In a moment another Russian came along; his ability to speak English intelligibly proved to be less than the first man’s. By paying careful attention to what he was saying I was able to tell approximately what he was trying to say, and thus we managed to surmount the barrier of language. I gathered that he had been a longshoreman in Seattle and that he knew that Mr. Taft had been president of the United States. He asked me, in fact, if I knew him.
While we were standing there Kataktovick came up and asked me what he should do.
“You take out the dogs,” I said, “and come with me.”
In the excitement at seeing a white stranger come along in this unexpected way no one thought for the moment of asking us to come into the aranga; there was no intentional inhospitality—they all simply forgot to do the honors.
After a few more attempts at conversation between the Russians and myself, a native came along and said, “You old man?”
His question puzzled me at first; presently it dawned on me that he was speaking in nautical parlance and wanted to know if I was a captain. “Yes,” I replied.
“You come below in my cabin, old man,” he said, meaning that I was to go into his aranga.
I followed him and we entered his aranga together. Cold as it was outside, the air inside was very warm, too warm for comfort. There were a good many people there. Talking with my host as best I could I learned that at one time he had lived at East Cape and had met some of the whalers there in the days when Arctic whaling was still a big industry; he had been aboard of them and knew their names.
“Me know Karluk,” he said, in reply to a question of mine. “Me on board Karluk when she whale.”
He was surprised to think that we were on a whaling voyage and I explained to him by the chart what we were trying to do and where we had been when the ship went down. He understood a good deal of what I told him and was able to understand a little of Kataktovick’s language, but I could see that he was much surprised when he realized that we had walked all the way from Shipwreck Camp to get to the land. He seemed to have an idea that this was a great feat. I explained to him that Kataktovick was with me and built our igloos and killed seal and bear, and that an Eskimo and a white man could live indefinitely on the ice.