NEWS FROM HOME
With the first breeze, we set sail for Port Clarence, Alaska, the northern
rendezvous of the Arctic Ocean whaling fleet in early summer. There in the
latter part of June or the early part of July, the fleet always met the
four-masted schooner _Jennie_, the tender from San Francisco, by which all
firms in the whaling trade sent mail and supplies to their vessels. On our
way across from Siberia to Alaska, we passed just south of Behring Straits
and had our first distant glimpse of the Arctic Ocean. When we dropped
anchor in the windy roadstead of Port Clarence, eighteen whale ships were
there ahead of us.
The land about Port Clarence was flat and covered with tall, rank grass--a
region of tundra stretching away to distant hills. The _Jennie_ came in
direct from San Francisco soon after we arrived. Boats from the whale
ships swarmed about her as soon as she dropped anchor, eager for letters
and newspapers. Our mate brought back a big bundle of San Francisco
newspapers which were sent forward after the cabin had read them. They
gave us our first news since leaving Honolulu of how the great world was
wagging. Every man in the forecastle who could read read these papers
from the first headline to the last advertisement. It seemed good to get
into touch once more with the men and events of civilization. Exiles of
the sea, the news of our country seemed to have an intimate personal
meaning to us which it never could possibly have to stay-at-homes to whom
newspapers are every-day, casual budgets of gossip and information. I
remember that a telegraphic brevity describing a murder in my native state
seemed like a message from home.
Among the Eskimos who came aboard the brig from the large village on
shore, was a white man dressed like an Eskimo to the last detail and
looking like one except for a heavy beard. He had run away from a whale
ship three years before, hoping to make his way to some white settlement
to the south and there secure passage on shipboard back to San Francisco.
He had escaped, he said, in an Eskimo kyack tied alongside his ship. As
soon as he was missed officers and boatsteerers put ashore in a boat and
trailed him. He led his pursuers a long chase inland and though he was
shot at several times, he managed to elude them and reach the safety of
the hills.
After he had seen the whaling fleet sail away, he ventured back to the
Eskimo village on shore where he was welcomed by the natives. He soon
found that escape by land was practically impossible; the nearest white
settlement was hundreds of miles distant and he would have to thread his
way through pathless forests and across ranges of mountains covered at all
seasons with ice and snow. Moreover, he learned what he should have known
before he ran away that no vessels except whaling ships, their tender, and
an occasional revenue cutter ever touched at Port Clarence which at that
time was far north of the outmost verge of the world's commerce. There
was nothing left for him to do but settle among the Eskimos and wait for
the arrival of the whaling fleet in the following summer.
During the long Arctic night, with the temperature forty and fifty degrees
below zero, he lived in an igloo after the manner of the natives; learned
to eat raw meat and blubber--there was nothing else to eat--became fluent
in the Eskimo language; and took an Eskimo girl for a wife. He found
existence among these human anachronisms left over from the stone age
a monotonously dreary and soul-wearying experience, and he waited with
nervous impatience for the coming of the fleet with its annual opportunity
for getting back to civilization.
The first year passed and the ships anchored in Port Clarence. He hurried
out in his kyack to ask the Captains for permission to work his way
back to San Francisco. He never once doubted that they would give him
his chance. But a sad surprise was in store for him. From ship to ship
he went, begging to be allowed to remain aboard, but the hard-hearted
captains coldly refused him, one after the other. He was a deserter, they
told him; he had made his bed and he could lie in it; to take him away
would encourage others to desert. Some captains cursed him; some ordered
him off their vessels. Finally the ships sailed away for the whaling
grounds, leaving him marooned on the bleak shore to pass another year in
the squalor of his igloo.
Next year when the whaling fleet came again it was the same story over
again. Again he watched the ships arrive with a heart beating high with
hope and again he saw their topmasts disappear over the horizon, leaving
him hopeless and wretched behind. Before he came aboard the brig, he had
made the rounds of the other ships and had met with the same refusals as
of yore. I saw him go aft and plead with Captain Shorey and that stern
old sea dog turned him down as curtly as the other skippers had done. The
ships sailed away, leaving him to his fate. To me his story was the most
pathetic that ever fell within my personal experience. I never learned
whether he ever managed somehow to get back home or left his bones to
bleach upon the frozen tundra.
