CHAPTER XIV

Callers from Asia

"Winter," he said, "sun pau; daylight pau. All dark. Water pau; all ice. Land pau, all snow. Eskimo igloo, plenty fire. Moss in blubber oil all time blaze up. Cold pau. Plenty hot. Eskimo, he sweat. Clothes pau. Good time. Hot time. Eat plenty. Sleep."

This seemed to me a good, vivid description. The picture was there, painted chiefly with "nothing."

Of course he had the English words "yes" and "no" in his assortment, but his way of using them was pure Eskimo. For instance: "You wear no clothes in winter?" I asked him. "No," he replied. "No?" I echoed in surprise. "Yes," he said. His "yes" merely affirmed his "no." It sometimes required a devious mental process to follow him.

A pretty girl came up to me with a smile and an ingratiating air.

"Tobac," she said holding out her hand.

I handed her my smoking plug. She took half of it at one cavernous bite and gave the remainder back to me, which I thought considerate. She enjoyed the tobacco. She chewed upon it hard, working her jaws as if she weremasticating a dainty tidbit. Did she expectorate? Not a drop. She evidently did not propose to waste any of the flavor of that good weed. Neither did she get sick—that pretty Eskimo girl. At last when she had chewed for twenty minutes or so, she removed her quid and stuck it behind her right ear. She chewed it at intervals later on, always between times wearing it conspicuously behind her ear.

I rather expected our guests would depart after a call of an hour or so. Not so. They had come to stay indefinitely. When they became tired they lay on deck—it didn't make any particular difference where—and went quietly to sleep. They seemed to have no regular time for sleeping. I found Eskimos asleep and awake during all my deck watches. As it was day all the twenty-four hours, I wondered if these people without chronometers did not sometimes get their hours mixed up.

New parties of Eskimos kept coming to see us. One of these had killed a walrus and the skin and the raw meat, butchered into portable cuts, lay in the bottom of their big family canoeof hide. The boat was tied alongside and the Eskimos came aboard. If any of them became hungry, they climbed down into the canoe and ate the raw walrus meat, smacking their lips over it. When the sailors would lean over the rail to watch this strange feat of gastronomy, the Eskimos would smile up at them with mouths smeared with blood and hold out a red chunk in invitation. It was their joke.

We loafed in St. Lawrence Bay for more than a week. We could not have sailed away if we had wanted to, for all the time there was a windless calm and the sea heaved and fell, unruffled by a ripple, like a vast sheet of moving mercury.

It was weather characteristic of the Arctic summer—a beautiful dream season of halcyon, silver seas, opalescent haze, and tempered golden sunlight. To the men in skin clothes, it was warm weather, but one had only to step from sunshine to shadow to pass from summer to winter. One perspired in the sunlight; in the shadow there was frost, and if the spot were damp, a coating of ice.

I went duck hunting with a boat's crew oneday. Mr. Winchester, who headed the boat, was a good hand with a shotgun and brought back a fine bag. One of the ducks, knocked over on the wing, dropped within a few feet of shore. When we rowed to pick it up, I touched Siberia with an oar. I felt that it was a sort of handshake with the Asiatic continent. I never landed and never got any nearer.

In a little while, most of us had traded for a number of nicely tanned hair-seal skins and had set the Eskimo women and girls to work tailoring trousers and vests and coats. It was marvelous how dexterous they were at cutting and sewing. They took no measurements and yet their garments fitted rather snugly. Before they began sewing they softened the edges of the skins by chewing them. They wore their thimble on their index finger and drove the needle into one side of the skins and jerked it through from the other side with such amazing rapidity that the two movements seemed one. A good seamstress—and all seemed remarkably expert—could cut and sew a pair of trousers in an hour, a bit of work it would have taken asailor a day or two to accomplish. We could hire a seamstress for an entire morning or afternoon for five hardtack. A bowl of soup with a piece of salt horse was sufficient pay for a day's labor.

My old skin clothes, which I had obtained from the slop-chest were greasy, dirty, and worn and I had an Eskimo woman make me a complete new outfit from hair-seal skins I purchased from her husband. She cut out a coat, vest, and trousers, spreading the skins on deck and using a knife in cutting. She sat cross-legged on deck most of the day sewing on the garments and I carefully superintended the job. She ornamented the coat with a black dogskin collar and edged it down the breast and around the bottom with the same material, which set off the glistening seal skin attractively. I also bought a new squirrel skin shirt with a hood attached. When I appeared on deck in my new toggery, I felt quite presentable.

