The Young Ice Whalers

by Winthrop Packard

The head man could not tell whence this little image of pure gold came except that he had got it in trade from a man of the coast tribes who came in to the sandspit to trade from along the coast to the south. Like the jade Buddha, it might have passed from hand to hand for a long distance.

As they continued their journey, another tribe joined them, coming down a tributary of the Kowak; then others came, and soon the little expedition was a large one, steadily and leisurely progressing down river. It was toward the end of May. The days were long and warm; indeed, there was no night, for though the sun set for a few hours each day, only a gentle twilight marked his absence. The tributaries from the hills were running free of ice and threatened to flood the surface of the river, which was still solid. Signs of the spring break-up were numerous, and when the little army reached a long winding canyon among abrupt hills, there was much discussion whether they should continue on the ice or take to the banks. The easy but unsafe route of the main river ice was decided upon, and they entered between the hills and pressed on. They traveled rapidly now, and there was much uneasiness among the Indians, who seemed to fear something from behind. The ice was solid in the main, yet in spots it was flooded, and the increase in volume and rush of the water beneath had worn holes through it in other places. They pressed on with all the speed they could command, watchful always of the menace from behind.

It was on the second day that it came. They were between perpendicular bluffs, difficult if not impossible to climb, when a shout went up from those in the rear. As if at a signal, every one stopped and listened. Far behind them could be heard a dull sound, faint, yet ominous. Somehow it reminded Harry of a still spring night when he had been boating late on the Charles River, and had heard across the water the steady hum of electric cars, speeding hither and thither in the city, a vibrant undertone like the quivering of tense wires in a gale.

A shout went from one end of the long line of sledges to the other. “Emik kile! Emik kile! Gur!” it said. “The water is coming! The water is coming! Go!”

At the word dogs and men, women and children, sprang from listening immobility into intense action. The dogs surged against their collars, and the sleds bounded forward. The men, shouting, ran beside them, urging them on with whip and voice. Mothers caught their smaller children to their shoulders, the older ones scampered beside them, and all rushed forward down the river, fleeing from that menacing hum, which was drowned for the moment by their own uproar. On they went, splashing across the flooded places, daring the thin edges of the water-holes, unmindful of the danger under foot, thinking only of what was bearing down upon them, still miles behind. As they plunged on, they scanned the rude cliffs anxiously for a gully or a break that would give them passage to the upland, but they found none. Little need to lash the dogs; their own instinct told them the danger only too well. Their tawny sides panted, and their tongues hung from their dripping jaws.

A half mile, and still no escape to the right or the left. The women and children kept up with wonderful endurance, yet the pace was telling on them, and the weaker already lagged behind.

They had ceased to shout and urge one another on now. The race for life took all their breath. Out of the unknown distance behind them the low vibrant hum had increased to a grinding roar, in which there were sounds like cannon-shots,—the bursting of the ice under the pressure of the oncoming flood. Just ahead of Harry a youngster stumbled, then sprang to his feet, limping badly. The fall had wrenched his ankle, and he could no longer run. Harry hesitated for a second. There was an indescribable terror of that mighty uproar thrilling through him. What was the life of a little Indian boy to him? But it was only for a second, this hesitation. Then with a gasp of shame at the thought, he snatched the youngster to his shoulder, and ran on, panting for breath, his nerves quivering with the bodily fear which no man can avoid, yet strong in the determination that his manhood should not fail in the crisis.

The roar of the flood suddenly grew louder yet, and he looked behind as he fled. Round a bend in the river he caught a glimpse of what was coming. The ice sprang into the air in great cakes, that were caught by a white wall behind and crushed into whirling rubble. It did not seem to come fast, this great white wall of ice and foam, yet it gained on them rapidly. In this look behind he saw Joe. He was near the end of the line of flight, helping along an Indian grandmother, who bore in her arms her little granddaughter, while the mother with a babe stumbled along at her side, her black eyes wide with terror. Their dogs with the loaded sled had outrun them both in this wild race.

Cries of encouragement sounded ahead once more. Those in the front of flight had seen a gully in the bluffs through which they might escape. Harry saw them turn toward this, and he stumbled and gasped along under his burden with renewed hope. Dogs and men foremost in the race leaped into this gully and scrambled upward. He was near it now, running in a sort of bad dream, with the tremendous crushing roar of the flood seeming to whelm him in its waves of sound. Cannon boomed in this uproar, volleys of musketry pulsed through it, and the steady hoof-beats of the white horse cavalry of the flood rolled deafeningly on. Now he was at the bank, and plunging up it, too weak to do anything more than drop with his burden at the safety line. He was among the last to reach safety, but Joe was behind him.

The Indian mother with her babe was at the edge of the ice. Twenty feet behind them were Joe and the older woman and the child. Behind them again, not a dozen rods away, rolled the great white wave in the forefront of the flood. The river ice swelled to meet this wave. It rounded up, bulged, burst, and was tossed in the air in huge cakes, springing a dozen feet upward, engulfed in the white seething wall as they came down. In front of this the grandmother fell, sending the girl rolling ahead of her on the ice. Joe snatched up the child, turned as if to help the woman, and then the ice lifted under him, sending him spinning toward the bank. A moment and the ice burst beneath his feet. A great cake rose and tossed him up, still clinging to the child, and then he was half smothered, bruised, and soaked in a whirl of ice-cold water, and sank and rose on the edge of the flood, washed into the eddy that whirled in the gully, and still he clung half unconsciously to the child.