The Boy With the U. S. Survey Part 26

"But why did you let go?"

"I don't know, Mr. Rivers; it felt as though some one was going to hit me in the face, and I just threw up my hands to defend myself."

"A man's got to be a pretty good prize-fighter who will go in the ring with an Alaskan blizzard," said the geologist, amusedly, "and the worst of it for you is that all your wounds are in the back. I should think you would have a few bruises in the morning, for you went down like a Jack-in-the-Box goes up."

The snow was falling steadily and heavily as the two walked back to the tent, and Roger remarked:

"This will make the trails heavy going, won't it?"

"It looks to me," replied the other, "as though it would make all travel impossible. If this storm had struck a few days earlier, or had we been a few days later in getting here, the chances are that the delay would have been considerable."

"How much, do you suppose?" asked the boy.

The leader of the party shrugged his shoulders.

"If it should prove a heavy snowfall," he said, "and had it struck us on the Sus.h.i.tna, it might have gone far to spoil the entire season's work.

You see a snowfall of four or five inches on the level can be whipped up into drifts fifteen and twenty feet in height, not only hiding the trail, but making conditions through which the dogs cannot flounder until a crust is formed.

"Then you see, Doughty, it's getting late for a good snow-crust, and we might have had to wait down there until the break-up. Then, instead of going on down the Jack River as we shall be able to do now, we would have had to track our way up Indian Creek against all the force of the spring floods, portage across the pa.s.s with the ground in bad condition, and then find little water in the Jack River instead of reaching here comfortably by 'mushing.'"

"It's lucky then," said Roger, "that we're not later in getting here."

"It's not," objected Rivers. "It may be lucky that the storm didn't strike earlier, but it isn't luck that brought us to this place in so much shorter time than had been allotted. That wasn't luck, that was work. I've noticed, too, that luck and labor go together oftener than luck and loafing."

On reaching the tent they found everything snuggled down for winter quarters, and Roger was subjected to some mild chaffing over what Magee called his "one round bout with a gale," but the lad took it good-naturedly enough, knowing from previous experience that his turn might come. He promised himself, however, that before the trip was over he would notice some slight misadventure on the part of others which would enable him to return the compliment of banter.

But while Roger had been out when the snow started and had seen the dense clouds and felt the weight behind them, he was not prepared to see, the following morning, a sheet of snow several inches deep over the entire landscape. Other members of the party had been up during the night, but the boy had not wakened, and when, stepping outside the tent, his foot sank in soft snow halfway to his knee, his amaze was great.

Twelve and a half inches of snow had fallen in the single night, and the bright May sun shining over the glittering expanse made necessary the snow gla.s.ses with which each member of the party was hastily equipped.

"I should not like to be without gla.s.ses to-day," said the boy to Gersup, as they stood by the door of the tent.

"There would be fewer skeletons on the Alaskan hillsides," replied the other, "had it not been for the madness caused by the intense pain of snow-glare on the eyes."

"Is it so acute?"

"It is torture unendurable, because any light, no matter how faint, aggravates it, and it is not possible to live without light. Don't make any mistake, snow-blindness is an awful thing."

This gave Roger pause, for he saw at once how many fatal errors he had been saved by being connected with a party wherein all the details of travel had been so carefully arranged, and all sorts of contingencies, which would have been unforeseen to him, provided against. He had been inly contemptuous of the smoked gla.s.ses, when a pair had been given him at the beginning of the trip, but now he realized their immense importance, for by this time the May sun had begun to make itself felt with intense heat and the days grew long.

It seemed as though the snowstorm had been the last effort of winter, a sample to show what it could do if necessary, a comparison against the heat of the summer days to come. The rays of the sun soon honeycombed the snow and Roger realized how rotten it had become and saw that Rivers's thankfulness that they did not have to travel over it was well founded. Keenly alive to the interests of the expedition, and not having learned the patience of later life, he chafed a good deal under the delay and was continually asking the chief when they should start.

"Doughty," said the chief to him on one of these occasions, when the boy's restlessness was intense, "you can't expend energy until you have acc.u.mulated it. Now in worrying and fretting over not being able to start you are expending energy at a time when, as far as possible, you should be gathering your strength for the time when you will need it.

And, what's more, every one reckons on losing a couple of weeks during the break-up; that is a part of the consumption of time on the trip."

But the rapid advance of spring added a new source of surprise to the lad. From the stillness and silence of the days when they first made camp at the head of the pa.s.s, the air became filled with the myriad voices of life, and the primal solitude became vibrant with tiny songsters. The golden sparrow was there with his piercing plaint, made musical by distance, and the trilling warble of Townsend's fox sparrow, and the varied strain of the hermit thrush, seemed quite homelike.

Before the snow was gone the rosy finch was to be seen, his quick flight giving a gay spot of color to the landscape, and that the more utilitarian side might not be omitted, the snowy ptarmigan formed a welcome addition to the larder of the camp.