However, I was not alone in gorgeous regalia. Most of my shipmates were soon looking like animate statues of silver in their shining sealskins. Our turns up and down deck became fashion parades. We strutted like peacocks, it must be admitted, and displayed our fine clothes to best advantage under the eyes of the Eskimo beauties.

It remained for Peter, our rolypoly little Swede, to make the only real, simon-pure conquest. In his new clothes, which sparkled like a silver dollar fresh from the mint, and with his fresh boyish face, he cut quite a handsome figure and one little Eskimo maid fell a victim to his fatal fascinations. "'E's killed her dead," said English Bill White. She was perhaps fifteen years old, roguish eyed, rosy cheeked, and with coal-black hair parted in the middle and falling in two braids at the sides of her head. Plump and full of life and high spirits, the gay little creature was as pretty as any girl I saw among the Eskimos.

Peter was all devotion. He gave his sweetheart the lion's share of all his meals, feasting her on salt horse, hardtack, soup, and gingerbread which to her primitive palate that never had risen to greater gastronomic heights thanblubber and raw meat must have seemed epicurean delicacies. The sailors called the girl "Mamie," which was very different from the Eskimo name her mother spluttered at her. If Peter was missed at any time, it was only necessary to locate the charming Miss Mamie, and there by her side Peter would be found, speaking only with his eyes and making distinct progress.

Sometimes Peter, finding optical language not entirely satisfactory, pressed into his service the intellectual Eskimo as interpreter. These three-cornered efforts at love making were amusing to all who chanced to overhear them;—the dashing young Romeo could scarcely talk English himself, the interpreter could talk even less and the object of Peter's adoration could not speak a word.

As the upshot of this interesting affair, the little lady and Peter plotted between them that Peter should run away from the ship and live among her people. This plan appealed to Peter who was a cold weather product himself and almost as primitive as his inamorata. But Peter made one mistake;—he took old Nels Nelson,his countryman and side-partner, into his confidence. Nelson loved the boy like a father and did his best to persuade him to give up the idea, but Peter was determined.

One twilight midnight with the sun just skimming below the horizon, Peter wrapped from head to foot in an Eskimo woman's mackintosh of fish intestine, with the hood over his head and half hiding his chubby face, climbed over the rail into an Eskimo boat with a number of natives, his sweetheart among them, and set out for shore. Nelson and several sailors watched the boat paddle away, but no one but Nelson knew that the person bundled up in the native raincoat was Peter. The boat got half a mile from the brig. Then Nelson could stand it no longer. The strain was too much. He rushed back to the quarter-deck where old Gabriel was walking up and down.

"Peter's run away," Nelson blurted out. "There he goes in that boat. That's him dressed up like a woman in fish-gut oil-skins."

Peter's Sweetheart

Without ado Gabriel called aft the watch, manned a boat, and set out in pursuit. The Eskimo canoe was quickly overhauled and Peter was captured and brought back aboard.

"You ben bigges' fool for sech a li'l' boy I ever have see," said Gabriel severely. "You don't know you freeze to deaf up here in winter time, no?"

Peter had nothing to say. He was ashamed, but he was mad, too. He was not punished. When Captain Shorey learned of the escapade, he merely laughed. Peter took the matter quite to heart and pouted for days. To the end of the voyage, he still dreamed of his Eskimo sweetheart and of the happiness that might have been his. Every time he spoke of her his eyes grew bright. "She was fine gal," he used to say.

MOONSHINE AND HYGIENE

We noticed that several of our Eskimo guests appeared at times to be slightly under the influence of liquor and thought perhaps they had obtained gin or rum from some whaling vessel that had touched at the port before we arrived. We asked the intellectual Eskimo where these fellows had got their booze. He pointed to an Eskimo and said, "Him."

"Him" was a lordly person dressed in elaborately trimmed and ornamented skin clothes. From the way he strutted about, we had fancied him a chief. He turned out be a "moonshiner."

This doubtless will surprise those whose ideas of "moonshiners" are associated with southern Appalachian ranges, lonely mountain coves, revenue raids, and romance. But here was an Eskimo"moonshiner" who made unlicensed whiskey under the midnight sun and yet was as genuine a "moonshiner" as any lawless southern mountaineer. The sailors, being thirsty souls, at once opened negotiations with him for liquor. He drew from beneath his deer-skin coat a skin bottle filled with liquor and sold it to us for fifteen hardtack. Wherefore there was, for a time, joy in the forecastle—in limited quantity, for the bottle was small. This product of the ice-bound North was the hottest stuff I ever tasted.

