from unalaska, into which port we put to have the captain's leg attended to, the brig stood northwesterly for the spring whaling on the bowhead and right whale grounds off the siberian coast. we were a week's sail from the fox islands when we encountered our first ice. it appeared in small chunks floating down from the north. the blocks became more numerous until they dappled the sea. they grew in size. strings and floes appeared. then we brought up against a great ice field stretching to the north as far as the eye could see. it was all floe ice broken into hummocks and pressure ridges and pinnacles, with level spaces between. there were no towering 'bergs such as are launched into the sea from the glaciers on the greenland coast and the pacific coast of alaska. the highest 'berg i saw on the voyage was not more than forty feet high. it was composed of floe ice which had been forced upward by the pressure of the pack.
the crow's nest was now rigged and placed in position on the cross-trees abaft the fore-mast, between the topsail and the fore-top-gallant-sail yard. it was a square box of heavy white canvas nailed upon a wooden frame-work. when a man stood in it the canvas sides reached to his breast and were a protection against the bitter winds. from early morning until dark an officer and a boat-steerer occupied the crow's nest and kept a constant lookout for whales.
as soon as we struck the ice the captain's slop-chest was broken open and skin clothes were dealt out to the men. accoutred for cold weather, i wore woolen underwear and yarn socks next my flesh; an outer shirt of squirrel skin with hood or parka; pants and vest of hair seal of the color and sheen of newly minted silver; a coat of dogskin that reached almost to my knees; a dogskin cap; deer-skin socks with the hair inside over my yarn socks; walrus-hide boots and walrus-hide mittens over yarn mittens. the walrus-boots were fastened by a gathering string just below the knees and by thongs of tanned skin about the ankle. some of the men wore heavy reindeer-skin coats. the skin clothes worn by the officers and boat-steerers were of finer quality and more pretentious. perhaps the handsomest costume was that of little johnny. it consisted of coat, vest, and trousers of silvery hair-seal, with the edges of the coat trimmed with the snowwhite fur of fur-seal pups. with this he wore a black dogskin cap and walrus-hide boots.
while we were among the ice, the officer in the crow's nest directed the course of the brig. whaling officers are great fellows to show their skill by just grazing dangerous ice. many a time we green hands stood with our hearts in our mouths as the ship seemed about to crash into a 'berg bows-on.
"starboard, sir," the helmsman would respond.
"starboard," would come the order from aloft.
the bow would swing slowly to one side and the 'berg would go glancing along the rail so close perhaps that we could have grabbed a snowball off some projection.
"steady," the officer would call.
"steady, sir." the bow would stop in its lateral swing.
"port."
"port, sir." the bow would swing the other way.
"steady." we would be upon our old course again.
once i remember the mate was in the crow's nest and had been narrowly missing ice all day for the fun of the thing—"showing off," as we rather disturbed green hands said. a 'berg about thirty feet high, a giant for behring sea waters, showed a little ahead and to leeward of our course. the mate thought he could pass to windward. he kept the brig close to the wind until the 'berg was very near. then he saw a windward passage was impossible and tried suddenly to go to leeward.
"hard up your wheel," he cried.
"hard up it is, sir."
the bow swung toward the 'berg—swung slowly, slowly across it. the tip of the jib-boom almost rammed a white pinnacle. just when everybody was expecting the brig to pile up in wreck on the ice, the great 'berg swept past our starboard rail. but we had not missed it. its jagged edges scraped a line an inch deep along our side from bow to stern.
shooting okchug (or, as it is sometimes spelled, ooksook) or hair seals was a favorite amusement in the spring ice. the mate was an expert with a rifle. he shot many as they lay sunning themselves on ice cakes. okchugs are as large as oxen and are covered with short silvery hair so glossy that it fairly sparkles. if an okchug was killed outright, its head dropped over upon the ice and it lay still. if only slightly wounded, the animal flounced off into the sea. if vitally hurt, it remained motionless with its head up and glaring defiance, whereupon a boat's crew would row out to the ice cake and a sailor would finish the creature with a club.
