In the Misty Seas: A Story of the Sealers of Behring Strait

"Yes, sir," said Appleby, but his face was a trifle pale in the light from the lantern when he came back. "It about turned me sick – and it's going to take some time to get used to this," he said.

"Well," said a man, glancing at Niven, "it's the more smell the bigger profits when you go sealing. It's different from the things you were taught to do in the old country?"

Niven laughed a little, for the man's tone was ironical, and he had discovered that the less he talked about what he had been used to in England the better it was for him. "We don't have any seals to catch over there," he said. "Still, however do they clean up those things and make them into ladies' jackets? They have to get the smell off them."

"It's done back there in your country, in London," said another man. "Most beasts have two coats on them, anyway, and somebody once told me they pulled the outside half off with little pincers. Then I guess they shave them down and dye them. They're smart people there in London, and they don't let up when the holluschackie can't be had. No, sir. They'll make you a seal-skin jacket out of most anything. It's all in the dressing."

"But do the Americans send their seals to London?" asked Niven.

"Yes," said Stickine. "That's just what they do. Bring them back again dressed, paying a heavy duty, too, and one way or other those seals fetch the States a tolerable big revenue. That's why it galls them to see any other folk catching them."

Just then Jordan sprang up on the house with a flare in his hand, and the lurid wind-blown blaze that streamed above them showed the same look in the faces of the men. It suggested confidence in their skipper and their comrades out at sea, and yet grimly-suppressed expectancy. Then the darkness was intensified as the light went out.

"It's 'bout time you fired the gun again," he said.

A man floundered forward, and presently a long red flash blazed out over the rail, but the thud of the report was probably plainer a mile to leeward than it was on the deck of the Champlain. Then for five minutes nobody spoke and the bell tinkled dolefully, but no answer came out of the sliding fog.

"Thicker than ever!" said Jordan. "Try her again."

Three times at five minutes' intervals the red flash blazed out, and then while they listened a man sprang into the shrouds. "Here's one of them!" he said.

There followed a few moments of tense expectancy until a roar of voices went up as a faint cry came out of the fog. Then there was another silence, even worse to bear, until the man in the shrouds swung up an arm.

"Stand by," he shouted. "Here they come!"

Appleby running forward saw a dim black shape hove up on a sea that swept past the bows, and for a moment the light from the forestay shone down upon the boat. She was lapped about in foam, and while the men, with wet, grim faces, bent their backs as the oars swung through it, a dark ridge with froth about its top rolled up out of the night behind her. Then all was dark again, for she swept in beneath the bulwarks and the schooner rolled viciously. Out of the darkness came a thud and a shouting, black figures fell in over the rail, and while blocks rattled the boat swung dripping high above the bulwarks, until they dropped her neatly inside the other ones. Appleby surmised that the operation would have been almost impossible on board the Aldebaran, and he had heard that it not infrequently takes an hour to get a boat out on board a steamer. Then the men came aft with the water running from them, and Jordan, who once more paced up and down, stopped a moment.

"Where's Montreal?" he asked.

The foremost sealer turned and pointed to the sliding whiteness over the rail. "I don't know," he said. "One couldn't make out much of anything in that."

Jordan nodded. "What have you got?"

"Three holluschackie," said the sealer. "I guess we'll get the boat cleaned up and the hides off them."

Jordan said nothing but paced up and down again, and while a few dark objects moved about the boat the men floundered back into the partial shelter of the house. They did not express their fears in speech, but all of them knew the chances were against Montreal and his crew finding the schooner. If he failed the prospect of his boat living through the gale that was evidently rising appeared very small. To leeward lay St. Paul and St. George, but the sea foams and seethes about them, and any sealer who might make a landing in the dark, which very few men could do, would in all probability find himself a prisoner. Still the men of the Champlain faced such risks almost daily in the misty seas, and when the boat was stripped they and the Indians quietly set about flaying the seals. The fog whirled past them, their knives twinkled in the flickering lantern light, and now and then a brighter beam fell on their impassive brown faces and blubber-smeared hands. Then it would swing away as the schooner rolled, and the lads who stood about with swab and bucket could only see them dimly until it blinked into brilliancy again. The rigging screamed, the bell jangled on, and now and then through the confused sounds rose the thud of the gun.

