for one night.”
The great boatswain went forward, holding the bird in one hand and now
and then slapping his great leg with the other, and letting forth a roar
of amazed laughter.
“A goose,” he said; “a Yukon goose! Went overboard and came back and
brought a Yukon goose! Well, the young feller is a seven-time winner.
Bet ye we’ll raise whales this trip, all right.” He went forward to the
galley, where he left his game, and then went back on watch.
As light grew through the chaos of struggling mist, the cry of “Land ho!”
rang out from the lookout, and the ship rounded to so near dark cliffs
that stretched upward into the mists out of sight that she was fairly
in the wash of the great waves that thundered at their base. A moment
after, ice barred their farther way on the other tack, and a great floe
moved majestically along, bearing them down toward the cliffs. To lie
to was to be carried in and crushed between ice and rocks, and Captain
Nickerson, who was on deck, wisely guessing that it must be one of the
Diomedes, wore ship and ran before the gale, coasting within sight of the
great rock barrier. A half hour afterward he rounded to and swung close
up under the lee of the towering northeast cliff of the big Diomede; so
close to its sheer lift that one could almost throw a line ashore.
Here was level water indeed, and they were safe from the northward driven
ice-floes, which would split on the island’s prow and sail by to port
and starboard; but they did not escape the wind, which came over the
heights in tremendous “willie-waus,” blowing, as the sailors say, “up and
down like the Irishman’s hurricane.” This seems to be a peculiarity of
the Arctic gale. It comes tearing over the great heights, plunges down
the steep face of the cliffs, and striking the water at their base with
tremendous velocity, sends it whirling out to sea in great masses of
spoondrift that sail along the surface as blown snow does in winter.
Two days more the ship lay head to the cliff, swinging to two anchors,
then the mists blew away, the wind went down rapidly, and the sun shone
brightly on lofty granite heights. Halfway up was a little space of level
ground like a shelf set in a corner of rock, and out of holes in this
green level came stubby fur-clad men and women, who swarmed down the
cliff by paths of their own and launched umiaks from a sheltered little
hidden cove, putting out to the ship.
[Illustration: HOME OF “THE LITTLE MEN” OFF THE DIOMEDES]
Harry was none the worse for his sudden plunge overboard a few days
before. Instead of the weakness and lassitude which had followed his
April upset in the Fore River, there came an immediate reaction, and he
declared a few hours afterward that it had done him good; he would do it
every day, if he could be sure of getting back to the ship so handily.
The Arctic air was already working wonders in him. The experienced seamen
shook their heads at this. They knew well that his chance had been one in
a thousand, and Captain Nickerson rated him soundly for being so careless
as to let a sea catch him that way.
The little men had much walrus ivory, but not much else that was of
value to the ship, and their trading did not last long. They did have
many curios, and Harry had an opportunity to buy some of these with the
“trade goods” he had brought from Seattle for the purpose. By Captain
Nickerson’s advice he had laid in a few dollars’ worth of rubber balls,
huge beads, little mirrors, harmonicas, and trinkets, and he now found
these very useful. He bought with them many walrus teeth; the back teeth,
which are as large as one’s thumb, carved in grotesque but life-like
shape of seals, bear, walrus, and other animals. Two bargains which he
made are noteworthy as showing the ways of the little people in trading.
One of these was for an exquisite pair of little shoes, soled with
walrus hide crimped up into miniature boots, topped with the softest of
fur from the reindeer fawn, and with a bright edging of scarlet cloth.
They were most skillfully fashioned, and tasteful, for the Eskimo is a
born artist, and were brought aboard by a young woman who apparently was
very proud of them, and wished rather to exhibit than to sell them.
Harry, proud of his newly acquired Eskimo, asked her immediately, “Soonoo
pechuckta?” (How much do you want?) but she replied by shaking her head
and putting the shoes away in her fur gown.
By and by she brought them out again and patted them lovingly. Again
Harry tried to get her to name a price for them, and after much labor he
got from her the single word “Oolik” (Blanket).
“Soonoo?” asked Harry again.
“Tellumuk,” was the answer, further emphasized by holding up five fingers.
Five blankets was so obviously exorbitant a price that Harry could not
and would not think of giving it, so he thought to tempt his adversary
with the offer of other things. In vain he brought out tin trumpets,
harmonicas, bangles, beads, and even two alarm clocks, which he had
found elsewhere to be greatly desired by the tribes, and offered them
singly and in groups; the owner of the little shoes was determined. To
all his offers she replied with fine scorn, “Peluck” (No good), and clung
persistently to her first price.
