Young Alaskans in the Far North Part 13

John was setting down these figures and doing a little figuring on the margin of his paper. "We left on May twenty-ninth," said he, "and got here July eighth--forty days into two thousand miles--that makes fifty miles a day we've averaged, including all the stops. You see that fifty miles a day, kept up, gets you into the thousands in time, doesn't it? After we struck the steamboat we began to raise the average."

"Well," said Jesse, looking off to the dull-brown slopes of the tundra-covered mountains which lay to the westward, "if what that trader-man told me is true, we'll slow down considerably before we get to the top of that pa.s.s in the Rockies yonder."

They were all sitting on the crest of the bluff of Fort McPherson landing, where a long log slab, polished by many years of use, had been erected as a sort of lookout bench for the people who live the year around at Fort McPherson.

"What time is it, Rob?" asked Jesse, suddenly.

Rob pulled out his watch. "It's eleven-thirty," said he. "Get the cameras, boys! Here's a good place for us, right here at the end of the bench. It's almost midnight. Look over there!"

The three of them looked as he pointed. The Midnight Sun of the Arctic hung low on the horizon, but not lower now than it had been for some time. Its rays, reflected from the surface of the Peel River just beyond, shone with a pale l.u.s.ter such as they had never before known.

With some sort of common feeling which neither of them could have explained, each of the three boys took off his cap and laid it on the bench beside him as he stood looking at that strange spectacle given to so few travelers to see--the unsinking Midnight Sun!

XI

THE MIDNIGHT SUN

It was two o'clock in the morning. There had been no night. The sun had not sunk at all beyond yonder dark, ragged fringe of the spruce-trees marking the horizon. Not even the lower edge of its disk had been broken by the top of the tallest spruce-tree. Yes, for one of the few remaining nights of that year it had been given to our young travelers to see the Midnight Sun at its lowest point.

It was a strange sun, so it seemed to them all. After it had sunk far off to the left of the Peel River it seemed to hang there for a time, and then to go, not in the arc of a circle, but almost in a line parallel with the level of the earth plane, pa.s.sing with considerable rapidity from left to right in its course. Its reflection upon the water of the Peel River, very noticeable at first, changed until by and by there was no reflection left at all and it had pa.s.sed off across the spruce forest upon the right bank of the river. There again it seemed to hang, as in its upward course it began to forsake its semi-contact with the level of the earth's sphere. For these few days at this lat.i.tude it would make its circle in what Rob called the northwest corner of the heavens, striving to give these poor natives who live in that land some sort of compensation for the terrible sunless nights of the immeasurable Arctic winter.

Our young adventurers, be sure, had lost no time in this fine opportunity for photography--an opportunity given to very few travelers of any age or climate at this particular spot; for since the great Klondike rush had straggled through, broken and failing, twenty years before, few white persons indeed had ever stood upon these sh.o.r.es.

"Run, Jesse, to our tent upon the beach!" called out John. "I'm out of films. Get all we've got. We'll have to try and try again, so as to be sure we're not missing anything."

"That's right," said Rob. "We don't know much about this light. It's soft and faint, but it seems to cut the film, after all, as near as I can tell. I'm going to make all sorts of times--from three seconds and five seconds and ten seconds up to twenty and thirty seconds; and with each of these times that I give it I'm going to use a different stop. Somewhere, some of us will get a picture, I'm sure of that."

"Well," said John, looking at Jesse's hurrying form as he scurried down the steep path to their tent upon the beach, "it would be too bad to come this far and then fail."

It may be added that the boys did not fail, for certainly they brought out from their trip what then were known as the best amateur negatives ever made in that lat.i.tude; and of all the trophies of their northern trips they have prized none so much as these pictures of their own, of that strange spectacle of the great, mysterious North.

It was late that night, or early that morning, when at length they closed their labors with the cameras, all fairly content. Uncle d.i.c.k had left them to their own devices, feeling that if they got results--as he felt sure they would--they would feel all the more proud for having done so without the advice and aid of one older than themselves. Indeed, he was beginning more and more to trust these young lads to their own devices. Himself occupied with matters of business which kept him very largely about the government office--as might have been called the log barracks of the Northwest Mounted Police which made the only representative of the law in that far-off land--he for some time after the landing of the boat allowed the boys to shift pretty much for themselves, with what results we have seen.

