with the first breeze, we set sail for port clarence, alaska, the northern rendezvous of the arctic ocean whaling fleet in early summer. there in the latter part of june or the early part of july, the fleet always met the four-masted schooner jennie, the tender from san francisco, by which all firms in the whaling trade sent mail and supplies to their vessels. on our way across from siberia to alaska, we passed just south of behring straits and had our first distant glimpse of the arctic ocean. when we dropped anchor in the windy roadstead of port clarence, eighteen whale ships were there ahead of us.
the land about port clarence was flat and covered with tall, rank grass—a region of tundra stretching away to distant hills. the jennie came in direct from san francisco soon after we arrived. boats from the whale ships swarmed about her as soon as she dropped anchor, eager for letters and newspapers. our mate brought back a big bundle of san francisco newspapers which were sent forward after the cabin had read them. they gave us our first news since leaving honolulu of how the great world was wagging. every man in the forecastle who could read read these papers from the first headline to the last advertisement. it seemed good to get into touch once more with the men and events of civilization. exiles of the sea, the news of our country seemed to have an intimate personal meaning to us which it never could possibly have to stay-at-homes to whom newspapers are every-day, casual budgets of gossip and information. i remember that a telegraphic brevity describing a murder in my native state seemed like a message from home.
among the eskimos who came aboard the brig from the large village on shore, was a white man dressed like an eskimo to the last detail and looking like one except for a heavy beard. he had run away from a whale ship three years before, hoping to make his way to some white settlement to the south and there secure passage on shipboard back to san francisco. he had escaped, he said, in an eskimo kyack tied alongside his ship. as soon as he was missed officers and boatsteerers put ashore in a boat and trailed him. he led his pursuers a long chase inland and though he was shot at several times, he managed to elude them and reach the safety of the hills.
after he had seen the whaling fleet sail away, he ventured back to the eskimo village on shore where he was welcomed by the natives. he soon found that escape by land was practically impossible; the nearest white settlement was hundreds of miles distant and he would have to thread his way through pathless forests and across ranges of mountains covered at all seasons with ice and snow. moreover, he learned what he should have known before he ran away that no vessels except whaling ships, their tender, and an occasional revenue cutter ever touched at port clarence which at that time was far north of the outmost verge of the world's commerce. there was nothing left for him to do but settle among the eskimos and wait for the arrival of the whaling fleet in the following summer.
during the long arctic night, with the temperature forty and fifty degrees below zero, he lived in an igloo after the manner of the natives; learned to eat raw meat and blubber—there was nothing else to eat—became fluent in the eskimo language; and took an eskimo girl for a wife. he found existence among these human anachronisms left over from the stone age a monotonously dreary and soul-wearying experience, and he waited with nervous impatience for the coming of the fleet with its annual opportunity for getting back to civilization.
the first year passed and the ships anchored in port clarence. he hurried out in his kyack to ask the captains for permission to work his way back to san francisco. he never once doubted that they would give him his chance. but a sad surprise was in store for him. from ship to ship he went, begging to be allowed to remain aboard, but the hard-hearted captains coldly refused him, one after the other. he was a deserter, they told him; he had made his bed and he could lie in it; to take him away would encourage others to desert. some captains cursed him; some ordered him off their vessels. finally the ships sailed away for the whaling grounds, leaving him marooned on the bleak shore to pass another year in the squalor of his igloo.
next year when the whaling fleet came again it was the same story over again. again he watched the ships arrive with a heart beating high with hope and again he saw their topmasts disappear over the horizon, leaving him hopeless and wretched behind. before he came aboard the brig, he had made the rounds of the other ships and had met with the same refusals as of yore. i saw him go aft and plead with captain shorey and that stern old sea dog turned him down as curtly as the other skippers had done. the ships sailed away, leaving him to his fate. to me his story was the most pathetic that ever fell within my personal experience. i never learned whether he ever managed somehow to get back home or left his bones to bleach upon the frozen tundra.