But Harry, grown wise, took a leaf from her own book. He bethought him of
a little plate-glass mirror, rimmed with scarlet plush, which he had not
offered thus far. It had cost him a dollar and a half at Seattle, but he
was willing to trade it for the shoes. Yet he was convinced that direct
offer would be useless. So he brought it on deck, and without looking at
the obdurate young woman began admiring his own countenance in it. When
she took a furtive interest in it, he thrust it back in his own pocket.
After a little he took it out again, and once more contemplated himself
in its depths. This ludicrous performance continued for some time, and
he could not tell whether or not his adversary were much interested, so
cleverly did she veil her thoughts. By and by her boatload of people were
ready to go home, and getting into the umiak, called to her to come with
them. Harry saw that she lingered, and he played his last card.
“Ah de gar!” he exclaimed; “ah de gar!” (Wonderful! wonderful!) and
held the mirror in front of the little woman. She saw her own comely
countenance in it, she saw the beveled glass and the vivid scarlet plush,
and as Harry held out his other hand she gave a twitch of her shoulders,
snatched the shoes from their concealment in her gown, and gave them
to him. At the same time she caught up the mirror, flounced down into
the umiak, and settled herself on the bottom, with an air that was
ludicrously like that of her civilized sister when angry with herself for
being outwitted. Vanity and curiosity had conquered, but it was the only
case in all his dealings with Eskimos in which Harry ever knew one of
them to name a price for an article and then accept something different.
The other trade, if trade it could be called, was a different matter. It
was with the smallest of the Eskimo men of another boat. He had half a
dozen ivory finger rings, carved symmetrically with a seal’s head, or two
or three, where stones would be. Harry sighted these and wished to trade
for the bunch, but this did not suit the little man at all. Instead, with
much pomp and much show of valuing it highly, he took one ring from the
string and offered it to Harry, saying:—
“Tobac, tobac, tunpanna kowkow” (Eating tobacco).
The Eskimos are not great smokers, a whiff or two is generally enough
for them, but they are very fond of chewing tobacco, or “eating tobacco”
as they call it, and there was a good store of this on the ship. Harry
offered a moderate-sized piece for the ring and then wanted to purchase
the second with a similar piece. This he could not do. The crafty little
man’s price had risen fivefold, and it was only reluctantly that he
parted with the second ring at the price of five pieces of tobacco.
But when it came to the third one, there seemed to be no such thing as
purchasing it. Harry offered tobacco galore, added trinkets and trade
goods, but the little man was obdurate and all chances of trade seemed
off.
Harry remembered the shoes and the mirror, and did not despair. He went
down to his locker and brought out the alarm clock again. He wound it
up, set the alarm for a little ahead of the moment, and took it on deck.
There he set it up on a cask and waited. Several of the Eskimos gathered
round and admired it, but the little man only looked at it out of the
corner of his eye.
After a few minutes the alarm went off, and being a vigorous one, it
startled the crowd of little men and women around it. They nearly fell
over one another in astonishment, and when Harry wound up the alarm and
set it off again, their delight was great. The ring-maker tried to assume
an air of indifference, but when his boat was ready to go he came toward
Harry as if to offer to trade. Harry had learned much of the ways of
the Eskimo trader by that time and turned away indifferently. When the
boat was loaded, he strolled to the side with the clock in his hand.
The little man held up one ring, but he shook his head. Then the Eskimo
offered two. The boat was just going, and Harry wanted the rings so much
that he yielded. It would make four in all, which was perhaps all he
cared for anyway. He handed the clock to the little man, and that worthy
dropped something in his palm as he did so. At the same time he pointed
toward the cliff and jabbered something excitedly in Eskimo.
Harry looked where he pointed but saw nothing. The boat was several
lengths away now, the click of the windlass pawl showed that the
Bowhead’s anchor was coming up, and they were off. The little man was
no longer gesticulating, but looked back over his shoulder and solemnly
winked one eye. This was a new feature in Eskimo expression, and Harry
wondered much if a wink meant as much with these seemingly stolid people
as with us. As he mused, the umiak rounded the cliff and was gone, and
Harry looked at his two rings for the first time. They were not rings at
all, only two circular sections of a walrus back tooth, flat and useless
disks, which the little man may have meant to make into rings later.
Then he realized that a wink is a wink the world over, and the language
of signs is common to all people.
The day was bright, the gale was over, and the Bowhead put to sea, once
more heading northward into the mysterious Arctic, keeping a keen lookout
for whales. The southerly weather had driven the ice of the straits far
to the northward, and though there was now and then a floating cake, the
pack was many miles distant.
“Suppose you could pull a whaleboat oar?” asked Captain Nickerson of
Harry that day at dinner.
“Why, yes, sir,” replied Harry, “I think so. I’m a good oarsman, though I
have never used quite such large oars as you have in the whaleboats.”
