CHAPTER XXVIII
IN TOUCH WITH THE WORLD AGAIN
On the morning of May 19 an Eskimo whom we had sent over to John Holland Bay came back and said that theHermanhad been there, but had left for Cape Bering, so I sent word there to see if I could catch the captain. While he was on his way there, however, he heard through the natives of my being at Emma Harbor and on the afternoon of the twenty-first I was delighted to see theHermancome steaming in.
I did not need to be told that she was there for me and went aboard at once. The captain greeted me hospitably and made no demur when I told him how anxious I was to be set ashore at Nome as soon as possible. I cannot express too strongly my warm appreciation of the kindness of the captain and his crew, for it meant a considerable delay in his trading voyage and consequent loss to the men who, according to the established custom, were working entirely on shares. He told me that ever since he had been on this coast the weather had been bad. He had got the natives aboard again and again, to trade with them, only to have thewind spring up and make it necessary for him to up-anchor with all speed and put to sea again.
I bade good-by to the baron and to my other kind friends at Emma Harbor and we started for Alaska. The distance across Bering Sea at that point is about 240 miles. When we reached the edge of the ice off Nome on the twenty-fourth we found that we could not steam in near enough to the land for me to get ashore. There was nothing to do but to lie off shore about twelve miles and hope for the ice to break up enough to enable the ship to be worked in nearer the town. There is no harbor at Nome; it is simply an open shore, unsafe for vessels in any kind of bad weather, and conditions have to be exactly right before a ship can venture in. For three days we lay there, while my patience underwent a severe test; all I could do was to read the magazines and gaze at the shore, twelve miles away.
Finally, during the afternoon of the twenty-seventh the captain decided to go to St. Michael’s, and we got under way again and steamed across Norton Sound. Early the next morning we arrived off St. Michael’s, but on account of thick fog had to anchor and wait. At sixP. M.the fog lifted and we steamed in to a point about a mile off shore. The harbor ice was still frozen solid, but we got out a boat and rowed to the edge of the ice andthen made our way ashore on foot. It was about eight o’clock in the evening when, with a feeling of great relief, I set foot at last on American soil. Captain Pederson had given me some American clothing to take the place of the furs I had been wearing for so many months. He accompanied me to the wireless station, but when we got there we found that the office was closed.
We walked on in the direction of the town of St. Michael’s and on our way I was overjoyed to meet Hugh J. Lee, the United States Marshal. I had met him in Nome the previous summer, which was the first time I had seen him since 1896. He had been with Peary on his Greenland ice-cap trip in 1892 and had been on theHopein 1896 when she touched in at Turnavick on the Labrador, my father’s fishing-station, where I was spending a summer vacation. He was astonished to see me in St. Michael’s and wanted to know what on earth I was doing there. A few brief explanations put him in touch with the situation and I felt that I was in the hands of a good friend.