Alaska -- Description and travel; Frontier and pioneer life -- Alaska
The dog-team, which I had seen following in the distance, had now come
up with us, and I heard one man say to the other: "There is Mrs.
Sullivan," but I did not recognize the voice. When they came nearer, we
found it to be two men from camp who were going out to the schooners to
buy fruit and vegetables, and they wanted to get a dog belonging to them
which Mollie had borrowed and had hitched into her team. A change of
dogs was then made, and we started--Mollie and I on her big sled, the
other two following.
We now skirted the rocky cliffs, and found the ice hummocky between
great, deep cracks where the water was no longer white, but dark and
forbidding. Sometimes Koki suddenly started the dogs to one side to
avoid dark-looking holes in the ice, the dogs leaping over seams which
quickly lay beneath us as the fore and hinder parts of our sled bridged
the crevasse of ugly water.
Now the sled swayed from side to side as the dogs made sudden curves or
dashes, then a big hummock of ice and snow had to be crossed, and one
end of the sled went up while the other went down. I was holding to the
side rails with both hands, and knowing that the sled was a good, strong
one, I had no fear of its breaking, but my feet were cold in my rubber
boots, and I had drawn some furs over me.
Mollie is not a great talker, she seldom explains anything, and one has
only to wait and see the outcome of her movements, and this I did, when
she suddenly with Ituk left the sleds and climbed the rocks of the
island again on the south side. Then I saw them gathering sticks and
small driftwood, and knew that they would make a fire upon the ice at
midnight, while preparing to hunt for seals.
Coming to a rough place, with high-piled ice between great, ugly seams
over which the sagacious dogs dragged the sleds always in a straight
line, not slantwise, I climbed out, and Mollie and Ituk came with their
driftwood, which they threw upon the sled; the two men making for the
schooner forging ahead in the direction of Cape Darby.
Ituk and Muky now made ready to go with me to the Home, a half mile away
to the east where they were also to get some bread, this important item
having been forgotten in the hurry of departure from Chinik. In the
meantime Mollie, not to lose a moment of time, as is her method, had
gotten out her fishing tackle and was already fishing for tom-cod
through a hole in the ice. Bidding her Beoqua (good-bye), we started for
the Home, Ituk politely taking my little bag, and Muky leaping lightly
over the rocks toward the mainland. Along the shore of the island I was
fearful of cutting my boots on the jagged rocks and rubble thickly
strewn over the sands, and had to proceed cautiously for a time, but
Ituk, perceiving my difficulty, led to a smoother path, and we were soon
on the mainland, and upon the soft tundra, when it was only a few
minutes walk to the Home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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