They had pitched their tent farther down the beach than the lowest Eskimo hut, and had in this case put up the great mosquito tent, which stood eight feet high and had windows like a house. Into this, late that night, they now crawled, one after another, through the sleeve of the tent.

"My!" exclaimed Jesse, "I never saw such mosquitoes in my life as these little black fellows! There are simply clouds of them all along the beach here, and they follow you wherever you go."

They all stood up inside the tent before preparing for bed in their blanket rolls.

"Take your socks, fellows," said Rob. "We'll have to kill every one in the tent, or they won't let us sleep to-night. Jesse's right; these little fellows bite worse than anything I've seen yet. I vow, when I came into the tent they almost scared me when they lit on my head and neck!"

"That trader and his wife didn't seem to mind them so much," said John, scratching his own neck rather seriously. "She's a white woman, too--Norwegian, I think some one told me--at least she speaks somewhat broken. She's a nice woman, too, and I don't see how she stands it up in this country."

"Her husband told me this is their third winter in the North,"

answered Rob. "They say it takes two or three years to get used to these things, and then you sort of quiet down and get resigned."

"Or else you die!" grumbled John. "We don't know how many people there are that don't get resigned."

"How long is the boat going to be here yet, Rob?" queried Jesse, sitting up on his bed and unlacing his moccasins.

"Until the jamboree is ended and all the fur is bought from the Huskies," replied Rob, seriously. "Maybe two or three days yet--I don't know. There'll be plenty of time for us to look around a bit to-morrow, and even later. Meantime, Uncle d.i.c.k has got to get the supplies ready for our canoe. We're a long ways from home yet. We're not going back when the steamer goes, young chaps; you'd better remember that!"

"Huh! Who cares?" said Jesse, contemptuously, pulling his blanket over his head. "I'm not afraid. We'll get through somehow."

As Rob had said, they had ample time the next day to look about them in this strange and interesting environment into which they had now come. The unloading of the boat went on steadily, the slow stream of breeds, stooping under their heavy loads, pa.s.sing up the steep bluff from the boat landing to the trading-post. The boys had time to prowl along the beach and watch the natives run their nets, and even pursue their native art of hunting; for that morning, hearing shots from the bank, they looked out to see a half-dozen native kayaks hurrying to a point out in the river where a black object bobbing up was seen now and then. It was, in fact, a beaver which had been spied. On the bank a half-breed was shooting at it with a rifle, while the Huskies were crowding around, endeavoring to spear it when it came to sight. At last a lucky shot from the rifleman brought an end to the chase. A Husky drove a spear into the body of the dead beaver, and they came ash.o.r.e with it, all of them shouting and singing and flinging up their paddles or their spear-shafts as they raced ahead.

"Look at those boats," said Rob, always observant. "In the last five hundred miles we have seen the birch-bark canoe change into a kayak, haven't we?"

"That's right," said John. "First there was the Cree canoe, with the high bow and stern rolling in--much as you could see in Canada anywhere. Then, as the trees got smaller, birch bark scarcer, in the Dog Rib and Rabbit country, the boats got narrower. I wouldn't have liked to get into one. But they didn't waste any bark rolling the ends in; the ends came up sharp, as in the kayak."

"Yes, and at Arctic Red River," said Jesse, remembering, "they had just a little deck--not much of a one. And now here they are made out of skin and decked all over except a little hole in the middle."

"And if you'll look at these Eskimos," said Rob, again, "and then think of how those Chippewyans looked, you'll have to admit that they both have the same look and that they both look j.a.panese. I saw Chippewyans that looked like j.a.ps to me, and that was 'way south of here. I suppose maybe some writers are correct, and that a good many of the tribes, if not all of them, came across the Bering Sea once upon a time, long ago."

"Uncle d.i.c.k is going to get a couple of Indian boys here, Loucheux, to help us up to the divide," said John. "He told me that to-day. He's out of patience with the delay here and crazy to get started, but he couldn't get any supplies. The Hudson's Bay say that they lost a scow somewhere which ought to have come in here and didn't come. The Northwest Mounted Police claim that all their bacon is missing. The Indians say they are starving and have to have something for their children. How we'll get beans enough to carry us across Uncle d.i.c.k can't say."

"Well, leave it to Uncle d.i.c.k," said Jesse. "I know he'll fix it all right some way, and we'll get through, too."