The captain was not long in discovering that the Eskimo had liquor to sell and sent a boat ashore with a demijohn. The jug was brought back filled with Siberian "moonshine," which had been paid for with a sack of flour. The boat's crew found on the beach a little distillery in comparison with which the pot stills of the Kentucky and Tennessee mountains, made of old kitchen kettles would seem elaborate and up-to-date plants. The still itself was an old tin oil can; the worm, a twisted gun barrel; the flake-stand, a small powder keg. The mashused in making the liquor, we learned, was a fermented mixture of flour and molasses obtained in trade from whale ships. It was boiled in the still, a twist of moss blazing in a pan of blubber oil doing duty as a furnace. The vapor from the boiling mash passed through the worm in the flake-stand and was condensed by ice-cold water with which the powder keg was kept constantly filled by hand. The liquor dripped from the worm into a battered old tomato can. It was called "kootch" and was potently intoxicating. An Eskimo drunk on "kootch" was said to be brave enough to tackle a polar bear, single-handed. The little still was operated in full view of the villagers. There was no need of secrecy. Siberia boasted no revenue raiders.

The owner of the plant did an extensive trade up and down the coast and it was said natives from Diomede Islands and Alaska paddled over in their canoes andbidarkasto buy his liquor. They paid for it in walrus tusk ivory, whale bone, and skins and the "moonshiner" was the richest man in all that part of Siberia.

If contact with civilization had taught the Eskimo the art of distillation and drunkenness, it also had improved living conditions among them. Many owned rifles. Their spears and harpoons were steel tipped. They bartered for flour, molasses, sugar, and all kinds of canned goods with the whale ships every summer. They had learned to cook. There was a stove in the village. The intellectual Eskimo boasted of the stove as showing the high degree of civilization achieved by his people. The stove, be it added, was used chiefly for heating purposes in winter and remained idle in summer. The natives regarded the cooked foods of the white man as luxuries to be indulged in only occasionally in a spirit of connoisseurship. They still preferred their immemorial diet of blubber and raw meat.

Aside from these faint touches of civilization, the Eskimos were as primitive in their life and mental processes as people who suddenly had stepped into the present out of the world of ten thousand years ago. I fancy Adam and Eve would have lived after the manner of theEskimos if the Garden of Eden had been close to the North Pole.

There is apparently no government or law among these Eskimos. They have no chiefs. When it becomes necessary to conduct any business of public importance with outsiders, it is looked after by the old men. The Eskimos are a race, one may say, of individuals. Each one lives his life according to his own ideas; without let or hindrance. Each is a law unto himself. Under these conditions one might expect they would hold to the rule of the strong arm under which might makes right. This is far from true. There is little crime among them. Murder is extremely rare. Though they sometimes steal from white men—the sailors on the brig were warned that they would steal anything not nailed down—they are said never—or hardly ever—to steal from each other. They have a nice respect for the rights of their neighbors. They are not exactly a Golden Rule people, but they mind their own business.

The infrequency of crime among them seems stranger when one learns that they never punishtheir children. Eskimo children out-Topsy Topsy in "just growing." I was informed that they are never spanked, cuffed, or boxed on the ears. Their little misdemeanors are quietly ignored. It might seem logical to expect these ungoverned and lawless little fellows to grow up into bad men and women. But the ethical tradition of the race holds them straight.

When a crime occurs, the punishment meted out fits it as exactly as possible. We heard of a murder among the Eskimos around St. Lawrence Bay the punishment of which furnishes a typical example of Eskimo justice. A young man years before had slain a missionary by shooting him with a rifle. The old men of the tribe tried the murderer and condemned him to death. His own father executed the sentence with the same rifle with which the missionary had been killed.

Tuberculosis is a greater scourge among the Eskimos than among the peoples of civilization. This was the last disease I expected to find in the cold, pure air of the Arctic region. But I was told that it caused more than fifty per cent.of the deaths among the natives. These conditions have been changed for the better within the last few years. School teachers, missionaries, and traveling physicians appointed by the United States government have taught the natives of Alaska hygiene and these have passed on the lesson to their kinsmen of Siberia. Long after my voyage had ended, Captain A. J. Henderson, of the revenue cutterThetisand a pioneer judge of Uncle Sam's "floating court" in Behring Sea and Arctic Ocean waters, told me of the work he had done in spreading abroad the gospel of health among the Eskimos.

Finding tuberculosis carrying off the natives by wholesale, Captain Henderson began the first systematic crusade against the disease during a summer voyage of his vessel in the north. In each village at which theThetistouched, he took the ship's doctor ashore and had him deliver through an interpreter a lecture on tuberculosis. Though the Eskimos lived an out-door life in summer, they shut themselves up in their igloos in winter, venturing out only when necessity compelled them, and living in a super-heated atmosphere without ventilation. As a result their winter igloos became veritable culture beds of the disease.

