An hour was quite sufficient for Treadwell, so we steamed over to this place, nearly opposite, and went ashore. There are several hundred houses in this town, built at the base of the mountains. Near the water there was the usual number of Indian women squatting on the ground and offering baskets and curios for sale. The stores are well supplied with skins of foxes, bears, and other wild animals, and the usual goods required in country places. CHAPTER XV. THE RETURN VOYAGE, AND SOME STORIES TOLD ON THE WAY. On the evening of the 13th we left Juneau, and reached Chilcat, the most northerly place on our course, the following morning. Then commenced the return trip over much the same route which we took on the outgoing voyage, passing the mountains, glaciers, and islands we had seen before. The passengers amused themselves in various ways, one group in the cabin telling stories to pass away the time. One of this party interviewed an elderly gentleman, and asked him if there was not a history connected with the great scar which extended across his face, and the gentleman very kindly told the following, which may be called-- THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. "My name is Neilson, and I have been at sea since I was a boy. For many years I served before the mast, then as mate, and finally as captain, on many voyages in different parts of the world. Back in the fifties I was in command of a whaling ship owned in San Francisco, and we sailed from that port to the selected cruising ground in Behring Sea, between the Aleutian Islands and Behring Strait. Once we sailed through the strait into the Arctic Ocean, but the intense cold and immense masses of floating ice drove us back in a damaged condition. We secured a good many whales after some months' cruising about, until, one day, a violent storm came up, and we were driven ashore on St. Lawrence Island, near North Cape. The ship was a total loss, but all the officers and crew succeeded in getting ashore, and a passing ship took us back to San Francisco. I stopped in the city for some weeks, and talked a good deal with an old friend, Captain Samuel, who had also been so unfortunate as to lose his ship on a whaling voyage. We looked about and found some capitalists who purchased a ship for us, and we determined to try our luck again, searching for whales in the Behring Sea. Captain Samuel suggested that I should be captain and he would act as mate, but I told him no, that he, being the elder and more experienced, should be captain, and I the mate, and it was so arranged. The captain of a whaling craft always has a share of the results of the voyage, and the mate another, but not so large as the captain's. It was agreed between us that on this voyage we would divide the profits, if any, equally. It will be understood that at this time whaling voyages were very profitable, sperm oil often selling in the San Francisco market for two dollars and fifty cents per gallon.