Like a necklace about the throat of Bering Sea, the Aleutian Islands swing in a cloud-capped circle of peaks to within about five hundred miles of the Siberian coast. The story of their discovery and exploitation by the Russians is one of romantic interest, thrilled through with horror at the needless oppression and slaughter of their gentle inhabitants. It was in the year 1740 that the Russians first sighted them, on the ill-fated expedition of Bering and his fellow commander Chirakoff. During the preceding centuries the little white sable known as the Russian ermine had led the wild Cossack huntsmen across the Siberian steppes to the shores of Kamchatka. The value of east Siberian furs in Russian markets was great, and when the wild huntsmen and traders reached the sea limit, they learned from the natives legends of land yet beyond, over-sea, where furs were still more plentiful. Accordingly, with a commission from the Russian court, Bering and Chirakoff fitted out two little vessels and set out upon these unknown seas on a voyage of discovery. Bering touched the mainland of Alaska, but soon started for home. Chirakoff visited several of the Aleutian Islands and finally reached Kamchatka again, after losing many of his crew from starvation and disease. Bering, however, was wrecked on the Commander Islands, just off the Gulf of Kamchatka, and died there, but after incredible hardships a remnant of his crew reached the mainland. They had been obliged to subsist on the flesh of the sea otter during their stay on the islands, and they brought back with them some of the pelts of the animals. These were received with great favor in Russia, and the high price offered for the skins gave a great impetus to further exploration of the islands, on which they abounded. Expedition after expedition was fitted out in crazy vessels, and the Promishlyniks, as the Russians called these savage huntsmen and voyagers, began to overrun the Aleutian chain.
Often their unseaworthy ships were wrecked in the gales which surge about the islands. Hunger and disease decimated their crews, and many an expedition started out boldly into the untried tempestuous waters, only to disappear and be no more heard from. Yet now and then an unseaworthy craft would escape the gales, and with half an emaciated crew return, the ship loaded down with many thousands of sea otter, fox, and seal skins, meaning great wealth to the survivors. Nothing could exceed the boldness and hardihood of these men. The half-starved, disease-smitten remnants of the unsuccessful crews would immediately dare the myriad dangers again in a new expedition, so great was their courage and so tempting the prize. We have scant records of the expeditions, yet in those of which we know the misery and death, even when success resulted, is appalling. Yet they kept on, and the boldness and hardihood of the Cossack hunter-mariners were equaled only by their rapacity and cruelty. Invariably met with goodwill and hospitality on the part of the natives of the mountainous islets, their return was invariably oppression and cruelty in the extreme. A busy, contented, hospitable people swarmed in the sheltered coves of the rocky isles when the invasion began. Within thirty years but scattered remnants were left, enslaved, diseased, discouraged. Once only, on Unalaska, they took advantage of the winter and slaughtered their oppressors who remained on the island, but with the spring came new hordes, and they were obliged to sue for peace, with slavery.
This uprising took place in the winter of 1763, and the story of the escape of two of the Promishlyniks, driven to the mountains, at bay on a rocky headland, concealed in a cave, fleeing alongshore in a captured canoe, always with tremendous odds against them, yet always winning in the unequal fight, is an extraordinary one.
Most of the Aleutian Islands to-day are barren, and desolate of inhabitants. Few if any Russians remain, and but a handful of Aleuts. Moreover, the greed of a century and a half has practically exterminated the sea otter. Once so common that it might be killed with a club, the animal is to-day one of the most wary known, and the price of a single skin is a fortune to the Aleut hunter, of whom a few still seek for the prized fur. The Russian domination passed with the sale of Alaska to the United States. The American domination is kindly, but the Aleut does not thrive, and it seems but a few more years before he will have passed into the category of races that have faded before the advance of the white man.
The Bowhead made only a brief stay at Unalaska. Here some coal was added to their supply, and store of fresh water was taken from the reservoir, established by one of the big trading companies that have stations there, at the seal islands, and at St. Michaels, at the mouth of the Yukon River. Then the anchor was hoisted, they steamed out of Captain’s Bay, by the strange headland, Priest Rock, which marks its entrance, and with a southerly wind in the sails left the clouds and snowy peaks behind. Their prow was set toward the mysterious north, and already the man on the lookout was on the watch for the blink of Bering Sea ice not yet melted by the spring sun.
CHAPTER III
BUCKING ICE IN BERING SEA
Harry sat at the mess-room table one morning a few days later, writing the first chapter in what he rather shyly called his “report.” He had learned much from Captain Nickerson of the habits of the humpback whale, which frequents the Aleutian Islands, and the dangerous circumstances under which vessels would work while whaling in these waters. The captain had declared that it was not worth while to hunt the humpback, that the dangers and losses would more than balance the gain, and Harry believed him. Nevertheless it was on such things as these that Mr. Adams wanted knowledge, and so he was jotting down what he had learned.
The old humpbacks are born fighters. The shoals and currents, the fogs and gales, of the islands are their allies, and right well do they know how to take advantage of them. Once an iron is fast to a humpback, his first impulse is to turn and crush the puny boat which has stung him. Failing in this, he rushes to a shoal, and rolling on the bottom tries to roll the iron out, or he swings in and out the narrow, reef-studded passages, and often wrecks the boat that is fast to him. Even if he fails in all these attempts and is killed, the swift currents and the fog which surrounds make the bringing of the carcass to the ship difficult and dangerous. Hence, now that the Aleuts have passed from the islands, he is left to pursue his ways in peace. “Why bother with him,” say the whalemen, “when just a little way to the northward are the bowheads, far more valuable, and as a rule killed almost without a struggle?”
Now and then Harry lifted his head from his work to listen to a peculiar grating sound that seemed to come from the side of the ship. It was the same sound that a small boat makes when it touches a gravelly bottom, and he noted also that steam was up on the vessel, and knew by the slow pulsations of the screw that they were proceeding at half speed. He was curious about all this, but decided that he would finish his work before he went on deck. Then a faint, far-away cry came to his ear. The man at the masthead had sung out—“A-h-h blow!”