Here during the recent centuries met the Asiatic and Alaskan Eskimos, to trade and fight; and the bold, bare cliffs have been the scene of many a bloody battle. Now even this custom has passed, and the men from one side of the straits rarely meet those of the other; but the little remnant of an unknown people, who stranded there no one knows how long ago, still cling to their rocky islets and live as did their forefathers. You may find among them some who bear the mark of the Chuckchis, some who are more like the Alaskan Eskimos, but the little folk, while having the manners and customs of each, have characteristics which belong to neither. Hardly five feet in height, they are too small to have battled successfully with their more robust brethren, but they make up in slyness and ability what they lack in brute strength. They are shy and reticent, clever workmen, clever thieves, and cleverest of all in trading.
No vegetation save grass and chickweed grows on their cliffs. They build their dwellings of flat stones banked with scant earth, and the icy sea, which rims them round and seems to threaten with certain death, is their father and their mother in that it provides all they have in the world. In the brief summer an occasional log of driftwood is thrown against their cliffs, and from this they fashion their canoe frames and their spear handles. During all the cold and cruel winter the ice-floes which crash and grind against the worn granite of their islands bring the seal and walrus and the polar bear. These and the myriad sea birds of summer are their supplies.
For many days the southerly gale which had driven the Bowhead from the Siberian shore kept her in much danger. The sea room was narrow, ice-floes came driving down before the wind, it was impossible to get sight of the sun to find the ship’s position, and the drift of the current toward the straits was an unknown factor. Most of the time the vessel jogged under reefed topsails, with steam up for use in an emergency, and Captain Nickerson was almost constantly on deck. Thick clouds made the nights longer, and very dark, and Harry had a chance to see the full danger of Arctic navigation.
It was in the gloom of one of these nights that he stood on deck. The vessel heeled to the gale, now and then an icy wave sent a rush of spray over the windward rail, the wind howled and wailed in the tense shrouds, and an eerie glow seemed to show in the darkness without lighting it, as if dull fires burned behind the cloud curtains. It seemed to Harry as if they were blown about in chaos, a place dreary, ghostly, and lonely beyond expression. He shuddered and thought of the people at home, happy in the bright June weather. For the first time he was sorry for himself, and homesick. He thought with a great longing of the broad veranda looking out upon the bay, of his mother sitting there, and he seemed with his mind’s eye to see Maisie, in a pretty white gown, flitting gayly across the lawn toward the boats. Then out of the night came a wild, despairing cry, and something fluttered aboard, crashed against the mizzen rigging, and fell in a draggled white heap at his feet. The thought of Maisie was so strong that he sprang forward, with a great cry of alarm, to pick her up where she had fallen, when a sudden tremendous gust of the gale threw the Bowhead on her beam ends. A wall of white water roared down upon him, lifted him up with Maisie in his arms, and he went out into the night with it, still clinging to the limp figure he had clutched as he went down.
It was well for Harry that the same sea that sent him overboard sent with him a coil of line from a belaying-pin, where it hung against the mizzenmast. The whirl of the wave wound this round him, and the great boatswain, whose watch on deck it was, saw him go out with it, and finding it taut, and something towing, hauled away at it until he could reach down and get him by the collar. Then with one big swing of his enormous arm he landed him aboard. He set him in a heap on the deck, and with a hand on either knee peered down at him in the gloom.
“Young feller,” he said, with much emotion, “there’s just one thing I want you to do for me when we get back to Frisco. Do you know what that is?”
“What?” asked Harry, wholly dazed and half drowned, replying mechanically.
“I want you to take all the money I get this trip and go and bet it on something for me. A man that can win out the way you’ve just done couldn’t lose at any game. Great jumping Jehoshaphat! what have you got here?”
“Is she all right?” asked Harry, struggling to his feet. He was still dazed, and had forgotten all the events of the last two months. It seemed to him that it was Griggs speaking, and that he had just pulled him and Maisie out of the Fore River.
The boatswain took the limp white figure from his arms and looked at it. It was a great white bird, quite dead, no doubt killed by its crash against the mizzenmast.