"There are mighty few villages of the same size in the States," said the surgeon to Eric, as they were returning to the boat, "which could show as good a record as these Eskimo villages. Nobody sick, nobody living on charity, nobody headed for jail!"
Returning to Nome, what was Eric's delight to find Homer Tierre awaiting them! He had been assigned to duty on the Bear to relieve one of the juniors, who had been assigned to another cutter, and the two young officers greeted each other warmly. The head government reindeer-herder was eager to get to his post, so the Bear made a second attempt, this time successfully.
On the island only one case came up before Eric as United States Commissioner, that of a native who had allowed his dogs to run in the reindeer herds, four deer having been killed. Eric, before whom the case was tried, ruled that the native should be made to pay for the deer. As the margin of living in those barren islands is very small, this was quite a heavy punishment, and struck terror into the hearts of the natives. They had been ignoring the government's regulations concerning the corralling of the huskies, believing that there was no one with power to punish infractions of the law.
From there the Bear went to Cape Prince of Wales, and here Eric fell in with Joey Blake, the former first mate of one of the whaling vessels rescued by the famous Overland Expedition in 1897. For the first time Eric heard the whole story of that heroic trip when the Coast Guard sent three men to save the lives of three hundred men, imprisoned in the polar ice. He heard how the men who were now his brother officers had done that which no white man had ever done before, how they had gone from Nome to Point Barrow in the dead of winter, their only base of support in those months of frozen night being their own fortitude and resourcefulness.
Joey Blake, now in charge of the Point Barrow station of one of the commercial whaling companies, waxed eloquent as he told how the Coast Guard men had risked their lives over and over again, to reach the herd of reindeer, who might be driven on the hoof over mountains that had never before been crossed. He told how, thereby, they had saved from starvation and death the crews of several vessels fast in the crushing grasp of the ice-pack of the Arctic Seas. From one of the men who owed his life to that magnificent piece of daring, Eric learned the tale of the great march across the ice and round the inhospitable shores in the bleak darkness of the Arctic night. He understood why Congress had voted special thanks and medals to the three men who carried to success the greatest rescue in Arctic history, full as that record has been of sacrifice and heroism.
Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.
The Bear in the Ice Pack.