How long they worked Appleby did not know, but he forgot the smell of the blubber and the horrible sliminess of the swab as he pictured the worn-out men grimly swinging the oars in the fog. Each time the schooner swung her bows aloft the black shape of a man crouching forward in the spray became visible, and now and then Jordan tramped along the deck to speak to him. The lads could guess what his question was, but there was no answer to either bell or gun, until at last the skipper stood still suddenly, and every man who saw him turned and stared across the rail. For a minute nobody moved or spoke, and there was nothing to hear but the wail of the wind in the rigging.

Then Jordan swung himself into the shrouds, and the men went forward with a rush. Clinging to the rail Appleby looked down, and as the flicker of the light fell upon the sea something went by, and he had a glimpse of part of a dripping boat with two men whose faces showed white and set straining at the oars. One of the others had apparently fallen forward, and a fourth was standing erect astern. The attitude of all of them expressed exhaustion. Then as the boat swung round a trifle a sea that rolled up caught her on the bow and the men at the oars made a last effort as she swept astern. Next moment she had passed out of the light, and there was only foam beneath him.

"We've lost them. They'll never pull her up," he gasped.

Jordan sprang down from the shrouds, and his voice rang out, "Down trysail. Sheet your staysail to weather and run it up."

He said nothing to Stickine, who now held the wheel, but Appleby saw him bending over it, and there was a banging and thrashing of canvas as the staysail went up and the trysail came down. Then the schooner slowly swung round, until a shout rose again, "Let draw, and sing out forward if we're running over them!"

The Champlain had her stern to the wind now, and was running before it after the boat which had blown away to lee, while the men stood silent here and there along her rail, until one of them forward shouted, and as Stickine swung with the wheel something half-seen went by. It was lost in a moment as the schooner drove ahead, and Appleby recognized the horror he felt in Niven's voice.

"He can't be going to leave them!" he said.

Donegal, who was standing close by, dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder and held it in a painful grip. "Is it a head or a shroud deadeye ye have that ye do not know Ned Jordan yet?" he said. "Away with ye to the trysail halliards. They'll be wanted presently."

For about a minute the Champlain lurched on before the seas, and then from where Jordan stood in the shrouds a great blue blaze flared out and Stickine pulled round the wheel. Men whose faces showed intent in the streaming radiance floundered towards the mast, and as the Champlain came round the trysail went up. In another moment or two Appleby and Niven were hauling at its sheet among the rest, and presently the schooner lay rolling almost head to the sea. Then there was a brief space of breathless waiting while every man stared over the rail, and Appleby knew that the schooner would lie there scarcely moving through the water until the boat came up with her. He could feel his heart beating as he strained his ears and eyes.

"Here they come!" shouted somebody, and while the blue radiance streamed out across the waters the boat swung into sight.

It was evident that the worn-out men knew they could take no chance of driving down to lee this time, and the lads held their breath as they saw the boat whirl towards them on the top of a sea. One could almost have fancied she would be flung on board over the rail.

"Down helm!" said Jordan. "Luff, if you can. Handy with the tackles there. Make sure of them."

The schooner swung round a trifle, the boat slewed, there was a crash, and she was lost in the shadow below the rail, while black darkness followed as the light went out. Hoarse shouts came out of it, men scurried here and there, and fell from the rail, then there was a rattle of blocks, and Appleby found himself floundering along the deck with panting men behind him and a rope in his hand. The boat they hove up was dropped into her nest, a seal or two flung out, and Jordan, who came forward with a lantern, shook his head as he glanced at her.

"Coming alongside that way is kind of expensive, but I guess you hadn't much choice just then," he said.

"No," said a man who stood, gasping still, with half-closed eyes in the lantern light. "We just had to fetch you the best way we could, and we'd have missed you sure while we tried to round her up to lee. She was 'bout half-swamped and all of us used up considerable."