from port clarence, we headed back to unalaska to ship our whale bone to san francisco by steamer. midway of our run down the behring sea a thick fog closed about us and we kept our fog horn booming. soon, off our bows, we heard another fog horn. it seemed to be coming closer. our cooper, an old navy bugler, became suspicious. he got out his old bugle and sounded "assembly" sharply. as the first note struck into the mist, the other fog horn ceased its blowing. we did not hear it again. when the mist lifted, no vessel was in sight, but the situation was clear. we had chanced upon a poaching sealer and when she heard our cooper's bugle, she concluded we were a revenue cutter and took to her heels.
a day or two later, we saw the revenue cutter corwin chasing a poacher. heeled over under crowded sail, the sealing schooner was scurrying before a stiff wind. the corwin was plowing in hot pursuit, smoke pouring from her funnel and hanging thick in the wake of the chase. she was gaining steadily, for she was a steamship and the schooner had only her sails to depend on. finally the revenue cutter sent a solid shot across the schooner's bows. the ball knocked up a great splash of water. but the poacher did not heave to—just kept on her way, leaning so far over that the clews of her lower sails almost touched the waves and a big white feather of spray stood up in front of her. so pursuer and pursued passed over the horizon and we did not see the end of the hunt. but we knew that there could be but one end. the fate of that poacher was sealed. only a fog could save her, and the sky was clear.
we passed close to st. george island, the southernmost of the pribiloff group, the breeding place of the fur seals. as we came near the shores, the air literally shook with the raucous, throbbing bark of countless seals. the din was deafening. along the shore, a shelving beach ran up to rocky declivities and beach and rocks were packed with seals. there may have been a hundred thousand; there may have been a million; and it seemed as if every seal was barking. the water alongshore swarmed with them. thousands of heads were sticking out of the sea. thousands of other seals were playing, breaching out of the water like porpoises. they swam close to the brig and floated lazily on the surface, staring at us unafraid. if we had been poachers, i should think we could have taken several hundred thousand dollars worth of seals without difficulty.
a dozen little pup seals whose fur was of a snowy and unspotted white came swimming about the vessel. these sea babies were soft, furry, cunning little fellows and they paddled about the brig, sniffing at the strange monster that had invaded their home. they seemed absolutely fearless and gazed up at us out of big, brown, wondering, friendly eyes. sealers kill them, as their fur makes beautiful edgings and borders for fur garments.
the fur seals are supposed to pass the winter somewhere in the south pacific, but whether in the open sea or on land has never been definitely learned. from their mysterious southern hiding places, they set out for the north in the early spring. they first appear in march in the waters off california. coastwise vessels find the sea alive with thousands of them. they travel slowly northward following the coast line, fifty or a hundred miles out at sea, feeding on fish and sleeping on the surface. regularly each year in april, a revenue cutter setting out from port townsend for patrol service in behring sea and arctic ocean waters, picks up the herd and convoys it to the pribiloffs to guard it against the attacks of poachers. the seals swarm through the passes between the aleutian islands in may and arrive at the pribiloffs in the latter part of that month or early in june.
they remain on the pribiloffs during the breeding and rearing season and begin to depart for the south again in the latter part of september. they are all gone as a rule by november, though in some years the last ones do not leave until december. they are again seen as they crowd through the aleutian channels, but all track of them is lost a few hundred miles to the south. at what destination they finally arrive on that southward exodus no man knows. it is one of the mysteries of the sea.
we saw no whales on our southward passage and did not much expect to see any, though we kept a lookout at the mast-head on the off chance of sighting some lone spout. the summer months are a second "between seasons," dividing the spring whaling in behring sea from that in the arctic ocean in the fall. the whales had all followed the retreating ice northward through behring straits.
the fourth of july found us in the middle of behring sea. we observed the glorious fourth by hoisting the american flag to our gaff-topsail peak, where it fluttered all day long. mr. winchester came forward with two bottles of jamaica rum and dealt out a drink all around.
we entered unalaska harbor by the same long, narrow, and precipitous channel through which we had passed on our voyage north when we put into the harbor to have the captain's leg set. negotiating this channel—i should say it was about two miles long—was another illustration of our captain's seamanship. we had to tack innumerable times from one side of the channel to the other, our jib-boom at every tack projecting over the land before the brig came around. we finally dropped anchor opposite the old, cross-crowned greek church which stands in the center of the struggling village.