Eskimos Summer Hut at St. Lawrence Bay

Those afflicted had no idea what was the matter with them. Their witch doctors believed that they were obsessed by devils and attempted by incantations to exorcise the evil spirits. The doctor of theThetishad difficulty in making the natives understand that the organism that caused their sickness was alive, though invisible. But he did succeed in making them understand that the disease was communicated by indiscriminate expectoration and that prevention and cure lay in plenty of fresh air, cleanliness, and wholesome food.

In all the villages, Captain Henderson found the igloos offensively filthy and garbage and offal scattered about the huts in heaps. He made the Eskimos haul these heaps to sea in boats and dump them overboard. He made them clean their igloos thoroughly and take off the roofs to allow the sun and rains to purify the interiors. After this unroofing, Captain Henderson said, the villages looked as if a cyclone had struckthem. He taught the natives how to sew together sputum cups of skin and cautioned the afflicted ones against expectoration except in these receptacles.

The Eskimos were alive to the seriousness of the situation and did their utmost to follow out these hygienic instructions to the last detail. As a result of this first missionary campaign in the cause of health, the Eskimos have begun to keep their igloos clean and to ventilate them in winter. There has grown up among them an unwritten law against indiscriminate expectoration more carefully observed than such ordinances in American cities. The villages have been gradually turned into open-air sanitariums and the death rate from tuberculosis has been materially reduced.

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 schoonerJennie, 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. TheJenniecame 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 wasfar 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 remainaboard, 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 neverlearned 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.

At the Gateway to the Arctic

A day or two later, we saw the revenue cutterCorwinchasing a poacher. Heeled over under crowded sail, the sealing schooner was scurrying before a stiff wind. TheCorwinwas 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 hidingplaces, 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 arriveon 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 illustrationof 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.

SLIM GOES ON STRIKE

It was the heart of the Arctic summer and the high hills that rose all about the town were green with deep grass—it looked as if it would reach a man's waist—and ablaze with wild flowers. I was surprised to see such a riot of blooms in this far northern latitude, but there they were, and every off-shore breeze was sweet with their fragrance. The village was dingy enough, but the country looked alluring and, as the day after we dropped anchor was Sunday and nothing to do aboard, the crew decided to ask for a day's liberty ashore. Bill White, the Englishman, and Slim, our Royal Life Guardsman, agreed to act as the forecastle's ambassadors to the cabin. They dressed up in their smartest clothes and went aft to interview Captain Shorey on the quarter-deck. White madethe speech of the occasion and proffered the forecastle's request in his best rhetoric. Captain Shorey puffed silently at his cigar. "I'll see about it," he said. That closed the incident as far as the captain was concerned. We got no shore leave.

As the day wore away and the desired permission failed to materialize, the forecastle became piqued at what it considered the skipper's gratuitous ungraciousness. Slim waxed particularly indignant.

"He'll 'see about it,'" Slim sneered. "He never had no idea of letting us go in the first place. He's a cold-blooded son of a sea cook—that's what he is—and as for me, I'll never do another tap of work aboard the bloody hooker."

This was strong language. Of course, none of us took it seriously, feeling sure Slim would reconsider by the next morning and turn to for work with the rest of us. But we did not know Slim. Bright and early Monday morning, the men mustered on deck and went to work, but Slim remained in his bunk.

Having rowed our whale bone to the dock andstored it in a warehouse to await the first steamer for San Francisco, a boat's crew towed three or four hogsheads roped together ashore for water. Another boat went ashore for coal. Those left aboard the brig were put to work in the hold near the main hatch under the supervision of Mr. Winchester. The mate suddenly noted Slim's absence.

"Where's Slim?" he asked.

Nobody answered.

"He didn't go ashore in the boats," said the mate. "Where is he?"

Someone volunteered that Slim was sick.

"Sick, eh?" said the mate.

He hustled off to the forecastle scuttle.

"Slim," he sang out, "what's the matter with you?"

"I'm sick," responded Slim from his bunk.

"If you're sick," said the mate, "come aft and report yourself sick to the captain."

In a little while, Slim shuffled back to the cabin. A few minutes later wild yells came from the cabin. We stopped work. The mate seemed to think we might rush to the rescue.

Hoisting the Blubber Aboard

"Get busy there," he roared. "Slew that cask around."

The yells broke off. We went to work again. For a half hour, there was silence in the cabin. We wondered what had happened. Slim might have been murdered for all we knew. Finally Slim emerged and went silently forward. We noticed a large shaved spot on the top of his head where two long strips of court-plaster formed a black cross.

