Alaska -- Antiquities; Eskimos; Eskimos -- Anthropometry; Indians of North America -- Alaska; Indians of North America -- Yukon
We toss and reel and stagger nearer, but motor still going strong.
For the skin boat they found at last a position in which it takes but
little water. Finally see decisively a blinking light, the mast signal.
We show our lantern a few times. Then the ship looms before us, but
there is still the risky task of getting alongside and aboard. However,
all is accomplished without real damage.
The cabin--the good and anxious captain--a little canned grapefruit,
and bed. But head falls and rises, the events of the day reappear,
wonder what has become of the trade schooner we saw being driven on the
beach--and so on until consciousness passes into deep sleep. The _Bear_
is fairly quiet, not in the brunt of the weather. And this eventually
moderates, so that a little after 4 we start again, only to anchor once
more at 6, a little below where last night we had our supper.
August 22. Cloudy, drizzly, rough still, and wireless news of
widespread bad storms, even in the States. So we shall wait. One more
hope for my collections at the Cape and with Jenness.
Captain says this morning the officer misunderstood his orders about
Teller. The trip demonstrated a number of things. One of the main and
most gratifying was the sterling quality of the men with me, officer,
boatswain, motorman. Weenie, Pete, in the teeth of real danger. They
were all that men should be under such conditions, which is the best
way I can express it. The trip may have been in vain so far as its
scientific object was concerned, but it brought a number of men face to
face with life's stresses and found their mettle of the truest quality,
without exception, to witness which was worth the whole experience.
August 22-23. During the night have left Port Clarence and endeavored
once more to reach Wales and the Diomedes, to be again turned away by
fog and rough weather. The captain doubts if there will be any more
decent "spells." The season for this stormy sea is too far advanced.
Unable to land anywhere.
The day is followed by another horrid night, again off the St. Lawrence
Island. Boat tossing and heaving and rolling, waves reaching and even
splashing over the level of the high upper deck in the back, everything
tied tip and cleared or fastened, a danger in making even a few steps
of being thrown against something, or on the deck of being thrown
overboard, and everything constantly cracking, creaking, with every
few minutes an impact big thud-like or a splash of a wave, the floor
heaving and twisting; and thus from before evening until morning.
Then a trace easier, but the whole day gloomy and rough and the night
again more unsettled. To-day better, wind which began east then
turned northwest, then almost north, now stopped, but a heavy swell
is running, heaving us nearly as much as yesterday. We have gone very
slowly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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