it was exciting to step on a small ice cake to face a wounded and savage okchug. the animal would come bouncing on its flippers straight at one with a vicious barking roar. the nose was the okchug's most vulnerable point. a tap on the nose with a club would stretch the great creature out dead. it required a cool head, a steady nerve, and a good aim to deliver this finishing stroke upon the small black snout. if one missed or slipped on the ice, the possible consequences would not have been pleasant. we tanned the skins of the okchugs and made them into trousers or "pokes." the meat was hung over the bows to keep in an ice-box of all outdoors. ground up and made into sausages, it was a pièce de resistance on the forecastle bill of fare.
one night in the latter part of may we saw far off a great light flaring smokily across the sea. it was what is known in whaler parlance as a bug-light and was made by blazing blubber swinging in an iron basket between the two smokestacks of a whale-ship's try-works. by it the crew of that distant ship was working at trying out a whale. the bug-light signaled to all the whaling fleet the first whale of the season.
the great continent of ice drifting southward gradually closed round the fleet. the ships had worked so far in there was no escape. in the early part of june the brig was frozen in. for three weeks the vessel remained motionless in solid ice with every stitch of canvas furled. no water or land was in sight—nothing but one great sweep of broken and tumbled ice as far as the eye could see. those three ice-bound june weeks were given over to idleness. a stove was placed in the forecastle and was kept going night and day. this made it possible to keep comfortable and to read.
we went on frequent seal hunts. we strolled across the frozen sea to visit the other ships, the nearest of which was two miles away. visiting is called "gamming" by whalers. we learned the gossip of the fleet, who had taken the first whale, how many whales had been caught, the adventures of the ships, the comedies and tragedies of the whaling season.
we established, too, what we called the "behring sea circulating library." there were a number of books in every forecastle. these greasy, dog-eared volumes were passed about from ship to ship. perhaps there were twenty books aboard the brig which had been read by almost every member of the crew, forward and aft. before we got out of the ice, we had exchanged these volumes for an entirely new lot from other ships.
one morning i awoke with the ship rocking like a cradle. i pulled on my clothes and hurried on deck. the ice fields were in wild commotion. great swells from some storm upon the open sea to the south were rolling under them. crowded and tumultuous waves of ice twenty feet high chased each other across the frozen fields from horizon to horizon. the ship would sink for a moment between ridges of ice and snow, and then swing up on the crest of an ice mountain. great areas of ice would fall away as if the sea had opened beneath them. then they would shoot up and shut out half the sky. the broken and jagged edges of these white and solid billows appeared for an instant like a range of snowy sierras which, in another instant, would crumble from view as if some seismic cataclysm had shaken them down in ruin. the air was filled with grinding, crushing, ominous noises and explosions.
the ship was in imminent peril. in that mad turmoil of ice it seemed certain she would be ground to pieces. captain shorey, who was hobbling about on crutches, ordered a cask of bread, a cask of water, and a barrel of beef hoisted on deck ready to be thrown out on an ice cake in case the brig were wrecked and we were cast away.
in the grinding of the floes, the ship became wedged in between two immense pieces of ice. the great bergs washed closer and closer. when they rose on some tremendous billow, great caverns, washed out by the sea, appeared in their sides like mouths, edged with splinters and points of blue and glittering ice, like fangs. as they rose and fell, it seemed the two white monsters were opening and closing devouring maws for us while the suck of the water in their ice caves made noises like the roar of hungry beasts of prey.
a cable was run out hurriedly over the bow and a bowline at the end of it was slipped over a hummock of ice. with the inboard end wound around the windlass, all hands worked like beavers to heave the brig out of her dangerous position. it was all the crew could do to swing the windlass bars up and down. the ship went forward slowly, almost imperceptibly, and all the time the great bergs swept closer and closer. for a long time it looked as if we were doomed. there was no doubt about the ship's fate if the bergs struck it. but inch by inch, heave by heave, we hauled her through. ten minutes later, the ice monsters came together with a force that would have crushed an ironclad.
gradually patches of clear water began to appear in the ice. it was as though the white fields were opening great blue eyes. little lakes and zigzag lanes of water formed. sails were set. the brig began to work her way along. soon she was swinging on heavy billows—not white billows of ice but green billows of water, thick with ice in stars and constellations.
