The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers Part 27

Michael.

Off Nunivak Island, Eric had his first sight of polar ice, but the pack was well broken up and gave little trouble. Norton Sound was comparatively free of ice, however, and the _Bear_ reached St. Michael's ten days later. As St. Michael's Bay was filled with ice-floes, the vessel anch.o.r.ed to await favorable conditions for landing mail. A "lead"

or opening in the ice having formed between Whale Island and the mainland, after a clear night's work, the Coast Guard cutter dropped her anchors inside the ice. A couple of days later the floes cleared partly away and the _Bear_ crossed over to Nome.

Endeavoring to make St. Lawrence Island, where the head government reindeer herder was to be landed, the _Bear_ struck a heavy ice pack, and the little vessel had to give up the attempt to land. She worked to the northeast, out of the ice, and the captain changed the s.h.i.+p's course for King Island.

This was the first opportunity Eric had to use his U. S.

Commissioners.h.i.+p. One of the natives, who had been a.s.sociated with the white prospectors, was accused of ill-treatment towards his children, a very unusual condition in the Arctic. He had boasted a good deal to the other natives that the United States had no judges so far north, and that the white men could not punish him. In order to teach him a lesson, Eric heard the case, found the man guilty and sentenced the native to a day's imprisonment in the s.h.i.+p's brig, in irons, releasing him shortly before the vessel sailed. A sick native, with his wife and three small children were taken on board, for transportation to the hospital at Nome.

The young lieutenant also made an inspection of Prince of Wales village.

During the entire winter there had not been a single case of disturbance and hardly a case of sickness.

"There are mighty few villages of the same size in the States," said the surgeon to Eric, as they were returning to the boat, "which could show as good a record as these Eskimo villages. n.o.body sick, n.o.body living on charity, n.o.body headed for jail!"

Returning to Nome, what was Eric's delight to find Homer Tierre awaiting them! He had been a.s.signed to duty on the _Bear_ to relieve one of the juniors, who had been a.s.signed to another cutter, and the two young officers greeted each other warmly. The head government reindeer-herder was eager to get to his post, so the _Bear_ made a second attempt, this time successfully.

On the island only one case came up before Eric as United States Commissioner, that of a native who had allowed his dogs to run in the reindeer herds, four deer having been killed. Eric, before whom the case was tried, ruled that the native should be made to pay for the deer. As the margin of living in those barren islands is very small, this was quite a heavy punishment, and struck terror into the hearts of the natives. They had been ignoring the government's regulations concerning the corralling of the huskies, believing that there was no one with power to punish infractions of the law.

From there the _Bear_ went to Cape Prince of Wales, and here Eric fell in with Joey Blake, the former first mate of one of the whaling vessels rescued by the famous Overland Expedition in 1897. For the first time Eric heard the whole story of that heroic trip when the Coast Guard sent three men to save the lives of three hundred men, imprisoned in the polar ice. He heard how the men who were now his brother officers had done that which no white man had ever done before, how they had gone from Nome to Point Barrow in the dead of winter, their only base of support in those months of frozen night being their own fort.i.tude and resourcefulness.

Joey Blake, now in charge of the Point Barrow station of one of the commercial whaling companies, waxed eloquent as he told how the Coast Guard men had risked their lives over and over again, to reach the herd of reindeer, who might be driven on the hoof over mountains that had never before been crossed. He told how, thereby, they had saved from starvation and death the crews of several vessels fast in the crus.h.i.+ng grasp of the ice-pack of the Arctic Seas. From one of the men who owed his life to that magnificent piece of daring, Eric learned the tale of the great march across the ice and round the inhospitable sh.o.r.es in the bleak darkness of the Arctic night. He understood why Congress had voted special thanks and medals to the three men who carried to success the greatest rescue in Arctic history, full as that record has been of sacrifice and heroism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE _BEAR_ IN THE ICE PACK.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE _BEAR_ BREAKING FREE FROM THE ICE.

