All having agreed that they would sail home in the Narwhal, the crew were transferred from the Ruby. Then Sergeant Manley bade them all good luck and a quick voyage, and joining Campbell, who had arrived the day previously, he sped swiftly into the southwest towards distant Fort Churchill with his rat-faced mutineer prisoner.
With doleful shakes of his head the skipper of the Ruby said farewell, muttering something about “Yankees taking chances where no sane man would,” and hoisting sail, he headed his tubby old craft for the open sea.
Working steadily, toiling for hour after hour, the men pumped the water from the Narwhal. They labored with light hearts, for steadily they gained and when at last the pumps sucked, and the following day the sounding rod showed less than a foot of water, all knew that the schooner was tight and safe. Rapidly the long deck house was dismantled, the big foretopmast yard was sent up to the words of a rousing chantey, sails were bent on and running rigging rove. Then, like beavers, the men and the Eskimos toiled, bringing the casks of oils, the bales of whalebone, the great bundles of skins and hides, the sacks of ivory, and the countless other valuables, as well as stores and supplies, from the shore.
At last all was done. The last of the cargo was stowed. The standing rigging was taut and well tarred. The carpenter had patched the cracked rails and bulwarks, and had relaid some of the deck planks. The motor had been overhauled and tested. The sails hung loosely in their brails and the boats were at their davits. All this had taken much time to accomplish, and the Arctic spring had come swiftly to the land. The hills and valleys showed gray and bare. The black rocks loomed above the patches of sodden snow. The ice, rotten and spongy, had almost disappeared from the bay. The Eskimos’ igloos had long since gone, and the natives were living in their skin tents once more. Far overhead in the blue sky, the long files of geese and swans winged northward; great flocks of eiders gathered on the bay; curlew and snipe filled the night air with their plaintive whistling, and the snowbirds twittered from rocks and last year’s weeds.
For the last time the boys paddled ashore in their kayak and bade farewell to Nepaluka, to Newilic, to Kemiplu, the wrinkled old story teller, and to all their Eskimo friends whom they had grown to love and respect.
Then the clank of the windlass and the rousing chantey of the men warned them it was time to leave, and swiftly they paddled to the schooner, gave a farewell wave of their hands to the crowd of Eskimos ashore, and saw their little kayak hoisted to the deck.
Oh first came the herring, the king o’ the sea,
Windy weather! Stormy weather!
He jumped on the poop. “I’ll be capt’n,” says he!
Blow ye winds westerly, gentle sou’westerly