While the sailors fished, we in the wardroom cast about in various ways for diversion. Newcomb (whom privately the captain was already beginning to regret having brought along, for not only did Newcomb seem never to have grown up but it was now too late to hope that he ever would) went into business for himself. Reverting to the habits of his forbears in far-off Salem, he went ashore with a five dollar bill, purchased from the Alaska Company’s store a variety of needles, thread, and similar notions, carted them a mile or two up the coast well out of sight of St. Michael’s, set up a “Trading Post,” and proceeded to sell his wares to the innocent Indians at just twice what the company store was asking for them.
For this piece of sharp practice at the expense of the natives who were helpfully engaged in making up our fur clothing, gleefully related to the wardroom mess on his return aboard, Newcomb earned the immediate contempt of his fellow New Englander, Dunbar, who burst out,
“You damned Yankee pedlar!” And from that day on, our ice-pilot who himself hailed from the land of the wooden nutmegs and was therefore perhaps touchy of making New England’s reputation any worse, refused again to speak to Newcomb, though some of the rest of us, including myself, felt with Newcomb that there was at least some humor in the situation.
Tiring of fish and of St. Michael’s, I organized a duck-hunting party with Dr. Ambler, Dunbar and Collins for my companions. For a while, I hesitated over including Collins, for by now I had discovered he also had a serious flaw in his character—his sole idea of humor was getting off puns, and so far all the attempts of his shipmates in the wardroom to cure him of it had failed. But as Collins was also our best hand with a shotgun, I decided to stand the puns for a few hours on the chance of increasing our bag of game and asked him to go.
We purposely took a tent and camped ashore all night to be ready for the ducks at dawn. We got about a dozen (Collins knocked down most of them) but without blinds to work from or decoys to attract our game, it was a tough job and we tramped a long way along the marshy beaches looking for game. During this search we separated, and I with my shotgun at “ready” was scanning the beach for ducks just below a small bluff, when suddenly there came sliding down its precipitous slope on all fours, face first with hands and feet spread out in the mud in a ludicrous attempt to stop himself, our meteorologist, Collins!
The spectacle was so comical that unthinkingly I roared out to Ambler,
“Look at the old cow there, sliding down the hill!” but I soon enough regretted my outburst for it was evident that Collins, plastered with mud from his mishap and in no humor to see anything funny in his antics, was furious and took my remark as a deep personal insult. So all in all, my hunting party was no great success, and by the time I signalled our cutter to stand in and pick us up, we were all so stiff from sleeping on the hard ground, so throbbing in every muscle from our tramp, and so sullenly did Collins keep eyeing me, that I began to doubt whether a dozen ducks were worth it.
Dr. Ambler, lolling back on the cushions in the sternsheets of the cutter, homeward bound, apparently took a similar view.
“About once a year of this satisfies me completely, chief.” He paused, ruefully massaged his aching calves, then in his careful professional manner continued, “As a doctor, I’m convinced that man’s an animal that must take to hard work gradually. No more plunging headlong into it for me! I prescribe a day’s complete rest in our berths for all hands here the minute we hit the ship!”
The doctor, I believe, followed his own prescription, and perhaps Collins and Dunbar did too, but I didn’t have time. We had broken a pump-rod on our way to Alaska, temporarily stopping our boiler feed. In that emergency, the spare auxiliary I had installed at Mare Island was immediately cut in on the feed line, saving us from hauling fires and going back to sail alone, but it left us with no reserve pump and it was up to me somehow to provide another rod. Neither Unalaska nor St. Michael’s could help me in the least—a machine shop in those primitive trading posts had never even been dreamed of.