"Why not?"
"Because a granny knot jams, and a reef-point may have to be untied."
"There's your answer," said the first lieutenant, smiling as he turned away.
With these constant small matters and with all the excitements of his trip through the Arctic, Eric's summer passed rapidly. After having touched Point Barrow, the Bear came south, landing supplies at Cape Lisburne and returning to Nome. As certain repairs to the machinery were needed, and as her coal bunkers were growing empty, the Bear headed to the southward for Unalaska.
The cutter was within half a day's steaming of the port when the radio began to buzz and buzz loudly, answering the call of a vessel in distress off Chirikof Island. As the steamer was known to be carrying a number of passengers, thus endangered, the Bear did not stop at Unalaska, but putting on full speed, arrived off Cape Sarichef Lighthouse at 4 o'clock in the morning, proceeding through Unimak Pass and Inside Passage. The naval radio station from Unalga Island confirmed the report, but could give no further details.
Under full speed the Bear reached the scene of the disaster the next day. Of the vessel, Oregon Queen, not a sign could be seen, but, save for three persons, all the crew and passengers were safe on Chirikof Island. They were almost without food, however—many of them insufficiently clad and utterly destitute. As the Oregon Queen had been bound for St. Paul, Kodiak Island, and a large number of the passengers could depend upon assistance there, the Bear picked them up, and the day following, despite extraordinary weather conditions, landed them at St. Paul. Little did the shipwrecked men realize that they had only escaped one danger to be imperilled by another.
"Homer," said Eric to his friend the following afternoon, as the Bear lay outside the barge St. James at the wharf at St. Paul, "what do you make of that cloud to the sou'west'ard?"
"Snow," was the terse reply.
"I don't," the boy objected. "It's a mighty queer-looking sort of cloud. It doesn't look a bit like anything I've ever seen before."
"There's lots of things you've never seen," was his friend's reply.