In another few minutes the lads and most of the others went back into the hold and sat watching the last comers, who wasted no time in talking as they attacked the meal Brulée set before them. One of them, however, sat somewhat limply, and his face, which was tinged with grey, seemed drawn together. He ate nothing and only drank a little tea. Then as the others stretched out their long limbs towards the stove Donegal looked at Montreal.

"And what was it kept ye so long?" he said.

Montreal laughed softly, though the stamp of exhaustion was on his face. "Just the wind!" he said. "We was well away to leeward, and when we'd pulled 'bout a mile Tom there got a kind of kink inside him and had to let up. Then Siwash Bob sprung his oar, and we lost all we'd made the last hour while Tom got his wind again and I was fixing it. After that the boat began to take it in heavy and we had to stop to bale. There wasn't much left in us, and Tom was groaning awful when we heard the gun."

Niven stared at the speaker with a little wonder, and Appleby smiled, for the story was a singularly unimpressive narration of what they knew had been a grim struggle for life. Then Niven saw that Donegal was watching him, and became sensible of a faint embarrassment, for the sealer had an unpleasant habit of guessing what he was thinking.

"You and me could have told it better, Mainsail Haul," said he.

Niven flushed a trifle. He knew he could have made the story a good deal more effective, for there had been times when he had held the dormitory silent and expectant as he narrated some small feat of his at Sandycombe, but he had an unpleasant suspicion that this gift was apt to win its possessor derision rather than respect at sea, where the men who did things that would have formed a theme for an epic poem seemed reluctant to talk about them. Montreal, the sealer who under Providence owed his life to his splendid strength and valour, said nothing about the effort and almost superhuman strain, but only mentioned that they had sprung an oar and his comrade suffered from what he termed a kink inside him.

"Well," said Niven awkwardly, "it's a good while now since I told you anything at all."

"Sure," said Donegal, grinning. "'Tis since I've had the teaching av ye. But ye do not seem quite easy, Tom. Sit up while me and Mainsail Haul pull the clothes off ye."

The man grumbled and protested that there was nothing wrong with him, but Donegal worked on unheeding and shoved him by main force into his bunk.

"Now, you lie right there till I get something from Jordan that will fix you," said Stickine. "If he tries to get up, boys, one of you will sit on him!"

He came back presently with something in a can, and the man, who gulped down the contents, grinned.

"I guess it would take a kink with considerable grit in it to face another dose of that," he said, and turned his face, which was beaded with the damp of pain, from the light.

The others, however, seemed to know what he was suffering from and went on with their talk, while presently Appleby asked a question.

"What would have happened if we'd been blown ashore?" he said.

Stickine laughed a little. "Well," he said, "I don't quite know, but it's kind of likely the Indians would have taken their clubs to us. Anyway, it would have been a long while before we did any more sealing."

It took Appleby several more questions before he elicited much information, and what he got was not very plain to him. It, however, appeared that the seals which bred on the lonely beaches of the misty seas had been growing scarcer, and that one or two of the commanders of the gunboats sent to watch them had now and then exceeded their rights. Three miles to sea is the limit placed to a nation's authority, but it seemed from stories told in the Champlain's hold, boats had been chased when farther than that from land. The men were not very explicit, but Appleby surmised that reprisals were made now and then when a schooner's crew landed on forbidden beaches.

"Still," he said, "if you lose a day or two's sealing when a gunboat's about it means a good many dollars."

A little twinkle crept into Montreal's eyes. "It don't always," said he. "Here you are with the boats all out raking in the holluschackie, and a gunboat comes along. 'Clear out of this or I'll make you,' says her skipper. 'All right,' says you. It's so many seals he's doing me out of now, when he has no right to, and I'm going in to get them where it's easiest when he steams away."

Niven seemed a trifle astonished. "That's here," he said. "Do they do things the same way everywhere?"

There was a little grim laughter, and Montreal pointed towards the west. "No, sir," he said. "When you go where the Russian seals live there's no use for talking of any kind, because you can't understand each other, and you use the clubs. There's men I know have seen other things come in quite handy too. Now old man Harper of the Golden Horn – "

Donegal stopped him. "'Tis talking too much ye are, and, as everybody knows, Ned Jordan is a quiet man," he said. "'Tis curious tales Mainsail Haul will be telling the earl about us when he goes home."

