“I only hope nothing worse will come of it,” said Phil, anxiously, when Gerald Hamer finally rejoined him in the pilot-house.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, the pilot said something about that baby having the measles, which I understand have been pretty bad on the river this summer, and if that is the case some of us may have caught them.”
“Oh, I guess there’s no danger,” replied the captain, carelessly, his mind at that moment being too fully occupied with the condition of his vessel to allow of other thoughts.
It was too late to do anything that evening, for the short Northern day was already merged in dusk, and the next morning, though anchors were carried out astern, they came home through the soft mud as if it were so much water the moment a strain was put on them. Sheer-poles were rigged, and an attempt was made to pry the boat off by means of them; but again the mud offered so little resistance that the effort only resulted in failure. So, after working like beavers for hours, the Chimo’s crew resigned themselves to waiting as patiently as might be for a change of wind and higher water.
In this enforced delay three precious days were spent, and nightfall of the third found the Chimo still outside Yukon mouth instead of one hundred miles or more inland, as had been hoped. Still, with so energetic a leader as Gerald Hamer, those three days were by no means wasted. He overhauled and restowed the cargo hurriedly put on board at St. Michaels, and with the engineer made a thorough examination of the machinery. He reorganized his slender crew, appointing Phil and Serge first and second mates, and giving each charge of a watch.
Besides the captain, the two mates, and the engineer, there were three other persons in the crew. Two of them were millwrights, who were going to Forty Mile to set up the saw-mill that formed part of the Chimo’s cargo, but who now served as firemen. The third was a sullen-faced fellow named Strengel, who had been engaged from the steamer Norsk, which brought the expedition to St. Michaels, to act as assistant engineer. Phil took a dislike to this fellow from the first, and it was strengthened by the fact that he seemed to have contracted an intimacy with some of the inmates of the Redoubt, who were avowed enemies of the expedition.
Besides doing the things already mentioned, the captain and his two young mates took a small boat and staked out about ten miles of the channel that the Chimo would follow as soon as she again floated.
On the evening of the third day the wind changed, and as the steamer would probably float during the night the captain ordered steam to be got up and everything made ready for a start at daylight. He turned in early, complaining of great weariness and many pains, which he attributed to the cold and the frequent drenchings that had accompanied his sounding of the channel.
The following morning, when Phil went to report that the steamer was afloat, and also to make a grave charge against Assistant Engineer Strengel, he was horrified to find the captain raving in the delirium of a high fever. Thus to his intense dismay the young mate suddenly found himself burdened with the entire responsibility of the expedition, with both a mutiny and a very sick man on his hands, in an unfriendly country, and about to be confronted with the terrors of an arctic winter.