Very few of my friends know me for a seafaring man, but I sailed the
salt seas, man and boy, for nine months and eighteen days, and I know
just as much about sailing the hereinbefore mentioned salt seas as I
ever want to.
Ever so long ago, when I was young and tender, I used to have fits of
wanting to go into business for myself. Along about the front edge of
the seventies, pay for "toting" people and truck over the eastern
railroads of New England was not of sufficient plenitude to worry a man
as to how he would invest his pay check--it was usually invested before
he got it. One of my periodical fits of wanting to go into business for
myself came on suddenly one day, when I got home and found another baby
in the house. I was right in the very worst spasms of it when my
brother Enoch, whom I hadn't seen for seventeen years, walked in on me.
Enoch was fool enough to run away to sea when he was twelve years old--I
suppose he was afraid he would get the chance to do something besides
whaling. We were born down New Bedford way, where another boy and myself
were the only two fellows in the district, for over forty years, who
didn't go hunting whales, icebergs, foul smells, and scurvy, up in King
Frost's bailiwick, just south of the Pole.
Enoch had been captain and part owner of a Pacific whaler; she had
recently burned at Honolulu, and he was back home now to buy a new ship.
He had heard that I, his little brother John, was the best locomotive
engineer in the whole world, and had come to see me--partly on account
of relationship, but more to get my advice about buying a steam
whaling-ship. Enoch knew more about whales and ships and such things
than you could put down in a book, but he had no more idea _how_ steam
propelled a ship than I had what a "skivvie tricer" was.
Well, before the week was out, Enoch showed me that he was pretty well
fixed in a financial way, and as he had no kin but me that he cared
about, he offered me an interest in his new steam whaler, if I would go
as chief engineer with her to the North Pacific.
The terms were liberal and the chance a good one, so it seemed, and
after a good many consultations, my wife agreed to let me go for _one_
cruise. She asked about the stops to be made in going around the Horn,
and figured mentally a little after each place was named--I believe now,
she half expected that I would desert the ship and walk home from one of
these spots, and was figuring on the time it would take me.
When the robins were building their nests, the new steam whaler,
"Champion," left New Bedford for parts unknown (_via_ the Horn), with
the sea-sickest chief engineer that ever smelt fish oil. The steam plant
wasn't very much--two boilers and a plain twenty-eight by thirty-six
double engine, and any amount of hoisting rigs, blubber boilers, and
other paraphernalia. We refitted in San Francisco, and on a clear summer
morning turned the white-painted figurehead of the "Champion" toward the
north and stood out for Behring sea. But, while we lay at the mouth of
the Yukon river, up in Alaska, getting ready for a sally into the realm
of water above the Straits, a whaler, bound for San Francisco and home,
dropped anchor near us, the homesickness struck in on me, and--never
mind the details now--your Uncle John came home without any whales, and
was mighty glad to get on the extra list of the old road.
The story I want to tell, however, is another man's story, and it was
while lying in the Yukon that I heard it. I was deeply impressed with it
at the time, and meant to give it to the world as soon as I got home,
for I set it all down plain then, but I lost my diary, and half forgot
the story--who wouldn't forget a story when he had to make two hundred
and ten miles a day on a locomotive and had five children at home? But
now, after twenty years, my wife turns up that old diary in the garret
this spring while house-cleaning. Fred had it and an old Fourth-of-July
cannon put away in an ancient valise, as a boy will treasure up useless
things.
Under the head of October 12th, I find this entry:
"At anchor in Yukon river, weather fair, recent heavy rains; set out
packing and filed main-rod brasses of both engines. Settled with Enoch
to go home on first ship bound south. Demented white man brought on
board by Indians, put in my cabin."
In the next day's record there appears the following: "Watched beside
sick man all night; in intervals of sanity he tells a strange story,
which I will write down to-day."
The 14th has the following:
"Wrote out story of stranger. See the back of this book."
And at the back of the book, written on paper cut from an old log of the
"Champion," is the story that now, more than twenty-five years later, I
tell you here:
On the evening of the 12th, I went on deck to smoke and think of home,
after a hard day's work getting the engines in shape for a siege. The
ship was very quiet, half the crew being ashore, and some of the rest
having gone in the boat with Captain Enoch to the "Enchantress,"
homeward bound and lying about half a mile below us. I am glad to say
that Enoch's principal business aboard the "Enchantress" is to get me
passage to San Francisco. I despise this kind of dreariness--rather be
in state prison near the folks.
