Tuesday, March eleventh.
It blows incessantly, cold and clear,—blue days. I have painted most of to-day, first indoors, and then outdoors commencing a large picture. Olson has been with us much of the time. He treasures every little memento we can give him. In his pocket-book are snapshots of Kathleen, Clara, and Barbara. He wanted Barbara’s curl that I have—but I couldn’t give him that. It looks as if we should all go to Seward together. This wind is likely to hold until the full moon passes—and that’s still some days off. My trunk is about packed and what remains can be done in a very few hours.
THE STAR-LIGHTER
Speaking to Olson to-night about the possibility of a shipwrecked man being able to support life on this coast for any length of time he told of a native boy of Unga, “crazy Simyon,” who lived four years at Nigger Head, a wild part of Unga Island, with no shelter but a hole in a sand bank, no fire, no weapons or clothes, or tools; a first-hand story, long, wild, terrible, beginning with a boy’s theft of sacrificial wine, and ending in madness and murder.
Thursday, March thirteenth.
Last night was bitterly cold. I had to get up repeatedly to attend to the fire. The wind howled and the vapor flew and Rockwell and I hugged close together beneath the blankets. Day dawned still icy cold. By noon it began to snow and the afternoon was calm and mild. And now again the wind blows fiercely from the northeast and we’re freezing cold! The day was spent in packing. The dismantled cabin looks forlorn.
Sunday, March sixteenth.
With the full moon has come the most perfect calm. If it holds through to-morrow we shall leave the island. The past three days have been busy ones. Bitterly cold weather has prevailed with the wind unceasingly from the north—almost the coldest days of the winter. Still I did some painting out-of-doors every day until yesterday, trying hard to pin upon the canvas a little more of the infinite splendors of this place. Meanwhile our packing was carried on. We have made a thoroughly good job of it—I hope! But who can tell what strain a trip of so many thousand miles will put upon our crates and bundles? But for a promise we had made Olson to go with him to Sunny Bay and Humpback Creek—on the eastern mainland—we’d have gone this day to Seward.