Quite a torrent was beginning to flow over the ice in the Jack River, and on the morning of May 16th, when Roger had gone out with Gersup the topographer, to map out with greater detail a little piece of country which had been pa.s.sed by on a previous expedition, he saw that the center of the ice in the river was bulging up like a hog-backed bridge.

"What makes it bulge that way?" asked the boy.

"You should have been able to figure that out," was the response. "When the ice thaws it increases the volume of water under the ice. The edges are frozen solid to the land, the middle is more or less elastic, and so of course the sides stay solid and the middle heaves up. In warmer climates, it is the edge that thaws out first, but up here the rivers, strictly speaking, do not thaw free, the ice is forced from them by the spring floods. It is strictly a break-up rather than a thaw, although it gets warm thereafter very rapidly."

"It certainly does," replied Roger, mopping his forehead. "It's hot enough now, and this is only the middle of May; while two weeks ago it was snowing like Billy O."

On May 18th the ice broke, moved down about a mile and jammed, and a few hours later broke again, finally clearing from the upper reaches of the Jack River on the 19th. Rivers was delighted at the opportunity to get out so soon, as he had feared it might be as late as the first week in June before he could get away.

"I think, Doughty," he said to Roger, "that we can count easily now on accomplishing what we set out to do, and probably get into the Arctic Ocean in good time for an early return."

"That is, barring accidents," put in the topographer.

"We will make up our minds not to have any," replied the chief of the party.

The following morning, therefore, the canoes being all packed, the party bade good-by to the little camp on Broad Pa.s.s, where they had spent so many quiet, uneventful days, and plunged into the grinding forced march that was to occupy every waking moment for so many months to come. The stern reality of Alaskan work became potent to Roger before they had been half an hour on the trail. The Jack River, though swollen by the spring currents, had worn an erratic bed, and was filled with bars on which the canoes stranded. Then there was nought to do but wade into the snow-fed stream, with large chunks of ice roaring down at him, and the chill of the water such as to make the boy gasp and turn everything black before his eyes, while his legs became numb and hurt cruelly. But he gritted his teeth and buckled to it, well aware that the other members of the party were watching him, awaiting a sign of weakening.

The entire morning was spent wading, helping the canoes over a series of small bars with a fairly steep gradient, but the work was slow, and Rivers seized eagerly any chance to increase the pace. Shortly after the midday halt, a reach fairly free from obstacles presented itself, and the party climbed into the boats and shot down the stream. Although Roger had not done any canoe work since he had been on the Survey, he was brought up beside a stream and had handled a paddle nearly all his life, and his delight was great when he found that he had not lost the knack. Not only was he quite at home in a few moments, but he found that his toughness and maturer strength told in every stroke. Harry, the Indian, who was in the stern, nodded approvingly, after ten minutes'

work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MORNING AFTER THE BLIZZARD.

The camp on Broad Pa.s.s where the party awaited the break-up.

_Photograph by U.S.G.S._]

"Heap nice," he said, as he found how keenly the boy judged the weight of the stern paddle and followed his intentions; "light weight and good paddle, go through rapids all right, sure."

And Rivers, who had kept a close eye on the boy, gave a snort of satisfaction.

"I guess you did learn what I bade you," he said, referring to their conversation in Washington a year before; "I think I told you that you should know how to handle a canoe."

"Yes, Mr. Rivers," said Roger, smiling at the remembrance, "but you implied that the Alaskan streams were a whole lot worse than Niagara."

"You won't complain of their not being bad enough, before long," said the chief grimly, "and from the general look of the place right now, I think we are going to run into rough water."

The warning served to sharpen the boy's wits, and it was time. The river was rushing about ten miles an hour over a winding bed, where the bow could not see ahead for more than twenty or thirty yards, a s.p.a.ce covered in a few seconds' time. Suddenly Harry gave a mighty back stroke, and Roger following suit almost instantaneously, the canoe was brought up with a jerk as though some mechanical brakes had been set.

There was not much room to spare, for across the river a big tree had fallen, and behind it the ice had jammed, not enough to dam the water absolutely, but affording no possible pa.s.sage for a canoe.

A landing was made, though it was extremely difficult, and the canoes portaged past the obstruction, Rivers having found that the tree had jammed on a harsh and shallow rapid, over which they could not have taken the boats. Then the chief ordered two of the men to cut through the jammed tree so as to break the dam.

"Why?" queried Roger of Bulson, as he was cutting and shaping a gigantic wooden crowbar for himself, while a couple of the other men were hacking through the tree; "why is it necessary to take all that trouble after we have got by?"

"Supposing we got some distance down the river," was the reply, "where it wasn't easy to make a landing, and this jam broke above us and came pounding down the river, where would we be?"

"But it wouldn't be going any faster than the stream, and we could keep ahead of it with paddles."

"And if you came to a portage?"