Where roaring on the ledges the summer groundswell rolled,
I heard them lift the chorus that dropped the breakers’ song,
The beaches of Lucannon—two million voices strong,
The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons,
The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes
The song of midnight dances that charmed the sea to flame
The beaches of Lucannon—before the sealers came!”
We made Indian Point, or Chaplin, as the settlement is called, in five days, held back by floes and fogs, narrowly escaping a collision with an adventuresome and premature whaler making its way to the same destination. These sailors often get caught in the ice, when they are helpless, and if the pack tightens on them, they are likely to come to grief with a cut stem or a stoved side. We assisted one poor fellow out of such a plight. His vessel was shipping water fast, and we helped shift his load, giving the boat a stern list that lifted its broken nose and allowed him to make repairs.
Chaplin is a small settlement of natives on the Siberian coast, the largest along the line to Behring Straits. There may be some forty huts there, and the whale men find it a convenient place to do a stroke of trade. Indeed, if it were not for their visits the unfortunate Masinkers might resign the job of trying to live at all, as the whales are more scarce than formerly, or more cautious, and walrus and seal scarcely turn in closer than St. Lawrence Island. The village is on a projecting tooth of land—a mere sandpit—and back from the village along the foothills is the curious, disconsolate looking graveyard where the dead are buried in rudely excavated holes and covered with stones and earth, some with deer antlers stuck about as gravestones.
The natives were not slow in coming aboard, and as we had outrun the whalers who are annually expected, their reception of us was, so to speak, enthusiastically hearty. I thought it was a trifle overdone. The entire population tried to get aboard, and assumed possession of everything with such unsophisticated satisfaction that it strained the limits of our hospitality and tired our patience somewhat. They were a jocular, spontaneous and chattering crowd, of all ages, many hues, and some diversity of dress. Each canoe had received from Captain Coogan a bucket of bread, but their appetite for tobacco would have made a tremendous contribution to the income of the United Cigar Company. Everyone wanted it—men, women and children, and it stood first in the commercial schedule of trade. We rejected their whalebone ivory and foxskins, but boots, skin shirts and coats were acceptable.