Instead of the schooner, the only boat in sight was a native kyack from which as soon as the anchor dropped, clambered aboard for his mail Mr. Newman, the local agent, who had about given up hope of seeing us this year.
That our schooner had not arrived was evident enough without discussion. But when De Long learned from Newman that they had no tidings whatever of Nordenskjöld, that they had had so far this season no communication with Siberia, and that at St. Michael’s they knew even less of Nordenskjöld and his whereabouts than we when we left San Francisco, it was obvious from the droop of the skipper’s mustaches that his depression was complete. No schooner, no coal, and now the prospect of having to search Siberia for Nordenskjöld instead of going north!
De Long, as I joined him at the rail to greet Mr. Newman, was polishing his eyeglasses on the edge of his jacket. Meticulously replacing them on his nose as I came up, he sourly scanned the settlement ashore.
“A miserable place, Melville! Look at those dirty huts. Only four white men and not a single white woman here, so the agent says.” He turned to the Fur Company agent, added prophetically, “Yet do you know, Mr. Newman, desolate as that collection of huts there is, we may yet look back on it as a kind of earthly paradise?”
Already immersed in his long delayed mail from home, Newman nodded absent-mindedly. Apparently he was under no illusions about life in the far north.
The captain shrugged his shoulders, philosophically accepted the situation, and after some difficulty in dragging Newman’s attention away from his letters from home, we got down to business with the agent, which of course was coal. It developed immediately that St. Michael’s had only ten tons of coal, which were badly needed there for the winter. This was hardly a surprise as we had every reason to expect some such condition, but it settled any vague hopes we had that we might coal and proceed before our schooner came. We resigned ourselves to waiting for the Fanny A. Hyde.
Next came the matter of our clothing. On that at least was some compensation for our delay. Through Mr. Newman, arrangements were made to send ashore all the furs we had acquired at Unalaska and have the natives (who were experts at it) make them up for us into parkas and other suitable Arctic garments, instead of having each sailor of our crew (who at best had only some rough skill with palm and needle on heavy canvas) attempt with his clumsy fingers to make his own.
With that arranged, the while we waited for our schooner, we settled down to making the best of St. Michael’s, all of us, that is, except De Long, who chafing visibly at the delay, thought up one scheme after another of expediting matters. But each one involved ultimately burning even more coal than waiting there, so finally the baffled skipper retired to his cabin to await as best he could our coal-laden tender.
But even for the seamen, making the best of St. Michael’s soon palled and they gave up going ashore. A liberty meant nothing more than wandering round in the mud and the grass, for the village had nothing more to offer a sailor. Even liquor, the final lure of such God-forsaken ports when all else fails, was here wholly absent, its sale being illegal in Alaska Territory. The illegality our seamen knew about, but the absence they refused to believe till a careful search convinced them that the negligible communication of this spot with civilization made it the one place in the wide world where the laws prohibiting liquor were of necessity observed.
So every other distraction failing, we were thrown back on fishing, the sailor’s last resource. Out of curiosity, we set a seine alongside the Jeannette. The amount of salmon and flounders we caught opened my eyes—we easily hauled in enough each cast to keep the whole crew in fresh fish every meal, till our men were so sick of the sight of fish that the little salt pork or canned meat served out occasionally from our stores was a welcome change. I see now why these waters are the world’s best sealing grounds—they are literally alive with food for the seals, which by the millions swarm over the islands in these shallow seas. The steamer St. Paul which we had fallen in with at Unalaska on her way back to America, had her hold packed solid with sealskins, one hundred thousand of them in that vessel alone, a treasure ship indeed!