Whaler, still fast, left behind, while Coast Guard cutter forces her way clear.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

In November, 1897, word reached the United States that eight whaling vessels, with 287 men on board, were fast in the ice north of Point Barrow. Nothing was known of their condition, save that the provisions of the entire fleet could not be counted upon to give them food beyond the end of January. Possibly hunting and fis.h.i.+ng might enable this to be spun out a month or so, but not more. The way through Bering Straits would not be open until June, at the earliest. Starvation, therefore, was imminent. The United States Government naturally turned to the Coast Guard--then known as the Revenue Cutter Service--well a.s.sured that whatever was possible in the realm of human courage and skill would be done.

Between the marooned whalers and civilization lay a thousand miles and more of the most fearful road that man has ever had to travel, a road untrod, with cold like to the bitterness of death as its constant state and the howl of the blizzard for its sole companion. Not only must this blind and awful trail be conquered, with possible disaster in every mile and a sure heritage of suffering and pain in every step, but food sufficient to last 300 men for over four months had to be taken over those desolate wastes.

The _Bear_, though only three weeks back from a six months' cruise in Arctic waters, was ordered back to the desperate attempt. There was no need to ask for volunteers in the Revenue Cutter Service. Every man in the service, from the most recently enlisted man to the Captain Commandant would have stepped forward. As it was, the expedition contained three of the ablest and most vigorous men in the entire service. It was under the command of Lieutenant Jarvis, with Lieutenant Bertholf (now the Captain Commandant of the Coast Guard) as the second in command. Only one other white man, Surgeon Call, accompanied the expedition.

The _Bear_, under sail and steam, headed for the north. Every mile gained by sea meant a vast help to the expedition. Yet, when Cape Nome was still 85 miles distant, the little vessel ran into thick mush-ice.

Beating around for clearer water the wind began to die down and the _Bear_ was almost caught. Had she been frozen in then, ten miles to the east of Southeast Cape, the expedition would have been frustrated and the whalers left unrescued. It was a narrow escape and the commander of the _Bear_ turned back to Cape Vancouver, and the next morning steamed to within five miles of a native village, not marked on any chart, but visible from the s.h.i.+p.

Minutes counted, and two boats were sent off to the sh.o.r.e. The settlement was found to be the village of Tununak, in which, by good fortune, was a half-breed trader, Alexis, who had dogs. On December 18th the overland expedition started, far south of Nome, with four sleds and forty-one dogs, nine dogs being harnessed to each of the sleds belonging to Alexis and fourteen to the heavy one from the s.h.i.+p. From Tununak they went to Ukogamute, and because a southeast wind had cleared away the ice from the sh.o.r.e, the party was compelled to climb a range of mountains between the two villages.

"Did you ever climb a mountain with a dog team?" queried Joey Blake.

"Take my word, it's some job. You've got to tackle a thing like that to get the heartbreak of it. It's bad enough to have to run ahead of a dog team on the level, but in mountain country it's something fierce."

"Do you have to run ahead of the dogs?" Eric said in surprise. "What for? To break a trail?"

"Sure. A dog team can trot faster than a man can walk but not as fast as he can run. So a fellow's got to run in the deep snow a hundred yards or so, then walk, then run, an' so on. I met Alexis a year or two after the expedition an' he told me all his troubles. They got to the top of the mountain, he said, in the midst of a furious snowstorm. It was so thick that the natives could not decide on the road an' it was impossible to stay up on the crest without freezin' to death. At last they decided to chance it. The side of the mountain was so steep that the dogs couldn't keep up with the sleds an' there was nothing to do but toboggan to the bottom of the hill.

"What fun," exclaimed Eric.

"Ye-es," the other said dubiously, "but it was a two-thousand-foot slide! They wound small chains around the runners of the sleds to try an' check their speed a little, an' hoping that they wouldn't hit anything, let 'em go. Just as the first sled had begun slidin', Alexis told me he called out that he thought they were a little too much to the north an' all the sleds would go off a precipice into the sea. It was too late to stop, then. It took three hours to climb one side of the mountain, an' less than three minutes to go down the other side.