"That's the talk, Jesse," said Rob, slapping a hand on his shoulder.

"You've got more nerve than you had when you started, and you weigh ten pounds more, too. I'll warrant that you'll be the lead dog on the tow-line going up the Rat."

Thus occupied, they pa.s.sed the time all too rapidly. In the late evening of their second day the boys noticed a strange hurrying among all the population at the crest of the bluff and on the beach below.

Some sort of warning seemed to be in the air; an instant later it became audible in the deep, booming whistle of the steamboat which lay moored below.

The _Mackenzie River_, last unit of the modern fur brigade, was ready to turn back from her farthest north and take up her weary way once more, bucking the tremendous current of the Mackenzie River for more than a thousand miles to the southward.

Again and again the whistle's echoes rang along the steep sh.o.r.e, and here and there whites and natives, all the tribesmen, every unit of the motley population of the place, hurried down to the landing, until the narrow beach was packed. Men shouted and waved to others now gone aboard the boat. The two red-clad police officers now going back home smiled their pleasure at the thought of the long journey that lay ahead of them; whereas the two who took their place stood looking upon them somewhat ruefully, but bravely as they might, facing their own two years of exile, during which they would never again see a white face until they themselves were relieved. A few Huskies now came hurriedly, offering bargains in their coveted white-fox skins, and some of the great Arctic mink which had not yet all been traded even by the shrewd district agent who had come north with the steamer to see after this particular portion of the territory of his Company, always so prolific in good furs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HUSKY FLEET--FORT MCPHERSON]

Men joked and chaffed each other here and there across the narrow strip of water. Dogs howled each time the whistle blast rang out. A few enthusiasts on the top of the bank wasted precious ammunition in a salute. A few cronies drank a parting stirrup cup out of their scant remaining alcoholic stores. Yonder the Eskimos now began to man their whale-boats for their long voyage to the Arctic Sea. The women were packing up their own supplies now, herding the dogs together, pulling the kayaks up on the decks of the sailing-schooners. The great event of the year was coming to its close and camp was breaking. Now the head of the brigade, this unit farthest north, must begin its long and laborious pa.s.sage southward once more against the current. As it had brought north such store as was possible of bulky goods, now it carried back, tight packed in its hold, the bales of the precious fur, so much less bulky than the goods which had been brought north, and so far more valuable.

The old trader, gray, grizzled, and taciturn, who had done his Company the service of acc.u.mulating all this store of fur, stood leaning against the beam of the great fur-press which but now had been busy in baling the precious white-fox fur, the mink and marten, of this great and solitary country of the North. He would not again see a civilized face until that time in the following year, if he still were living then. He made no comment, nor did the swarthy men of his immediate command who stood about him, grim and taciturn, and disdaining to show the emotion of a salute to the pa.s.sing crew of the _Mackenzie River_.

But at last the conclusion of all these partings came. All the government men and Company men who were going out went on board ship.

The bell jingled under the hand of the captain in his pilot-house above. The strong-armed breeds hauled in the gang-plank, and with a parting shrill salute the steamer began to swing her nose into the current of the Peel.

Majestically she turned about to pick up the current for her brief run down that stream to the great river which she was now to ascend. The boys on the bank plied their cameras as she swung midstream, and worked them yet further as the Eskimo whale-boats fell in her wake.

By and by the last cheering ceased to be heard. A blank silence fell upon all those remaining on the bank. The three young lads looked from one to the other, looked again at the silent face of the tall and sun-bronzed man who was to lead them out of this country now. A sudden melancholy had fallen upon them all. The silence, the mystery of the great North, seemed now to envelop them. They felt strangely alone--indeed, if truth were told, strangely sad and helpless.

Home--how very far away it seemed! John poked a swift elbow into Jesse's side, for it seemed to him he had caught just a suspicion of a tear in the corner of that young traveler's eye.

And now, late in what should have been the evening of the Arctic day, there arose, as if expressive of the thought in the minds of all, that strangest and most mournful sound that comes to the ears of man--the united howling of the dogs of the Far North.

There may have been two or three hundred of them in all, perhaps more, in the Loucheux village and the remainder of the Eskimo encampment, but all of them in unison, if not in accord, raised their voices in a tremulous wail which fairly made the blood run cold.