CHAPTER XXBRIMSTONE AND FEATHERS
While they talked, the three drenched and shivering castaways walked briskly up the beach, through a broad belt of golden-green moss, crossed a little stream of fresh water, from which they drank eagerly, and finally reached a wind-swept plateau overlooking both the sea and the mad waters of Krenitzin Strait. Here they found the ruins of many ancient dwellings huddled closely together, and marking the site of a once populous Aleutian settlement. Although the mate and the two lads knew that Oonimak Island had not been inhabited for many years, they could not help expecting to see human forms emerge from some of the ancient dwellings, and fancying that in the shriek of the wind over the roofless structures they heard despairing human voices.
Phil and Serge had never been there before, but Jalap Coombs had, though only in the night-time, and he pointed out the ruin that stood nearest the beach as the one containing the cache of seal-skins.
They did not visit it, but searched among the others for one suited to their purpose. At length they found an old barrabkie, or primitive Aleut hut, three walls of which were still standing, though the other wall and the roof had fallen in, filling the interior with a confused mass of rubbish.
“My! what a dismal-looking place!” exclaimed Phil, with a shiver. “If it wasn’t for this terriblewind that seems to blow right through me, I’d rather take my chances outside.”
“Wait till we get through with it, lad, afore ye pass jedgment,” said Jalap Coombs. “I never see a place yet so dismal but what a couple of live Yankees like me and you, one of which is likewise a subjeck, couldn’t knock the dismalness out of. Now, Serge, my boy, ef ye’ll only go ahead with that fire scheme of your’n, the rest of us’ll overhaul this shebang, and see ef we can’t make it a little more ship-shape.”
So Serge departed on his self-imposed mission, while the others began a vigorous cleaning out of the old barrabkie.
The floor of this ancient habitation, which was of the same style as those built by many Aleuts of to-day, was of hard-packed earth, and was sunk about four feet below the level of the surrounding surface. A stout frame of whale ribs standing about six feet high had been erected and enclosed in a wall two feet thick of tough, peaty sods. This in turn had been protected by an outer wall of loose rocks, while the whole had at one time been roofed with whalebone rafters and a thick thatch of the heavy sedge-grass that grows on all those islands.
For an hour Phil and the mate worked like beavers to clear this place of its ruinous litter. Then they returned to the beach and brought up everything that had been saved from the wrecked boat, including, of course, its sail. This with great difficulty, on account of the high wind, they fashioned into a sort of a tent roof, supported by oars, over one end of the barrabkie. This being finished to their satisfaction, the mate went to the beach for drift-wood in anticipation of their promised fire, while Phil gathered a quantity of sphagnum moss, which he spread thickly over the earthen floor of their shelter.
While the latter was wondering what he should do next, and what had become of Serge, and if any one else had ever been so hungry as he without the slightest prospect of supper, Jalap Coombs appeared staggering beneath an immense load of drift-wood, and greatly excited.
“Come, lad,” he cried, as he seized the long-handled steel gaff, “let’s go fishing. We may have to eat ’em raw, for I don’t see any sign of Serge or his fire. But even that’ll be better than starving.”
“Fishing for what?” called out Phil, as he hurried after his companion.
“Salmon!” shouted back the mate. “They’re running in the strait.”
Now Phil had seen salmon-fishing in Canada, where after hours of wading and patient labor an occasional fish had been lured with a fly, and finally hooked. Then, after a protracted struggle, in which the angler had displayed infinite skill and patience, the fish had either escaped or been brought within reach of a gaff. With this as his sole experience in salmon-fishing, he could not help thinking that Jalap Coombs must be crazy to fancy that without rod, line, reel, fly, or hook he was going to capture one of the wariest and gamest of fish with a gaff.
Nevertheless, that is just what our young hunter did see done. He also saw another sight that filled him with wonder. It was a stream of fresh-water flowing into Krenitzin Strait, and filled from bank to bank with salmon, thousands and tens of thousands of them leaping, crowding each other almost to suffocation, and eagerly working their way up against the swift current to their spawning-beds some miles inland. In these beds they had been born, and to them they returned as surely as came the seasons themselves. It is so with every Alaskan river and stream, from themighty Yukon southward. Every summer sees them swarm with uncounted myriads of this noble fish. Millions are caught for canneries and salteries, whence they are shipped to all parts of the world, and by the natives, who thus obtain their chief food supply for the ensuing year, while millions more are never even seen by man.