I sat on the rail, just abaft the stack, watching some natives handle
their big canoes, when a smaller one came alongside. I noticed that one
of the occupants lay at full length in the frail craft, but paid little
attention until the canoe touched our side. Then the bundle of skins and
Indian clothes bounded up, almost screamed, "At last!" made a spring at
the stays, missed them, and fell with a loud splash into the water.
The Indians rescued him at once, and in a few seconds he lay like one
dead on the deck. I saw at a glance that the stranger in Indian clothes
was a white man and an American.
A pretty stiff dram of liquor brought him to slightly. He opened his
eyes, looked up at the rigging, and closing his eyes, he murmured:
"Thank God!--'Frisco--Polaria!"
I had him undressed and put into my berth. He was shaking as with an
ague, and when his clothes were off we plainly saw the reason--he was a
skeleton, starving. I went on deck at once to make some inquiry of the
Indians about our strange visitor, but their boat was just disappearing
in the twilight.
The man gained strength, as we gave him nourishment in small, frequent
doses, and talked in a disjointed way of everything under the sun. I sat
with him all night. Toward morning he seemed to sleep longer at a time,
and in the afternoon of yesterday fell into a deep slumber, from which
he did not waken for nearly twenty hours.
When he did waken, he took nourishment in larger quantities, and then
went off into another long sleep. The look of pain on his face lessened,
a healthy glow appeared on his cheek, and he slept so soundly that I
turned in--on the floor.
I was awake along in the small hours of the morning, and heard my
patient stirring, so I got up and drew the little curtain over the
bulls-eye port--it was already daylight. I gave him a drink and a
biscuit, and told him I would go to the cook's galley and get him some
broth, but he begged to wait until breakfast time--said he felt
refreshed, and would just nibble a sea biscuit. Then he ate a dozen in
as many minutes.
"Did you take care of my pack?" he said eagerly, throwing his legs out
of the berth, and looking wildly at me.
"Yes, it's all right; lie down and rest," said I; for I thought that to
cross him would set him off his head again.
"Do you know that dirty old pack contains more treasures than the mines
of Africa?"
"It don't look it," I answered, and laughed to get him in a pleasant
frame of mind--for I hadn't seen nor heard of his pack.
"Not for the little gold and other valuable things, but the proofs of a
discovery as great as Columbus made, the discovery of a new continent,
a new people, a new language, a new civilization, and riches beyond the
dreams of a Solomon----"
He shut his eyes for a minute, and then continued: "But beyond
Purgatory, through Death, and the other side of Hell----"
Just here Enoch came in to inquire after his health, and sat down for a
minute's chat. Enoch is first, last, and all the time captain of a
whaler; he knows about whales and whale-hunters just as an engineer on
the road knows every speck of scenery along the line, every man, and
every engine. Enoch couldn't talk ten minutes without being "reminded"
of an incident in his whaling life; couldn't meet a whaleman without
"yarning" about the whale business. He lit his pipe and asked: "Been
whaling, or hunting the North Pole?"
"Well, both."
"What ship?"
"The 'Duncan McDonald.'"
"The--the 'McDonald!'--why, man, we counted her lost these five years;
tell me about her, quick. Old Chuck Burrows was a particular friend of
mine--where is he?"
"Captain, Father Burrows and the 'Duncan McDonald' have both gone over
the unknown ocean to the port of missing ships."
"Sunk?"
"Aye, and crushed to atoms in a frozen hell."
Enoch looked out of the little window for a long time, forgot his pipe,
and at last wiped a tear out of his eye, saying, as much to himself as
to us: "George Burrows made me first mate of the first ship he ever
sailed. She was named for his mother, and we left her in the ice away up
about the seventy-third parallel. He was made of the salt of the
earth--a sailor and a nobleman. But he was a dare-devil--didn't know
fear--and was always venturing where none of the rest of us would dare
go. He bought the 'McDonald,' remodeled and refitted her after he got
back from the war--she was more than a whaler, and I had a feeling that
she would carry Burrows and his crew away forever----"
Eight bells rung just here, and Enoch left us, first ordering breakfast
for the stranger, and saying he would come back to hear the rest after
breakfast.
As I was going out, a sailor came to the door with a flat package,
perhaps six inches thick and twelve or fourteen square, covered with a
dirty piece of skin made from the intestines of a whale, which is used
by the natives of this clime because it is light and water-proof.
"We found this in a coil of rope, sir; it must belong to him. It must be
mostly lead."
It was heavy, and I set it inside the door, remarking that here was his
precious pack.
"Precious! aye, aye, sir; precious don't describe it. Sacred, that's the
word. That package will cause more excitement in the world than the
discovery of gold in California. This is the first time it's been out of
my sight or feeling for months and months; put it in the bunk here,
please."