The first thing Slim did after getting back to the forecastle was to take one of his blue flannel shirts and, while none of the officers was looking, shin up the ratlines and hang it on the fore-lift. This is an old-time sailor sign of distress and means trouble aboard. The mate soon spied the shirt swinging in the breeze.

"Well, I'll be darned," he said. "Jump up there one of you and take that shirt down."

No one stirred. The mate called the cabin boy and the young Kanaka brought down the shirt. Slim told us at dinner time all about his adventure in the cabin.

"I goes down in the cabin," said Slim, "andthe captain is standing with his hands in his pants pockets, smiling friendly-like. 'Hello, Slim,' he says. 'Sit down in this chair.' I sits down and the captain says, 'Well, my boy, what's the matter with you?' 'I'm sick,' says I. 'Where do you feel bad?' he says. 'I ache all over,' says I. He steps over in front of me, still with that little smile on his face. 'I've got good medicine aboard this ship,' he says, 'and I'll fix you up in a jiffy, my boy,' says he. With that he jerks one of his hands out of his pocket and he has a revolver clutched in it. 'Here's the medicine you need,' he says and he bats me over the cocoanut with the gun.

"The blood spurts all over me and I jumps up and yells, but the captain points his pistol at me and orders me to sit down again. He storms up and down the cabin floor. 'I'll teach you who's master aboard this ship,' he shouts and for a minute he was so purple in the face with rage, I thought he was going to murder me for sure. By and by he cools down. 'Well, Slim,' he says, 'I guess I hit you a little harder than I meant to, but I'm a bad man when I getstarted. You need tending to now, sure enough.'

"So he has the cabin boy fetch a pan of warm water and he washes the blood out of my hair with his own hands and then shaves around the cut and pastes sticking plaster on. That's all. But say, will I have the law on him when we get back to Frisco? Will I?"

It was a long way back to Frisco. In the meantime we wondered what was in store for the luckless Irish grenadier.

That afternoon, the revenue cutterCorwincame steaming into port towing a poaching sealer as a prize. It was the same schooner, we learned, we had seen theCorwinchasing a few days before. As the cutter passed us, Slim sprang on the forecastle head while Captain Shorey and everybody aboard the brig looked at him and, waving a blue flannel shirt frantically, shouted: "Please come aboard. I've had trouble aboard." "Aye, aye," came back across the water from the government patrol vessel. Waving a shirt has no significance in sea tradition, but Slim was not enough of a sailor toknow that, and besides, he wanted to leave nothing undone to impress the revenue cutter officers with the urgency of his case.

No sooner had theCorwinsettled to her berth at the pier than a small boat with bluejackets at the oars, two officers in gold braid and epaulettes in the stern, and with the stars and stripes flying, shot out from under her quarter and headed for the brig.

"Aha," we chuckled. "Captain Shorey has got his foot in it. He has Uncle Sam to deal with now. He won't hit him over the head with a revolver."

The boat came alongside and the officers climbed over the rail. Captain Shorey welcomed them with a smile and elaborate courtesy and ushered them into the cabin. Slim was sent for.

"Tell 'em everything, Slim," we urged. "Give it to the captain hot and heavy. He's a brute and the revenue cutter men will take you off the brig as sure as shooting. They won't dare leave you aboard to lead a dog's life for the rest of the voyage."

"I'll show him up, all right," was Slim's parting shot.

Slim came back from the cabin a little later.

"I told 'em everything," he said. "They listened to everything I had to say and took down a lot of notes in a book. I asked 'em to take me off the brig right away, for, says I, Captain Shorey will kill me if they leave me aboard. I guess they'll take me off."

An hour later, the two officers of theCorwinemerged from the cabin, accompanied by Captain Shorey. They were puffing complacently at a couple of the captain's cigars. They seemed in high good humor. After shaking hands with Captain Shorey, they climbed down into their boat and were rowed back to their vessel. That was the last we ever saw of them. Poor Slim was left to his fate.

And his fate was a rough one. There was no outward change in the attitude of the captain or the officers of the brig toward him. Whenever they spoke to him, they did it with as much civility as they showed the rest of us. But Slim was compelled to work on deck all day and standhis regular night watches into the bargain. That meant he got eight hours sleep during twenty-four hours one day and four hours sleep during the next. As the ship was in whaling waters from now on, the crew had little to do except man the boats. But Slim always had plenty to do. While we smoked our pipes and lounged about, he was kept washing paint work, slushing down masts, scraping deck and knocking the rust off the anchors. Any one of a hundred and one little jobs that didn't need doing, Slim did. This continued until the brig squared her yards for the homeward voyage. Slim had more than three months of it. The Lord knows it was enough. When his nagging finally ended, he was a pale, haggard shadow of his former self. It almost killed him.

