September fourteenth.
I stopped writing, for the fire had almost gone out and the cold wind blew in from two dozen great crevasses in the walls. The best of log cabins need recalking, I am told, once a year, and mine, roughly built as it is, needs it now in the worst way. Some openings are four or five inches wide by two feet long. We’ve gathered a great quantity of moss for calking, but it has rained so persistently that it cannot dry out to be fit for use.
Well, it rains and rains and rains. Since beginning this journal we’ve had not one fair day, and since we’ve been here on the island, seventeen days, there has been only one rainless day. There has been but one cloudless sunrise. I awoke that day just at dawn and looking across out of the tiny square window that faces the water could see the blue—the deep blue—mountains and the rosy western sky behind them. At last the sun rose somewhere and tipped the peaks and the hanging glaciers, growing and growing till the shadows of other peaks were driven down into the sea and the many ranges stood full in the morning light. The twilight hours are so wonderfully long here as the sun creeps down the horizon. Just think! there’ll be months this winter when we’ll not see the sun from our cove—only see it touching the peaks above us or the distant mountains. It will be a strange life without the dear, warm sun!
I wonder if you can imagine what fun pioneering is. To be in a country where the fairest spot is yours for the wanting it, to cut and build your own home out of the land you stand upon, to plan and create clearings, parks, vistas, and make out of a wilderness an ordered place! Of course so much was done—nearly all—when I came. But in clearing up the woods and in improving my own stead I have had a taste of the great experience. Ah, it’s a fine and wholesome life!...
Another day. The storm rages out of doors. To-day I stuffed the largest of the cracks in our wall with woolen socks, sweaters, and all manner of clothes. It’s so warm and cozy here now! Olson has been in to see me for a long chat. I believe he can give one the material for a thrilling book of adventure. Take his story, or enough of the thousand wild incidents of it, give it its true setting—publishing a map of that part of the coast where his travels mostly lay—let it be frankly his story retold, above all true and savoring of this land—and I believe no record of pioneering or adventure could surpass it. He’s a keen philosopher and by his critical observations gives his discourse a fine dignity. On Olson’s return to Idaho in the ’80’s after his first trip to Alaska a friend of his, a saloon-keeper, came out into the street, seized him, and drew him into his place. “Sit down, Olson,” he said, “and tell us about Alaska from beginning to end.” And the traveler told his long wonder-story to the crowd.
THE SLEEPER
At last he finished.
“Olson,” said his friend, “that would make the greatest book in the world—if it was only lies.”
Gee, how the storm rages!
I’m relieved to-night; Rockwell, who seems to have a felon on his finger, is improving under the heroic treatment he submits to. I’ve had visions of operating on it myself—a deep incision to the bone being the method. It is no fun having such ailments to handle—unless you’re of the type Olson seems to be who, if his eye troubled him seriously, would stick in his finger and pull the eye out,—and then doubtless fill the socket with tobacco juice.
We have reached Wednesday, September the eighteenth.
That day the sun did shine. We rowed to Seward, Rockwell and I; stopped for the motor that on our last trip we had left by the way, but found the surf too high. At Seward the beach was strewn with damaged and demolished boats from a recent storm. Moreover, in the town the glacial stream was swollen to a torrent; the barriers had, some of them, been swept away; a bridge was gone, the railroad tracks were flooded, the hospital was surrounded and almost floated from its foundations. And we saw the next day, when it again poured rain, the black-robed sisters of charity, booted to the thighs, fleeing through the water to a safer place. It stormed incessantly for four days more. Although I had taken what seemed ample precaution for the safety of my dory, she was caught at the height of the storm by the exceptional tide of that season and carried against a stranded boat high up on the shore, and pinioned there by a heavy pile torn from the wharf. But our boat escaped undamaged.
Seward was dull for Rockwell and me. We’ve not come this long way from our home for the life of a small town. America offers nothing to the tourist but the wonders of its natural scenery. All towns are of one mold or inspired, as it were, with one ideal. And I cannot see in considering the buildings of a single period in the East and in the West any indication of diversity of character, of ideals, of special tradition; any susceptibility to the influence of local conditions, nothing in any typical American house or town where I have been that does not say “made in one mill.” There’s a God forsaken hideousness and commonplaceness about Alaskan architecture that almost amounts to character—but it is not quite bad enough to redeem itself. Somewhere in the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies there’s a little town of one street backed up against the towering mountains. Dominating the town is the two-or three-story “Queen Hotel,” the last word in flamboyant, gimcrack hideousness. Hotel and Mountain! it is sublime, that bald and crashing contrast.
