“I don’t care so much for the ivory as for the good story we will get out of it, if the whole thing turns out as we hope.”
“There’s you newspaper men again,” said Don, “always after a good story, but why not take the ivory too if we find it?”
“Well,” put in Pepper, “we’ll soon know, for Colonel Snow said last night that we should remain in St. Michael’s only until the Seattle steamer comes up to take us over to Nome, and he proposes to sail South with her, when she returns. Then we shall land at Seward, and meet the chief if he is there, and find out whether he has discovered the location of the cave.”
The travelers were surprised to find the mouth of the Yukon spread out over an enormous expanse of country before it finally empties into Behring Sea. The river, about ninety miles from the sea, begins to split up into separate streams, and is said to have nine or ten mouths.
Behring’s Sea is very shallow, and the waters are most of the time very rough, especially for the flat-bottomed boats that ply upon the Yukon. St. Michael’s lies about seventy miles up the coast from the mouth of the river which is used by the steamers, and the passage is uncomfortable, not to say, at times, dangerous.
The ground swell of the shallow sea tested the seamanship of the young Scouts to the utmost and one or two of them retired to their stateroom, but as a large proportion of the passengers were affected in the same way there was very little disposition to deride the unfortunates, as had been done on the trip up the “Inside Passage.” They arrived safely, however, and were again accorded a warm welcome by Colonel Snow’s comrades of the army, who at once took them to the post, which is the chief institution of importance in the small town.
St. Michael’s is situated on an island which constitutes a military reservation of the United States. Russia, in 1833, established a trading post there, and one of the curiosities of the place is the old Russian block house, a relic of primitive ideas in warfare. The town is the point of departure for the Yukon River steamers, and the aeroplane and the other luggage was taken off here to be placed on the Seattle steamer, which was to take them over to the Seward Peninsula, the other side of Norton Sound.
There are two small Indian villages on the island, and the boys spent part of a day in the inspection of these, buying large quantities of curiosities and looking on with interest at a “potlatch,” an institution which means the entertainment of a man’s neighbors so long as his goods hold out, and the host generally finds himself ready for a receiver by the time the entertainment ends.
The officers of the post were greatly interested in the aeroplane, and it was uncrated for their inspection, but stormy conditions on Behring’s Sea during their stay prevented a flight.
Two days after their arrival, the steamer from Seattle to Nome came along and they embarked and steamed the 112 miles across Norton’s Sound to Nome, the metropolis of that great northwestern section of Alaska that borders on the Arctic Ocean and extends within forty miles of Asia. There is no harbor at Nome, and the ships must lie about a mile off shore, while passengers and freight are taken in on flatboats, from which everything is raised on an elevator by a gigantic crane, and swung in shore.