INTO THE ARCTIC

From Unalaska, we headed north for the Arctic Ocean. For one day of calm, we lay again off the little Eskimo village of St. Lawrence Bay and again had the natives as our guests. Peter made an elaborate toilet in expectation of seeing once more his little Eskimo sweetheart, but she did not come aboard. A little breeze came walking over the sea and pushed us on northward. On August 15, we sailed through Behring Straits and were at last in the Arctic.

The straits are thirty-six miles wide, with East Cape, a rounded, dome-shaped mass of black basalt, on the Asiatic side and on the American side Cape Prince of Wales, a headland of sharper outline, but neither so lofty nor so sheer. In between the two capes and in line with them,lie the two islands of Big and Little Diomede. Through the three narrow channels between the capes and the islands, the tide runs with the swiftness of a river's current.

The Eskimos constantly cross from continent to continent in small boats. In still weather the passage can be made in a light kyack with perfect safety. The widest of the three channels is that between Big Diomede and East Cape and is, I should say, not more than fifteen miles across. While we were passing through the straits, we saw a party of Eskimos in a skin boat paddling leisurely across from America to Asia. They no doubt had been on a visit to relatives or friends on the neighboring continent. We were told that in winter when the straits are frozen solidly, the Eskimos frequently walk from one continent to the other.

Our Guests Coming Aboard in St. Lawrence Bay

While we were sailing close to the American shore soon after passing through the straits, the cry of "Walrus, walrus!" from the mast-head sent the crew hurrying to the rail to catch a glimpse of these strange creatures which we had not before encountered. We were passing an immense herd. The shore was crowded with giant bulks, lying perfectly still in the sun, while the waters close to land were alive with bobbing heads. At a distance and at first glance, those on shore looked like a vast herd of cattle resting after grazing. They were as big as oxen and when the sun had dried them, they were of a pronounced reddish color. Those in the water looked black.

They had a way of sticking their heads and necks straight up out of the sea which was slightly suggestive of men treading water. Their heads seemed small for their great bodies and with their big eyes, their beard-like mass of thick bristles about the nose, and their long ivory tusks they had a distinctly human look despite their grotesque ugliness. They lifted their multitudinous voices in gruff, barking roars like so many bulldogs affected with a cold. There must have been 10,000 of them. They paid little attention to the ship. Those on shore remained as motionless as boulders.

"Want to collect a little ivory?" Captain Shorey said with a smile to Mr. Winchester.

"No, thank you, not just now," replied the mate. "I want to live to get back to 'Frisco."

An ivory hunter among those tusked thousands doubtless would have fared disastrously. Walrus are famous fighters. When attacked, they sometimes upset a boat with their tusks and drown the hunters. They are dangerous even in small herds. Moreover they are difficult to kill. Their thick hides will turn a bullet that does not hit them solidly. Though slow and unwieldy on land or ice, they are surprisingly agile in the water and a harpooned walrus will frequently tow a boat at a dizzy clip.

The region about Cape Prince of Wales is a favorite feeding ground for the animals. The coasts swarm with clams, mussels, and other shell-fish upon which the walrus live. Thirteen varieties of edible clams, it is said, have been discovered by scientists about Cape Prince of Wales. The walrus dig these shell-fish out of the sand and rocks with their tusks, crush them with their teeth, eject the shells, and swallow the dainty tidbits. Their tusks serve them alsoas weapons of defense and as hooks by which to haul themselves upon ice floes.

We did not dare take chances in the boats among such vast numbers of these formidable creatures and soon left the great herd astern. A little higher up the coast we ran into a small herd numbering about a hundred, and Mr. Winchester, armed with his repeating rifle, lowered his boat to have a try for ivory.

When the mate's boat dashed among the animals they did not dive or run away, but held their ground, standing well up out of water and coughing out defiance. Long John darted a harpoon into one of the beasts and it plunged below and went scurrying away. One might have thought the boat was fast to a young whale from the way the line sizzled out over the bow. The walrus dragged the boat about half a mile, and when the animal again came to the surface for air Mr. Winchester killed it with a bullet.