From Port Clarence, we headed back to Unalaska to ship our whale bone to
San Francisco by steamer. Midway of our run down the Behring Sea a thick
fog closed about us and we kept our fog horn booming. Soon, off our bows,
we heard another fog horn. It seemed to be coming closer. Our cooper, an
old navy bugler, became suspicious. He got out his old bugle and sounded
"assembly" sharply. As the first note struck into the mist, the other fog
horn ceased its blowing. We did not hear it again. When the mist lifted,
no vessel was in sight, but the situation was clear. We had chanced upon
a poaching sealer and when she heard our cooper's bugle, she concluded we
were a revenue cutter and took to her heels.
[Illustration: At the Gateway to the Arctic]
Aday or two later, we saw the revenue cutter _Corwin_ chasing a poacher.
Heeled over under crowded sail, the sealing schooner was scurrying before
a stiff wind. The _Corwin_ was plowing in hot pursuit, smoke pouring from
her funnel and hanging thick in the wake of the chase. She was gaining
steadily, for she was a steamship and the schooner had only her sails
to depend on. Finally the revenue cutter sent a solid shot across the
schooner's bows. The ball knocked up a great splash of water. But the
poacher did not heave to--just kept on her way, leaning so far over that
the clews of her lower sails almost touched the waves and a big white
feather of spray stood up in front of her. So pursuer and pursued passed
over the horizon and we did not see the end of the hunt. But we knew that
there could be but one end. The fate of that poacher was sealed. Only a
fog could save her, and the sky was clear.
We passed close to St. George Island, the southernmost of the Pribiloff
group, the breeding place of the fur seals. As we came near the shores,
the air literally shook with the raucous, throbbing bark of countless
seals. The din was deafening. Along the shore, a shelving beach ran up
to rocky declivities and beach and rocks were packed with seals. There
may have been a hundred thousand; there may have been a million; and
it seemed as if every seal was barking. The water alongshore swarmed
with them. Thousands of heads were sticking out of the sea. Thousands of
other seals were playing, breaching out of the water like porpoises. They
swam close to the brig and floated lazily on the surface, staring at us
unafraid. If we had been poachers, I should think we could have taken
several hundred thousand dollars worth of seals without difficulty.
A dozen little pup seals whose fur was of a snowy and unspotted white came
swimming about the vessel. These sea babies were soft, furry, cunning
little fellows and they paddled about the brig, sniffing at the strange
monster that had invaded their home. They seemed absolutely fearless and
gazed up at us out of big, brown, wondering, friendly eyes. Sealers kill
them, as their fur makes beautiful edgings and borders for fur garments.
The fur seals are supposed to pass the winter somewhere in the South
Pacific, but whether in the open sea or on land has never been definitely
learned. From their mysterious southern hiding places, they set out for
the North in the early spring. They first appear in March in the waters
off California. Coastwise vessels find the sea alive with thousands of
them. They travel slowly northward following the coast line, fifty or a
hundred miles out at sea, feeding on fish and sleeping on the surface.
Regularly each year in April, a revenue cutter setting out from Port
Townsend for patrol service in Behring Sea and Arctic Ocean waters,
picks up the herd and convoys it to the Pribiloffs to guard it against
the attacks of poachers. The seals swarm through the passes between the
Aleutian islands in May and arrive at the Pribiloffs in the latter part of
that month or early in June.
They remain on the Pribiloffs during the breeding and rearing season and
begin to depart for the South again in the latter part of September. They
are all gone as a rule by November, though in some years the last ones
do not leave until December. They are again seen as they crowd through
the Aleutian channels, but all track of them is lost a few hundred miles
to the south. At what destination they finally arrive on that southward
exodus no man knows. It is one of the mysteries of the sea.
We saw no whales on our southward passage and did not much expect to
see any, though we kept a lookout at the mast-head on the off chance
of sighting some lone spout. The summer months are a second "between
seasons," dividing the spring whaling in Behring Sea from that in the
Arctic Ocean in the fall. The whales had all followed the retreating ice
northward through Behring Straits.
The Fourth of July found us in the middle of Behring Sea. We observed the
glorious Fourth by hoisting the American flag to our gaff-topsail peak,
where it fluttered all day long. Mr. Winchester came forward with two
bottles of Jamaica rum and dealt out a drink all around.
We entered Unalaska harbor by the same long, narrow, and precipitous
channel through which we had passed on our voyage north when we put into
the harbor to have the captain's leg set. Negotiating this channel--I
should say it was about two miles long--was another illustration of our
captain's seamanship. We had to tack innumerable times from one side of
the channel to the other, our jib-boom at every tack projecting over the
land before the brig came around. We finally dropped anchor opposite
the old, cross-crowned Greek church which stands in the center of the
struggling village.