GOING OUTSIDE.
"Do I sleep? Do I dream?
Do I wonder and doubt?
Are things what they seem?
Or are visions about?"
was now actually on my way home. It was not a dream, for here I was on board the snug little ocean steamer "Dora," belonging to the Alaska Commercial Company, and I was on my way to St. Michael and Dawson. For ocean travel our steamer was a perfect one in all its appointments, being staunch and reliable, with accommodating officers. After taking a last look at Chinik, I went to my stateroom. Only one stop was made before we reached St. Michael, that being at Port Denbeigh, a new mining camp where for some hours freight was unloaded. In about twenty-two hours from the time we left Chinik we were in St. Michael harbor, climbing down upon a covered barge which took us ashore.
It was nearly two years since I had first landed at this dock,—then in a snow storm, now in the rain,—then with my brother, now alone. Not at all like Nome is this quiet little hamlet of St. Michael by the sea. Neither saloons nor disorderly places are allowed upon the island. What was formerly a canteen for soldiers was now a small but tidy restaurant, where I ate a good dinner of beef-steak with an appetite allowable in Alaska.
Upon the streets and about the barracks were many boys in blue, while the hotel parlors swarmed at dinner time with officers and their wives and daughters, all richly and fashionably attired. At the parlor piano two ladies performed a duet, while the silken skirts of others rustled in an aristocratic manner over the thick carpet, and gentlemen in dress suits and gold-laced uniforms gracefully posed and chatted.
For my own part, a little homesick feeling had to be resolutely put down as I pulled on my old rain coat, and with umbrella and handbag trudged out in the darkness and rain to look for my baggage. I had already secured my transportation at the steamship office, where, at the hands of the kindly manager of the Alaska Commercial Company's affairs in this country I had received the most courteous treatment I could desire. With little delay I found my trunk and went on board the Yukon steamer T. C. Power.
Some months before a consolidation of the three largest transportation companies in Alaska had been effected, including the Alaska Commercial Company, and I was now traveling with the latter under the name of the Northern Commercial Company, but I felt a security like that of being in charge of an old and trustworthy friend, and was quite content.
I had a long journey before me. We should reach Dawson in fourteen days unless we met with delays, but a fast rising wind warned us that we might encounter something of the sort where we were, and we did. For two days and nights our steamer lay under the lee of the island, not daring to venture out in the teeth of the gale which buffeted us. Straining, creaking, swaying, first one way and then the other, we lay waiting for the storm to abate. No river steamer with stern wheel and of shallow draught, could safely weather the rough sea for sixty miles to the Yukon's mouth, and we tried to be patient.
Early on the morning of the third day we started, and for twelve hours we ploughed our way through the waters with bow now deep in the trough of the sea, now lifted high in mid-air, to be met the next moment by an uprising roller, which, with a boom and a jar, sent a quiver through the whole vessel.