But the blood and the shooting had thrown the remainder of the herd into violent excitement. Roaring furiously, the great beasts converged from all sides in the wake of the chase.By the time Long John had cut off the head of the dead walrus and heaved it aboard and had recovered his harpoon, the animals were swarming menacingly about the boat. Long John, who had been in such ticklish situations before, began to beat a tattoo on the gunwales with his sheath knife, at the same time emitting a series of blood-curdling yells. This was intended to awe the boat's besiegers and had a momentary effect. The brutes stood in the water apparently puzzled, but still roaring savagely. But they were not long to be held off by mere noise. Led by a monster bull, they rushed at the boat in a concerted attack. The sailors belabored them over the head with the sweeps. The mate pumped lead into them from his rifle. Still they came on.

When Captain Shorey, who had been watching the battle from the quarter-deck, saw how serious the situation was becoming, he grew alarmed.

"Those men will be killed," he shouted to Mr. Landers. "Call the watch and lower those other boats, and be quick about it."

In a jiffy the boats were lowered, the crewspiled in, masts were stepped, and we shot away to the rescue. But the mate's crew solved their own problem before we could come into action. When it seemed likely the walrus would swamp the boat, Long John harpooned the leader of the herd. The big walrus dived and made off, hauling the boat out of the midst of the furious brutes to safety. The other animals did not pursue. They bobbed about the scene of the conflict for some time and finally disappeared. Long John killed the big bull to which the boat was fast, cut off its head, and the boat went back to the battleground to take similar toll of the walrus that had died under the mate's rain of bullets. Eight carcasses were found afloat and as many more probably had sunk.

Ten heads with their ivory tusks were brought aboard the brig as trophies of the hunt. The tusks of the bull that had led the attack measured two feet six inches. The animal, according to Mr. Winchester, must have been ten or twelve feet long. The mate estimated its weight at 1,800 pounds—a guess, of course, but perhaps a close one.

BLUBBER AND SONG

We were cruising in open water soon afterward with two whaling ships in sight, theReindeerand theHelen Marr, both barkentines and carrying five boats each, when we raised a school of bowheads straight ahead and about five miles distant. There were twenty-five or thirty whales and a broad patch of sea was covered with their incessant fountains. The other ships saw them about the same time. The long-drawn, musical "Blo-o-o-w!" from their mastheads came to us across the water. Aboard the brig, the watch was called and all hands were mustered to the boats. Falls were thrown off the hooks and we stood by to lower as soon as the captain gave the word. There was equal bustle on the other ships. Traveling before a favoring breeze in the same directionas the whales, the three vessels waited until they could work closer. Each captain in the meanwhile kept a watchful eye on the others. None of them proposed to let his rivals get the start. TheReindeerwas to windward of us, theHelen Marron our lee.

When the ships had reached within a mile of the whales Captain Shorey sent our boats down. Instantly the other skippers did the same. Soon thirteen whale boats were speeding on the chase.

Fine sailing weather it was, with a fresh breeze ruffling the surface of a gently heaving sea. With all sails set and keeping well apart, the boats heeled over, their crews sitting lined up along the weather gunwales. There seemed no chance of any clash or misunderstanding. There were plenty of whales, and with any luck there would be glory enough and profit enough for all.

Like a line of skirmishers deployed against an enemy, the boats stole silently toward the whales. We soon saw the great animals were busy feeding. A few inches below the surface the sea was filled with "whale food," a round, diaphanous, disk-like jellyfish about the size of a silverdollar and perfectly white. When he arrived in this Arctic Ocean whale pasture the water seemed snowy with the millions of jellyfish. With open jaws, the whales swam this way and that, making zigzag swaths a hundred yards long through the gelatinous masses, their great heads and backs well out of water, their fins now and then flapping ponderously. When they had entangled a sufficient quantity of the jellyfish in the long hair hanging from the inner edges of their teeth they closed their mouths with reverberating snaps that sent the water splashing out on either side.

Before the whales were aware of danger, the boats rushed in among them. Each boatheader singled out a whale, and five boats were quickly fast—two from theReindeer, two from theHelen Marr, and Mr. Winchester's boat. Wild turmoil and confusion instantly ensued among the great animals. They went plunging below in alarm and the boats that made no strike at the first onslaught had no chance thereafter. The whales did not stop to investigate the causes of the sudden interruption of their banquet. Thesea swallowed them up and we did not see them again. A little later we caught a glimpse of their fountains twinkling against the sky on the far horizon.

Mr. Winchester's whale was wriggling about among the jellyfish with jaws widely distended when the boat slipped silently upon it. As the prow bumped against its black skin, Long John drove a harpoon up to the hitches in its back. With a tonite bomb shattered in its vitals, the monster sounded in a smother of foam. In the dynamic violence with which it got under way it literally stood on its head. Its flukes, easily twenty feet from tip to tip, shot at least thirty feet into the air. They swung over to one side, the great body forming a high arch, and struck the sea with a resounding smack. Then they sailed on high again to come down on the other side with another broadside smash. Again they rose like lightning into the air and the whale seemed to slip down perpendicularly into the ocean.

