Both yesterday and to-day it has poured rain. They’ve not been unpleasant days, however. Occasional let-ups have allowed us to cut wood and get water without inconvenience. This morning Olson, fearing that a continuance of the mild weather would melt the ice in the lake and send his bags of fish to the bottom, went out to the center of the lake where they hung suspended through a hole in the ice and brought them in. But so precarious has the ice become that he carried a rope and took me along in case of trouble. To get out upon the ice we had to go some distance along the lake’s shore.
Returning we missed meeting Rockwell who had gone to join us. Not for some time did it occur to me to call him. It was well I did call. The poor boy on not seeing us had suddenly concluded we were drowned. A strip of water separated him from the ice. He was on the point of wading into this at the moment I called him. He was still terribly excited when he reached us.
Both days I have been occupied with humble, housewifely duties,—baking, washing, mending, and now the cabin is adorned with our drying clothes. Here where water must be carried so far it is the wet days that are wash days. Darning is a wretched nuisance. We should have socks enough to tide us over our stay here. Last night after Rockwell had been put to bed I sat down and did two of the best drawings I have made. At half past twelve I finished them, and then to calm my elation a bit for sleep read in the “Odyssey.” At this my second reading of the book it’s as intensely interesting—or more so—than before. As a story it is incomparably better than the “Iliad.” To me it is full of suggestions for wonderful pictures.
Ten days from now it comes due for Olson to go to Seward. If only then we have mild, calm weather! But as yet we have seen no steamer go to Seward since early in the month. It looks as if the steamship companies had combined to deprive Alaska of its Christmas mail and freight in a policy of making the deadlock with the government over the mail contracts intolerable. Meanwhile, instead of serving us, the jaunty little naval cruisers that summered here in idleness doubtless loaf away the winter months in comfortable southern ports.
CAIN
Monday, December twenty-third.
Up to this morning the hard warm rain continued, and now the stars are all out and it might be thought a night in spring. At eight-thirty I walked over in sneakers and underwear for a moment’s call on Olson, but he had gone to bed. And now although we’ll have no snow the weather is fair for Christmas.