Lynn Canal.
It was a chilly, drizzling day. The clouds ordinarily hid the tops of the great steep mountains, so that these looked as if they might be walls that reached clear up to the heavens, or, when they broke away, exposed lofty snowy peaks, magnificent and gigantic in the mist. We caught glimpses of wrinkled glaciers, crawling down the valleys like huge jointed living things, in whose fronts the pure blue ice showed faintly and coldly. Here and there waterfalls appeared, leaping hundreds of feet from crag to crag, and all along was the rugged brown shore, with the surf lashing the cliffs, and no place where even a boat might land. All men, whether they clearly perceive it or not, find in the phenomena of Nature some figurative meanings, and are depressed or elevated by them.
We anchored in the lee of a bare rounded mountain that night, it being too rough to attempt landing, and the next morning were off Dyea, where we were to go ashore. The surf was still heavy, but the captain ventured out in a small boat to get the scow in which passengers and goods were generally conveyed to the shore; for the water was shallow, and the steamer had to keep a mile or so from the land. In the surf the boat capsized, and we could see the captain bobbing up and down in the breakers, now on top, now under his boat, in the icy water. The dishwasher, who evidently knew the course of action in all such emergencies from dime-novel precedents, yelled out "Man the lifeboat!" The captain had taken the only boat there was. The entire crew, it may be mentioned, consisted, besides the dishwasher and the captain, of the sailor, who was also the cook. The duty of manning the lifeboat—had there been one—would thus apparently have devolved on the sailor, but he grew pale and swore that he did not know how to row and that he had just come from driving a milk-wagon in San Francisco. A party of prospectors became engaged in a heated discussion as to whether, if there had been a boat on board, it would not have been foolish to venture out in it, even for the sake of trying to rescue the captain; some urging the claims of heroism, and others loudly proclaiming that they would not risk their lives in any such d——d foolish way as that.
However, all this was only the froth and excitement of the moment. The captain hauled his boat out of the breakers, skillfully launched it again, and came on board, shivering but calm, a strapping, reckless Cape Breton Scotch-Canadian. In due course of time afterwards the scow was also got out, and we transferred our outfits to it and sat on top of them, while we were slowly propelled ashore by long oars.