Yes, we left San Francisco about the end of April, a dull day with fog banks lifting and falling over the Golden Gate, while a rising storm outside was turning the ocean into water alps, smiting the clouds. Our course was almost a direct line to Behring Straits; we were to pass through the channel between Unalaska and Uninak Islands, then coast the Pribylof Islands for the benefit of the Professor, reach Indian Point, on the Siberian side of the strait where some of the natives, Masinkers (Tchouktchis), could be seen, then cross to Port Clarence on the Alaskan shore for an inspection of the Nakooruks (Innuits); then two stops for the benefit of Hopkins and Goritz. We also intended to secure at the latter place dogs for our dash over the ice to the Krocker Land shore from Point Barrow. Captain Coogan recommended a stop at Cape Prince of Wales where further ethnological notes might be gathered, but this was overruled as both the Professor and Hopkins expected to visit the coal beds beyond Point Hope, and Cape Lisburne in the Arctic Ocean.
We came abreast of Pribylof about May sixth, stalled off St. Paul’s Island in a still sea, light southwest winds and rising tide. The Professor was pulled off to the island in the morning; his eagerness to visit these famous fur-seal rookeries being irrepressible. He had talked of little else, in the intervals when we were not discussing our momentous enterprise, but the marvelous stories which old navigators, Captain Scammon and Captain Bryant had told, and the fascinating studies of Elliot. He told us that formerly, in the middle of the nineteenth century and later, these pelagic mammals had swarmed in millions up to these islands, rising from the ocean like a veritable mammal inundation. He told us about the bull seals, how they fought, their tenacity, their endurance, how a bull will fight fifty or sixty battles for the possession of his ample harem of twelve or fifteen cows, and last out to the end of the season, three months perhaps without food, living on his own fat, covered with scars, eyes gouged out, striped with blood; and how the jovial bachelors, not so disconsolate as might be imagined, the “hollus-chickies,” congregate to one side. He said the noise from these monstrous breeding grounds, where thousands of seals are roaring, bleating, calling—mothers, fathers and pups—could be heard, with the wind right, five or six miles to sea. He didn’t expect to see the households developed then—it was too early—but he might have an opportunity to find a few advance bulls on their stations. He found the bulls, and he found an adventure, and we found him.
It was almost four or five hours after the Professor had left the ship in a yawl rowed by two sailors, that Hopkins, Goritz, and myself followed him in another boat. We saw the yawl on a short beach of sand, with the men sunning themselves and asleep on the black rocks which hemmed in the little cove. We ran our boat on the sands, the men came strolling toward us, rubbing their eyes and recovering from the inertia of what had been an uninterrupted snooze. When we asked for the Professor they told us he had disappeared, and had ordered them to stay where they were while he pursued his investigations. He certainly was nowhere in sight and a little anxious over his long absence we moved up to the broken rim of rocks which probably separated this retreat from some similar beach on either side.
The elevated cones and ridges of the island could be seen towering up toward the interior in gaunt gray surfaces, on which rested extensive patches of snow. We surmounted the inconsiderable elevation and found it was a broader barrier than we had anticipated, a platform of jagged projecting crests with intervening rocky basins or tables, the whole an extended spur from a black wall of rock, on whose summit were the clustering huts of a native village. On the edges of the rocks hung a few large cakes of ice, and the receding tide had left broken, hummocky masses tilted at various angles over the inclined faces of stone. The scene was chilly and desolate and to add to its lugubrious desolation a fog had slowly drifted in from the sea and was now tortuously rolling down from the highland on the opposite shore to the island. Our search for the missing Professor would have to be hastened.
“The Professor must be found,” said Hopkins. “We shan’t know how to deal with the native Krockerans when we meet ’em, without the Professor. At present he is the only man alive who understands their peculiarities, and as an interpreter he’s bound to prove useful.”
“Of course,” said Goritz, “you don’t think the seals can eat him?”
“They might,” answered Hopkins, “but they could never digest him. It would certainly be a death potion to the venturesome bull who mistook him for food. Likely as not he is now engaged in explaining to an interesting family his plans for the preservation and increase of them and their kindred.”
During this irrelevant badinage I had crossed the rocky flat and reached another cove or gully, headed towards the land by a slope of broken boulders, and floored with sand. We had as yet encountered no seals. Looking beyond this bay I saw on a promontory bounding the distant edge of the beach what seemed like a human figure, or indeed like a group of figures. Watching the objects for a short time I could more clearly distinguish them, and to my astonishment determined that one was a man and the rest some erect animal forms, doubtless seals. The group was at an extreme point on the rocks, and, if the solitary human was the Professor, his only possible retreat from the beleaguering seals would be the water.
I hallooed to my companions, pointing to the distant objects, and hastened forward onto the rock-strewn beach. Goritz and Hopkins struggled over the rough patch of rocks and overtook me.
“Yes, by the lives of all the saints!” cried Hopkins, who had stopped a moment and with shaded eyes was studying the enigmatical figures silhouetted against sea and sky. “It’s the Professor and three beachmasters apparently bent on his capture, or else drinking in wisdom from his lips. It might just be they’re competing for his services in teaching their prospective families.”