On September third, I wrote to a friend: “They strike me as needlessly timid about the sea here, continually talking of frightful currents and winds in a way that seems incredible to me and would, I think, to a New England fisherman. However, I must be cautious. Olson says that in the winter for weeks at a time it has been impossible to make the trip to Seward. Well, I’ll believe it when I try it and get stuck.”
Three weeks later,—Tuesday, September twenty-fourth, we were in Seward. The morning was calm varying between sun and rain, but it seemed a good day to return to Fox Island. Rockwell and I had some difficulty launching our boat down the long beach at low water; but at last we managed it, loaded our goods aboard,—viz., two large boxes of groceries, fifty-nine pounds turnips, a stove, five lengths of stovepipe, a box of wood panels, two hundred feet one inch by two inch strips, suit case, snowshoes, and a few odd parcels.
THE WINDLASS
At ten forty-five we pushed off. At just about that moment the sun retired for the day and a fine and persistent rain began to fall. After about three miles we were overtaken by a fisherman in a motor sloop bound to his camp three miles further down the shore. He took us in tow and, finally arriving at his camp, begged us to stay “for a cup of tea”—he was an Englishman. I yielded to the delay there against my own better judgment. After a hearty meal we left his cove at two fifteen.
Still it drizzled rain and the breeze blew faintly from the northeast. We had a seven-mile row before us. Near Caines Head we encountered squalls from the south and were for sometime in doubt as to the wind’s true direction. We headed straight for Fox Island only to find the wind easterly, compelling us to head up into it. I fortunately anticipated a heavier blow and determined to get as far to windward and as near the shelter of the lea shore as possible, and without any loss of time. Our propulsion toward the island I left to the tide which was about due to ebb. We made good headway for a little time until the wind bore upon us in heavy squalls.
The aspect of the day had become ominous. Heavy clouds raced through the sky precipitating rain. The mountainous land appeared blue black, the sea a light but brilliant yellow green. Over the water the wind blew in furious squalls raising a surge of white caps and a dangerous chop. I was now rowing with all my strength, foreseeing clearly the possibility of disaster for us, scanning with concern the terrible leeward shore with its line of breakers and steep cliffs. Rockwell, rowing always manfully, had great difficulty in the rising sea and wind. Fortunately he realized only at rare moments the dangers of our situation.
We were now rowing continually at right angles to our true course. I had but one hope, to get to windward before the rising sea and gale overpowered us and carried us onto the dreaded coast that offered absolutely no hope. Once to windward I had the choice of making a landing in some cove or continuing for Fox Island by running with the wind astern. At last the surface of the water was fairly seething under the advancing squalls; the spray was whipped into vapor and the caldron boiled. I bent my back to the oars and put every ounce of strength into holding my own with the gale. It was a terrible moment for I saw clearly the alternative of continuing and winning our fight.
“Father,” pipes up Rockwell from behind me at this tragic instant “when I wake up in the morning sometimes I pretend my toes are asleep, and I make my big toe sit up first because he’s the father toe.” At another time Rockwell, who had shown a little panic—a very little—said: “You know I want to be a sailor so I’ll learn not to be afraid.”
At last we turned and made for the island. We had reached the point where with good chances of success we could turn,—and where we had to. We reached the shelter of the island incredibly fast, it seemed, with the sea boiling in our wake, racing furiously as if to engulf us,—and then bearing us so smoothly and swiftly upon its crest that if it had not been so terrible it would have been the most soothing and delightful motion in the world. In rounding the headland of our cove a last furious effort of the eluded storm careened us sailless as we were far on one side and carried us broadside toward the rocks. It was a minute before we could straighten our boat into the wind and pull away from the shore, then twenty feet away. Olson awaited us on the beach with tackle in readiness to haul our boat out of the surf. We landed in safety. Looking at my watch I found it to be a quarter to six. (The last four miles had taken us three hours!)
Olson’s dory had been hauled up onto the grass and tied down securely. Mine was soon beside it. The tides and heavy seas of this time of year make every precaution necessary.
THE SNOW QUEEN
The wind that night continued rising ’til it blew a gale. And that night in their bed Rockwell and his father put their arms tight about each other without telling why they did it.