“I’m sure he could, father,” said Joe; “what of it?”
“Why, this,” replied his father; “you’ve been practically second mate of
the Bowhead ever since we left Hawaii. Now I think I shall let you take
a second mate’s place in charge of one of the boats, and am planning to
have Harry pull an oar in your boat.”
Both boys turned red with delight at this prospect, and it was soon
decided to thus promote them to the list of regular whalemen. Billy,
an experienced Kanaka harpooner, was assigned to their boat as being a
level-headed, skillful whaleman, whose counsel would be of use to Joe,
and the whole thing was arranged.
If the two boys had been anxious to sight whales before, they were doubly
eager now, and both spent as much time as they could in the rigging on
the lookout. It was Joe who first of the two boys sighted a bowhead. The
cry of “A-h-h blow!” had rung from the crow’s nest, and the Kanaka on the
watch there reported a whale nearly dead ahead. All hands were on the
lookout for the spout of this one, for the Kanakas in many cases have
wonderful eyesight and can sight a whale much farther than the average
white man, when, several points off the windward bow, Joe saw another
blow and loudly proclaimed it from the mizzen rigging. A few moments
afterward a third and a fourth were sighted, and the ship approached a
school of black monsters numbering a dozen or so. Then she rounded to, a
little to the windward, and the boats were hastily lowered. Harry found
himself at the end of a sixteen-foot sweep that was very different from
the oars he had been used to, but he soon accustomed himself to the
stroke and swung along in good time with the others. He was conscious of
a feeling of great elation, the thrill of ecstasy of the huntsman mingled
with the dread of the unknown. They seemed such puny creatures to be
attacking the greatest monster in the world. As they went on, both these
feelings increased, till he shook with excitement and the man behind him
noticed it. He was a brawny, grizzly old timer, bronzed by all the winds
of the world, and hardened by many a hundred conflicts with the whales of
all seas.
“Don’t get gallied, younker,” he said kindly; “the bowhead ain’t no
whale. He’s jest a hundred tons or so of blubber and bone. If we was
goin’ up against a sperm now, or a fightin’ bull humpback, ye might
feel skeery, but a bowhead ain’t nothin’. They kill as easy as a
slaughter-house lamb.”
Just then Harry fairly jumped from his seat, and lost his stroke for a
moment. A shout had sounded, and glancing over his shoulder he saw that
the first mate’s boat near by had already made fast, but had not as yet
used the bomb gun. Instead, the whale seemed to have sounded too quickly,
then changed his mind, and as Harry looked up over his shoulder he saw a
great black mass rise fairly under the attacking boat, lifting it clear
of the water, where it hung high for a moment, then, by some miracle
still uncapsized, slid from the broad mass as if being launched. Even as
the boat left the mountainous back, the mate leveled the bomb gun and
discharged it full into the whale’s side. There was a shiver, the great
flukes curled in one sweep that sent tons of spray into the air, which
Mr. Jones with a skillful sweep of the steering oar narrowly avoided, and
then the great black mass floated quivering on the surface.
“I told ye so, younker,” said the veteran, still swinging steadily and
strongly to his oar. “He’s a dead un. There ain’t no fight in a bowhead.
Ef that had been a sperm bull, there wouldn’t have been enough of that
boat left to swear by. Oh, this ain’t whalin’, this ain’t; it’s pickin’
up blubber.”
Joe, standing by the steering oar, lifted his hand in a gesture
commanding silence. His eyes glowered big beneath his cap, and Harry knew
that they were close on to their game. A few more strokes and then, “Way
enough,” said Joe gently. They glided silently forward with lifted oars.
It seemed to Harry as if something took him by the throat and stopped his
breathing. He would have given much to look around, but something held
him motionless. He heard the stirring forward as the Kanaka harpooner
moved to his position in the very bow. Then there was a gentle jolt and a
“Huh!” from the harpooner as he drove the iron home.
“Give it to him!” yelled Joe; “stern all!”
Harry backed water mechanically, feeling curiously numb all over. He
heard the report of the gun, and saw something tremendous and black beat
the water three times with great blows within a few feet of the blade
of his oar. A rush of foam shot from these blows and seemed to overwhelm
him in a smother of salt water. Then he found himself still sitting on
the thwart, wet to the skin and up to his knees in water, but still,
to his great astonishment, alive and right side up, and backing water
with mechanical precision. There was no sound save the whir of the line
through the chock and the voice of the veteran in his ear.
“You’re all right, boy,” it said. “Ye didn’t jump out, and ye kept your
oar a-goin’. Ye’ll make a whaleman ’fore many days, an’ a good one, too.
