In the Inland Sea.
We were waiting the arrival of the Alaska boat,--wandering aimlessly
about the little town, looking off upon the quiet sea, now veiled in a
dense smoke blown down from the vast forest fires that were sweeping the
interior. The sun, shorn of his beams, was a disk of copper; the
sun-track in the sea, a trail of blood. The clang of every ship's bell,
the scream of every whistle, gave us new hope; but we were still
waiting, waiting, waiting. Port Townsend stands knee-deep in the edge of
a sea-garden. I sat a long time on the dock, watching for some sign of
the belated boat. Great ropes of kelp, tubes of dark brown sea-grass,
floated past me on the slow tide. Wonderful anemones, pink,
balloon-shaped, mutable, living and breathing things,--these panted as
they drifted by. At every respiration they expanded like the sudden
blossoming of a flower; then they closed quite as suddenly, and became
mere buds. When the round core of these sea-flowers was exposed to the
air--the palpitating heart was just beneath the surface most of the
time,--they withered in a breath; but revived again the moment the water
glazed them over, and fairly revelled in aqueous efflorescence.
"Bang!" It was the crash of an unmistakable gun, that shook the town to
its foundations and brought the inhabitants to their feet in an instant.
Out of the smoke loomed a shadowy ship, and, lo! it was the Alaska boat.
A goodly number of passengers were already on board; as many more were
now to join her; and then her prow was to be turned to the north star
and held there for some time to come. In a moment the whole port was in
a state of excitement. New arrivals hurried on shore to see the lions of
the place. We, who had been anxiously awaiting this hour for a couple of
long summer days, took the ship by storm, and drove the most amiable and
obliging of pursers nearly frantic with our pressing solicitations.
Everybody was laying in private stores, this being our last chance to
supply all deficiencies. Light literature we found scattered about at
the druggist's and the grocer's and the curiosity shops; also ink,
pens, note-books, tobacco, scented soap and playing-cards were
discovered in equally unexpected localities. We all wanted volumes on
the Northwest--as many of them as we could get; but almost the only one
obtainable was Skidmore's "Alaska, the Sitkan Archipelago," which is as
good as any, if not the best. A few had copies of the "Pacific Coast
Pilot. Alaska. Part I. Dixon's Entrance to Yakutat Bay,"--invaluable as
a practical guide, and filled with positive data. Dall and Whimper we
could not find, nor Bancroft at that time. Who will give us a handy
volume reprint of delightful old Vancouver?
We were busy as bees all that afternoon; yet the night and the starlight
saw us satisfactorily hived, and it was not long before the buzzing
ceased, as ship and shore slept the sleep of the just. By and by we
heard pumping, hosing, deck-washing, the paddling of bare feet to and
fro, and all the familiar sounds of an early morning at sea. The ship,
however, was motionless: we were lying stock-still. Doubtless everybody
was wondering at this, as I was, when there came a crash, followed by a
small avalanche of broken timber, while the ship quaked in her watery
bed. I thought of dynamite and the _Dies Irae_; but almost immediately
the cabin-boy, who appeared with the matutinal coffee, said it was only
the _Olympian_, the fashionable Sound steamer, that had run into us, as
was her custom. She is always running into something, and she succeeded
in carrying away a portion of our stern gear on this occasion.
Nevertheless, we were delayed only a few hours; for the _Olympian_ was
polite enough not to strike us below the water-line, and so by high noon
we were fairly under way.
From my log-book I take the following: This is slow and easy sailing--a
kind of jog-trot over the smoothest possible sea, with the paddles
audibly working every foot of the way. We run down among the San Juan
Islands, where the passages are so narrow and so intricate they make a
kind of watery monogram among the fir-lined shores. A dense smoke still
obscures the sun,--a rich haze that softens the distance and lends a
picturesqueness that is perhaps not wholly natural to the locality,
though the San Juan Islands are unquestionably beautiful.
The Gulf of Georgia, the Straits of Fuca, and Queen Charlotte Sound are
the words upon the lips of everybody. Shades of my schoolboy days! How
much sweeter they taste here than in the old geography class! Before us
stretches a wilderness of islands, mostly uninhabited, which penetrates
even into the sunless winter and the shadowless summer of Behring Sea.
As for ourselves, Old Probabilities has got down to business. He has
opened an impromptu peripatetic school of navigation, and triumphantly
sticks a pin into every point that tallies with his yard-square chart.
The evangelist has his field-glass to his eye in search of the
unregenerated aborigines. The swell tourists are much swollen with
travel; they loosen the belts of their Norfolks, and at intervals affect
a languid interest in this mundane sphere. There are delightful people
on board--many of them--and not a few others. There are bevies of
girls--all young, all pretty; and all, or nearly all, bubbling over with
hearty and wholesome laughter.