"From there they went straight along the coast to Kiyilieugamute, where they had reckoned on gettin' dogs to replace the young dogs on the 'scratch teams' Alexis had made up. All the dogs had gone on a trip for fish an' the natives said it would be two days before they arrived. So Jarvis went ahead with the two good teams, leavin' Bertholf to follow as soon as the native dogs arrived. Four days of hard traveling, stoppin'

at Akoolukpugamute, Chukwoktulieugamute, Kogerchtehmute, and Chukwoktulik brought 'em to the Yukon at the old Russian trading post of Andreavski.

"On the Yukon, I guess they made good time. You know, in the fall, when there are sou'westerly gales in the Bering Sea, the water rises in the lower Yukon, an' as it freezes quickly, there may be a trail of smooth glare ice for miles. Then there's prime traveling. But, often as not, the water flows back again before the ice is thick enough to travel on.

It makes a thin sh.e.l.l, an' dogs, sleds an' everybody goes through an'

brings up on the solid ice below.

"As a matter of fact, it put Jarvis' teams down an' out; most of his dogs were bleeding at every step from ice-cuts in the cus.h.i.+ons of their feet. He had trouble with the natives, too. Two of them got violent colds, an' they were no use for traveling."

"Seems queer to think of Eskimos catching cold," said Eric; "now if it had been Lieutenant Jarvis, I wouldn't have been surprised."

"There's nothing as tough as a white man," said the whaler. "If you look up stories of explorers you'll always find it's the natives that get used up first."

"Why, do you suppose?"

"A white man is more used to putting out energy. After all, natives are lazy, an' a white man on an exploring expedition or a rescue is pus.h.i.+ng natives faster than they have ever been used to going."

"He's taking the same trouble himself!" objected the boy.

"Sure, he is. But then, in one way or another, he's pus.h.i.+ng all the time. Jarvis told me that the next two or three days were bad. Off Point Romanoff the ice-crush was piled high an' they had to lift the sleds over the hummocks for two days on end. A snowstorm came up in the middle of it, an' I guess it was touch and go until they made Pikmiktallik, nine miles further on. Next day, late in the afternoon, they drove into St. Michael's, havin' covered three hundred and seventy-five miles in twenty-one days, with only one day's rest.

"The story of how Jarvis got teams at St. Michael's and Unalaklik is a yarn all by itself. Anyway, he got 'em, and on January fifth left Unalaklik, by a mountainous trail along the sh.o.r.e. A wild bit of road delayed 'em before they reached Norton's Bay. On the further sh.o.r.e, I guess they had real trouble. Jarvis told me--and the phrase has stuck in my mind ever since--that the ice looked like a cubist picture. I've seen stuff like that, but I never had to travel over it."

"It sounds awful," said Eric.

"It's worse than that," was the reply. "I don't want any of that sort of travel in my dish, thanks. Well, to go on. It was right there that Jarvis' an' Bertholf's trail divided. Orders had been left at Unalaklik for Bertholf to go on an' meet Jarvis at Cape Blossom, on the north side of Kotzebue Sound, with a thousand pounds of provisions."

"How could he catch up with Jarvis with a load like that," queried the boy, "when the first part of the expedition was traveling light?"

"Jarvis had to make a nine-hundred-mile roundabout, clear the way round the Seward Peninsula," explained the whaler.

"What for?"

"To get the reindeer."

"That's right," said Eric. "I forgot about the reindeer."

"They're the whole story," the other reminded him. "They couldn't have got food up to us with dogs, nohow. It would have taken an army of dogs."

"I don't see why?"

"You've got to feed dogs," was the answer. "Two hundred an' fifty pounds is a good weight for a dog team an' half of that is dog-feed. The food for the humans in the party is nigh another fifty pound. So, you see, a dog team on a long journey will only get in with about a hundred pounds.