It was evident at the outset that the animal was badly wounded. It swam only a short distancebelow the surface and not rapidly, sending up thousands of bubbles to mark its course. This broad highway of bubbles curved and turned, but Mr. Winchester, who had been smart enough not to lower his sail, followed it as a hound follows the trail of a deer. The boat sailed almost as swiftly as the whale swam and was able to keep almost directly above it. When the whale came to the surface the mate was upon it and Long John's second harpoon stopped it dead in its track. The whale went through no flurry, but died instantly and rolled over on its back.

With excitement all about, there was nothing for Mr. Landers or Gabriel to do. So we sat still in the boats and watched the swift incidents of the far-flung battle.

One of the whales struck by a boat from theReindeerbreached almost completely out of water as soon as it felt the sting of the harpoon. It floundered down like a falling tower, rolled about for a moment before sinking to a swimming depth, and made off at mad speed. It rose within twenty feet of where our boat layat a standstill and we could see its wild eye, as big as a saucer, as the injured creature blew up a fountain whose bloody spray fell all over us. The boat it was dragging soon went flashing past us, the crew sitting crouched down and silent.

"Swing to him, fellers," shouted Kaiuli, standing up and waving his hat about his head.

But the others paid no attention to our South Sea island savage. They were intent just then on tragedy. Their boat struck the whale at its next rise. The animal went into a violent flurry. It beat the sea into a lather with fins and flukes and darted around on its side in a semi-circle, clashing its great jaws, until it finally collapsed and lay limp and lifeless.

The whale struck by the other boat from the Reindeer ran out a tub of line, but a second boat had come up in time to bend on its own line and took the animal in tow. Before the whale had run out this new tub, a third boat harpooned it. With two boats fast to it, it continued its flight to windward and was at least two miles from us when its pursuers at last overtook and killed it.

Two boats from theHelen Marrstruck whales while the monsters were feeding within an oar's length of each other. One whale started off at right angles to the direction taken by the other. It looked for a time as if the two lines would become entangled and the boats would crash together. But the whale that cut across the other's course swam above the latter's line and dragged its boat so swiftly after it that a collision was averted by a few feet.

One of the whales was bombed and killed after a short flight. The other acted in a way that whales hardly ever act. It ran hard to windward at first, as whales usually do when struck. Then it suddenly turned and ran in an exactly opposite direction. This unexpected change in its course almost upset the boat, which was jerked violently over on its beam-ends and spun round like a top, while the crew held on for dear life and barely escaped being pitched into the sea. Once righted and on its way again, the boat rapidly hauled up on the whale, whose fast-going vitality showed in its diminished speed. After a flight that had covered at least a mile,the whale was finally killed close to the spot at which it had first been struck.

When, the sharp, fast work of the boats ended, five mighty carcasses lay stretched upon the sea. The great whale drive, which had lasted less than an hour, had bagged game worth something like $60,000.

The three ships soon sailed to close quarters and the boats had a comparatively easy time getting the whales alongside. That night the try-works were started and big cressets whose flames were fed by "scrap" flared up on all the ships, lighting them in ghostly-wise from the deck to the topmost sail.

At the cutting in of this whale I had my first experience at the windlass. The heaviest labor falls to the sailors who man the windlass and hoist in the great blanket pieces of blubber and the "old head." Gabriel, the happiest-spirited old soul aboard, bossed the job, as he always did, and cheered the sailors and made the hard work seem like play by his constant chanteys—those catchy, tuneful, working songs of the sea. All the old sailors on the brig knew these songs byheart and often sang them on the topsail halyard or while reefing on the topsail yard. The green hands soon picked up the words and airs of the choruses and joined in. The day laborer on land has no idea how work at sea is lightened by these songs.

Gabriel knew no end of them, and in a round, musical voice led the men at the windlass in such rollicking old-time sea airs as "Whiskey for the Johnnies," "Blow the Man Down," "Blow, Boys, Blow," and "Rolling Rio." He would sing a verse and the sailors would stand with their hands on the windlass bars until he had concluded. Then they would heave away with a will and make the pawls clank and clatter as they roared out the chorus. The old negro's favorite was "Whiskey for the Johnnies." It had a fine rousing chorus and we liked to sing it not only for its stirring melody but because we always harbored a hope—which, I may add, was never realized—that the captain would be touched by the words and send forward a drop of liquor with which to wet our whistles. Gabriel would begin in this way:

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