What richness! A good, clean deck running the whole length of the ship;
a cosy and cheerful social hall, with a first-class upright piano of
delicious tone, and at least a half dozen creditable performers to
awaken the soul of it; a good table, good weather, good luck, and
positively nothing to do but have a good time for three solid weeks in
the wilderness. The pestiferous telephone can not play the earwig on
board this ship; the telegraph, with metallic tick, can not once startle
us by precipitating town tattle; the postal service is cut off; wars and
rumors of wars, the annihilation of a nation, even the swallowing up of
a whole continent, are now of less consequence to us than the
possibility of a rain-shower this afternoon, or the solution of the
vexed question, "Will the aurora dazzle us before dawn?" We do not
propose to wait upon the aurora: for days and days and days we are going
to climb up the globe due North, getting nearer and nearer to it all the
while. Now, inasmuch as everything is new to us, we can easily content
ourselves for hours by lounging in the easy-chairs, and looking off upon
the placid sea, and at the perennial verdure that springs out of it and
mantles a lovely but lonely land.
Only think of it for a moment! Here on the northwest coast there are
islands sown so thickly that many of the sea-passages, though deep
enough for a three-decker to swim in, are so narrow that one might
easily skim his hat across them. There are thousands of these
islands--yea, tens of thousands,--I don't know just how many, and
perhaps no man does. They are of all shapes and sizes, and the majority
of them are handsomely wooded. The sombre green of the woods, stretching
between the sombre blue-green of the water and the opaline sheen of the
sky, forms a picture--a momentary picture,--the chief features of which
change almost as suddenly and quite as completely as the transformations
in a kaleidoscope. We are forever turning corners; and no sooner are we
around one corner than three others elbow us just ahead. Now, toward
which of the three are we bound, and will our good ship run to larboard
or to starboard? This is a turn one might bet on all day long--and lose
nearly every time.
A bewildering cruise! Vastly finer than river sailing is this Alaskan
expedition. Here is a whole tangle of rivers full of strange tides,
mysterious currents, and sweet surprises. Moreover, we can get lost if
we want to--no one can get lost in a river. We can rush in where pilots
fear to tread, strike sunken rocks, toss among dismal eddies, or plunge
into whirlpools. We can rake overhanging boughs with our yard-arms if
we want to--but we don't want to. In 1875 the United States steamer
_Saranac_ went down in Seymour Narrows, and her fate was sudden death.
The United States steamer _Suwanee_ met with a like misfortune on
entering Queen Charlotte Sound. It is rather jolly to think of these
things, and to realize that we were in more or less danger; though the
shores are as silent as the grave, the sea sleeps like a mill-pond, and
the sun sinks to rest with great dignity and precision, nightly bathing
the lonely North in sensuous splendor.
It is getting late. Most of us are indulging in a constitutional. We
rush up and down the long flush decks like mad; we take fiendish delight
in upsetting the pious dignity of the evangelist; we flutter the smokers
in the smoking-room--because, forsooth, we are chasing the girls from
one end of the ship to the other; and consequently the denizens of the
masculine cabin can give their undivided attention to neither cards nor
tobacco. What fun it all is--when one is not obliged to do it for a
living, and when it is the only healthy exercise one is able to take!
By and by the girls fly to their little nests. As we still stroll in the
ever-so-late twilight, at 10 p. m., we hear them piping sleepily, one to
another, their heads under their wings no doubt. They are early
birds--but that is all right. They are the life of the ship; but for
their mirth and music the twilight would be longer and less delightful.
Far into the night I linger over a final cigarette. An inexpressible
calm steals over me,--a feeling as of deliverance, for the time being at
least, from all the cares of this world. We are steaming toward a mass
of shadows that, like iron gates, seem shut against us. A group of
fellow-voyagers gathers on the forward deck, resolved to sit up and
ascertain whether we really manage to squeeze through some crevice, or
back out at last and go around the block. I grow drowsy and think fondly
of my little bunk.
What a night! Everything has grown vague and mysterious. Not a voice is
heard--only the throb of the engine down below and the articulated
pulsation of the paddles, every stroke of which brings forth a hollow
sound from the sea, as clear and as well defined as a blow upon a
drumhead; but these are softened by the swish of waters foaming under
the wheel. Echoes multiply; myriads of them, faint and far, play
peek-a-boo with the solemn pilot, who silently paces the deck when all
the ship is wrapped in a deep sleep.