In the mountainous country near Nome there are often sudden showers, accompanied by very high winds, so whenever we were out riding we always carried our oilskins strapped behind our saddles. On one of our rides we saw a storm coming up but hoped that it would pass us by; the tail-end of it struck us, however, with a deluge of rain and a high wind. I had not bothered to get off my horse to put on my coat and when the storm was upon us I unloosed the coat from behind my saddle and started to put it on. Just as I got my arms in the sleeves the wind took it and whirled it out into a kind of balloon. This frightened the horse and he turned suddenly around and started for the water. Then he as suddenly changed his mind and tore madly down over the outside edge of the embankment while my arms were seesawing back and forth as I tried to get them through the coatsleeves. After a while I managed to get one arm out, holding on by gripping my knees to the horse’s body, and as the horse started for some low trees I slid off without a scratch, though I did not deserve any such luck. The others came up very much disturbed, for they were sure that I would fall off among the boulders and be killed.
The time that I spent at Nome, though I was naturally very anxious for the moment to come when we should be on our way to get the men on the island, was made to pass pleasantly by the many good friends whom I made there. I lived at the Golden Gate Hotel but took my meals at the Log Cabin Club. The club had a Japanese chef named Charlie, who was really a wonder; one dined as well there as at any good hotel in San Francisco. The club is the great meeting-place in Nome and many were the lively political discussions we had there.
I could fill a book with descriptions of the interesting people I met in Nome. There was Doctor Neuman, a great student of the Alaskan Eskimo, and the author of important books about them, and more than that a man who has done them a great deal of good and is greatly beloved by them. There was Jim Swartzwell, the proprietor of the Golden Gate Hotel, a typical, open-hearted, Alaskan sour-dough; no man or woman ever came to him for assistance and went away empty-handed. I saw the house where Rex Beach lived in Nome and met the originals of many of the characters in his stories, who were some of them story-books in themselves.
CHAPTER XXX
OFF FOR WRANGELL ISLAND
From time to time there came rumors of how close the season was and how much ice there was about the coast. This was disquieting. I had told the captains of the vessels that from time to time left Nome for the northern waters, walrus-hunting or trading, about the men on Wrangell Island and had asked them, if they got anywhere near the island, to take a look around. By the first week in July I began to get more and more uneasy and anxious to get started. The Bear had been in the north and reported on her return that the ice was heavy and still closely packed, and the walrus-hunter Kit came back from north of Bering Strait with the same story. Such news was not at all reassuring, though I knew that the ice could be broken up in a few hours’ time just as it could form in an equally short interval. The tenth of August, I reckoned, should see us at Wrangell Island; the men would not really be expecting me much before that time.
The Bear finally got away, with me on board, on July 13. She had a number of calls to make on her way north, for in addition to being the mail-boat, she had to bring help to the needy, act as a kind of travelling law-court, carry school-teachers and missionaries around from place to place and make herself generally useful. It was a great relief to me to be really doing something at last, after so many weeks of inaction. My thoughts were constantly on the castaways and I wondered how things had been going with them since the middle of March.
We had a pleasant ship’s company. I slept in the captain’s cabin. On the port side in a hammock was the Reverend Doctor Hoar, who was accompanying us as far as his mission station at Point Hope. In another hammock was Mr. Shields, the Alaskan Superintendent of Education, an able young man who has done wonders with the means at his disposal to foster the spirit of thrift among the Eskimo in their reindeer-herding. He knows every nook and cranny from Nome to Point Barrow and has won the respect and admiration of the Eskimo everywhere. On the starboard side were Hershey and E. Swift Train, who was taking motion-pictures and gathering material for the use of schools.
Just across the way was the wardroom and a finer set of men than the officers of the Bear I never met. They had the latchstring always out. I was privileged to visit the chart-room at any time and had the rare opportunity of learning from Lieutenant Dempwolf, the navigating officer, much about Alaskan and Siberian waters. It was fine to feel a good ship like the Bear under one and worth while seeing others navigate. A lot of merchant-marine men would be greatly benefited by a trip on a revenue-cutter.
Our first stop was Reindeer Station at St. Lawrence Island. Then we went to other stations on St. Lawrence Island, with supplies for the schools there, and then on to St. Lawrence Bay on the Siberian coast, to Lütke Island. From there we went to Emma Town and picked up Lord Percy, who had been collecting birds at Lütke Island and had come up with a native in a skin-boat. At Emma Town I again met the Mr. Caraieff who had taken me to Emma Harbor; his brother had gone to Vladivostock. Here I paid the money I owed. Some of the dogs I had left were still here but only two of them were any good; the others were still not rested enough to be of use. They were offered me again but I told my kind friends to keep them if they could get any good out of them. When I had been there before the snow had been piled high over everything. How different it all looked on this beautiful July afternoon! When Lord Percy had picked up his things at Emma Town we steamed along the coast to East Cape, and then to Ugelen, near by. From here we went across to Teller, on the Alaskan coast, and visited various settlements.