Phil had known of canned salmon, but had an idea that they came only from the Columbia River. He had never imagined that in far-away Alaska these splendid fish outnumbered those of the mighty Oregon stream a thousand to one. And he had just now been wondering if Jalap Coombs could catch one with a gaff! Had even laughed at the idea! Now he smiled as he reflected on his own previous ignorance concerning salmon and their ways. Why, he could catch them with his hands if he cared to go into the water; while to hook out any required number with a gaff was as simple as catching oysters with a rake.
Within three minutes the mate had secured two fine fish, weighing between ten and twenty pounds each. Then he and Phil went a short distance down the beach, and inside of fifteen minutes more had captured half a dozen great paper-shelled crabs, each as large as a soup-plate. Phil also filled his pockets with mussels, and laden with this abundant supply of food they again turned their steps towards the barrabkie.
As they approached it they were overjoyed to see a thin column of smoke rising above its low walls.
“Hurrah!” shouted Phil. “Serge has got a fire sure enough. But what a horrible, vile, dreadful smell! What can it be? Phew!”
“Smells like burning feathers,” said Jalap Coombs. “Wonder who’s fainted?”
Filled with curiosity, they hurried forward, and as they entered the barrabkie they beheld Serge on hisknees before a large flat stone in one corner. He was bending over it, and blowing with furious energy at a little bunch of something, from which a dense cloud of smoke and the most nauseous fumes were issuing.
Hearing the voices of his companions, he shouted joyfully, without looking up, and hardly pausing in his bellowslike blowing, “I’ve got it.”
“What?” asked Phil, holding his nose. “The cholera? If so, keep right on with your fumigating. If not, do take pity on a suffering community, and feed your flame with leather, or rubber, or bones, or something else that is sweeter and pleasanter to the smell than the frightful stuff you are burning.”
Just then the smouldering mass burst into a bright blaze, and Serge sprang to his feet, jubilant over his success.
“Isn’t it glorious!” he shouted, as he added a few wood shavings to his blaze. Then lighting a sliver, he thrust it into a previously prepared pile of small sticks that he had placed directly before the open end of the tent. These were kindled in a moment. Larger sticks and billets of wood were carefully added, until in a few minutes more a fine, leaping, crackling, sparkling, and altogether lovely fire was banishing the last trace of gloom from the interior of the old barrabkie, and extending a cheery welcome of glowing warmth to the three castaways, from whose soaked garments little clouds of steamy fog began to ascend as they gathered admiringly about it.
At length Serge stood up, and stepped back a pace or two with an expression of triumphant satisfaction that said as plainly as words, “Now I am ready for congratulations.” And the others did congratulate him most heartily. Jalap Coombs said, “I wouldn’t have believed it could be did ef I hadn’t seen it.”
“It didn’t take seeing to make me believe it,” saidPhil. “Smelling was sufficient. What was the magic compound from which you produced such a frightful smell, and such satisfactory results?”
“Eider-down and sulphur,” answered Serge, smiling.
“Brimstoneandfeathers!” shouted Jalap Coombs. “I knowed it. That’s what old Mis’ Roberson—she that was Kite’s wife, you understand—allus kep’ on hand for fainting fits. I’ve smelled ’em many a time, and to this day their parfume carries me back to my happy childhood.”
“It was certainly strong enough to carry one most anywhere,” interrupted Phil. “But where did you get ’em, old man, and how did you set ’em afire?”
“I had a long tramp after the sulphur,” replied Serge, “and only found it in a cañon about three miles back of here, near the foot of the mountain. As I couldn’t find any dry moss to go with it, I hunted for feathers as the next-best thing, and was lucky enough to discover an eider-duck’s nest on the cliffs. Then I came back here and found my ‘fire-stick,’ that flat bit of flint-rock, in one of the old huts, also my ‘striker,’ that bit of quartz. After that the getting of fire was simple enough. I spread a layer of eider-down on the flat rock, sprinkled a little sulphur over it, and pounded the mixture with my quartz rock until it was set on fire by a spark struck from the flint.”
“Well, if that isn’t one way of getting a fire!” exclaimed Phil. “I say, Serge, what a wise sort of chap you are, anyway! I am only just beginning to find it out. Why didn’t you tell us how much you knew back there in New London?”
“Because the kind of things I know best are only worth knowing in this country, where I learned them,” replied Serge. “They would not be appreciated in New London.”
“I suppose not,” said Phil, thoughtfully; “and thekind of things I have been taught, such as Latin and English literature, don’t seem to count for much out here. Neither does the thing that I know best of all seem to be appreciated by the present company. It is that I am as hungry as sixteen wolves, and want my supper.”
With this startling statement Phil pounced upon an unoffending crab and thrust him without the slightest compunction into a bed of glowing coals.