He’s soundin’ now, but he’ll come up dead. The Kanaka put the bomb into
him right. He’s our whale.”
The rush of the line slackened and then ceased, and they began to take
in on it. A long time they pulled steadily, and at last the black bulk
showed in the wash of the dancing waves on the surface, the nerveless
flipper swaying in the swell, and blood flowing from the spout-hole. Joe
and Harry had captured their first whale in regulation fashion, and two
prouder boys it would be hard to find. A hole was cut in the gristle of
the great flukes, and the work of towing the monster to the ship was
begun. Harry could not put much strength into his stroke at first, he was
too weak with the reaction from the excitement, but he soon recovered
from this and tugged away manfully.
A little way ahead of them was the first mate’s boat with an equally
large capture in tow; astern was the captain’s boat, which had failed
to make fast, and which soon pulled in to their assistance; but the
boatswain was having the greatest adventure of them all. He had made fast
to a good-sized whale, which had immediately become gallied, and without
waiting to be reached by bomb gun or lance had started out at a terrific
pace, headed apparently for the north pole. The boat was already almost
out of sight in the distance and diminishing steadily in size. By and by
it grew no smaller, but gradually moved along the horizon, proving that
the tow had changed its course. Indeed, it seems to be well established
that a frightened whale runs in a circle, though generally a very large
one. This particular bowhead had done this, though his circle was much
smaller than many would have made. Thus it happened that when the two
whales which the first mate’s boat and Joe’s had struck were alongside,
the boatswain’s was looming large on the horizon again and approaching
rapidly. The circle which his whale had taken seemed to include the
position of the ship in a part of its circumference. With strength and
vivacity quite unusual for a bowhead, the monster kept up the pace,
and had thus far frustrated the boat’s attempts to close up and kill.
The boatswain, seeing that the whale was towing them toward the ship
again, had ceased to attempt it, confident that even such a wonder of a
pace-setter would finally tire, and wishing to be as near the ship as
possible when the final stroke was made. Much attention to the race was
given by those aboard, and Harry had an uneasy feeling that the monster,
even though a proverbially timid bowhead, was bent on wreaking vengeance
on the ship. If the huge creature should hurl himself against it at the
pace at which he was coming, the result would be wreck beyond a doubt.
On he came at a great rate, ploughing through the water like a torpedo
boat, the boatswain now straining every nerve to get up with him, but
when the whale was within an eighth of a mile, there was an unexpected
interference. He swerved to the right, again to the left, sounded and
then breached, and the next moment a mottled black and white orca flung
itself into the air, turned end over end, and came down with a tremendous
thud in the middle of the bowhead’s back.
A strange groaning bellow came from the whale, but he plunged on
desperately. Again the orca launched its twenty-five feet of length into
the air and came down on the poor bowhead; and now another appeared,
and the two alternately beat the frenzied and exhausted whale till it
apparently had what little breath there was left hammered out of its
body. Right alongside he gave up the fight and rolled motionless on the
surface. The bellow had already subsided to a moan; this was followed
by a gasp or two, and the bowhead ceased to breathe, turned on his side
with the flipper in the air, dead before the boat could get alongside
and finish the matter. The orcas had literally hammered the exhausted
whale to death, and were now tearing at his lip to get his mouth open
and devour the soft, spongy tongue, which is their chief delight. They
seemed to pay no attention to the ship or the boat, and Harry had a good
opportunity to see the behavior of these wild wolves of the sea before
the boatswain, with much indignation, lanced them both to death.
“You’ll try to eat up my whale, will you, you blasted davy devils! Take
that—and that—and that!” and with every “that” the keen lance searched
the vitals of the gnawing orcas.
One died still voraciously tearing at the whale’s under lip, but the
other turned at the blow of the lance and bit at what had stung it,
taking the bow of the boat in its jaws and crushing and shaking it in the
final agony as a terrier might worry a cat. The great teeth crunched the
wood, and the men, with cries of terror, were shaken out of the boat, but
luckily none were caught in the grasp of the jaws. The lance-thrust was
deadly, and in a moment the orcas lay, belly up, beside the dead whale.
The men were so near the side of the ship that ropes were thrown to them
and they clambered aboard, after some trouble to save the gear and the
crushed boat, which was towed alongside and hoisted on deck.
Thus ended the first adventure with a school of bowheads in the Arctic.
Not so badly, though the whales had been much more lively and the events
far more exciting than is common in the pursuit of this gentlest of
cetaceans. A week of calm, warm weather followed, and at the end of
that time the three whales were cut in, the blubber tried out, and the
oil stowed away, together with three good heads of bone, making a fine
beginning of what bade fair to be a very prosperous summer cruise.