"Let up!" said Niven. "I'm a sealer now, and I only want to know if any one tried to arrest the skipper wrongfully, what would he do?"

Donegal's eyes twinkled. "He would run away like a sensible man, or hide in the fog," he said.

"But if he couldn't, or there wasn't any fog?"

Donegal shook his head. "'Tis persistent ye are," he said. "Peace is a thing Ned Jordan's fond of, but if folks will not let him have it his fist is as big as most."

Nobody said anything further, but there was a curious little smile in the men's bronzed faces, and while Appleby endeavoured to kick his comrade in warning that it would not be desirable to ask any more questions there was a crash above.

"There," said Donegal, grabbing Brulée's shoulder. "'Tis your galley tore up by the roots."

"No," said Stickine. "I figure it's the water tank got adrift. We want a lashing on her before she goes right out through the bulwarks, boys."

They were out of the scuttle in another minute, and when he got on deck Appleby saw a big, black object drive against the mast. Before any one could seize it it had rolled aside again, and in another few moments struck the bulwarks with a heavy thud, for the Champlain was still lying hove to and lurching wildly. How they at last secured it the lads could not quite make out, for the big tank would have crushed the man who got between it and anything, but it was done, and as they were relashing it Jordan came up with a lantern.

"Heave her over, boys. She has started the rivets, and that's going to make trouble for us," he said.

They hove the tank the other side up, and Appleby saw that the skipper's face was grave as he lifted the cover off, but there was apparently no more to be done, and he went below with the other men.

"What did Jordan mean?" he said to one of them. "Of course it would be awkward to run short of water if we were far from land, but there is plenty within a few miles of us."

"Oh, yes," said the man dryly. "But it wouldn't be much use telling the folks ashore you'd only come for water and didn't want no seals. They'd be quite glad to get their hands on us, whatever brought us there!"

"But we can't do without it," said Niven.

"No," said the sealer. "Still, I wouldn't worry. When Ned Jordan's short of water it's quite likely he'll get it if there's any handy."

CHAPTER XIII

ON THE BEACH

It blew hard that night, and seeing there was no hope of sealing next day Jordan beat the Champlainslowly out to sea. He said nothing to any one until when noon came he called the men together.

"We want water, and there's plenty yonder," he said, pointing vaguely across the sea-tops that swung up under the rain. "Still, I don't know that we mightn't have some trouble getting it."

"When you tell us you're ready for it we'll bring that water off," said somebody.

Jordan nodded. "There'll be a big surf on the beaches, but you might do it unless somebody stopped you," he said. "They have a crowd of Aleuts on St. George, and I figure there's a gunboat hanging round somewhere handy. Well, now, if we went east to the Aleutians we could get all the water we wanted with less worry, but it would take us a while getting there, and every day means dollars."

"We'll take our chances at St. George," said Montreal.

"So long as you're willing!" said the skipper. "You've all got a stake in this deal, and I don't know that I'd like to help Mrs. Jordan keep house on nothing if I bring the schooner home without the skins. Still, if the Aleuts got you it's very few dollars you'd make sealing the next year or two."

He spoke slowly, and there was nothing to show that he was asking the men to do a perilous thing. Nor was there anything unusual in their answer returned by Montreal. "We're not sailing around here for pleasure. As soon as it's dusk you can run her in."

The rest of the day passed slowly with Appleby and Niven, but it came to an end at last, and when dusk was closing in the Champlain, under trysail and jib only, crept in towards the land. The sea ran behind her heaving, white-topped out of the gloom, for though there is no actual darkness up there at that season the haze that slid by before a nipping wind was thickened by the rain.

There was nothing now to be seen but the filmy vapours that whirled about them or heard but the splash of the sea, and Appleby wondered at the skipper's daring in running in for the land. At last, however, when the obscurity had grown almost impenetrable the lads heard a deep rumbling sound that came off to them faintly in long reverberations. They surmised it was the roar of surf on a rocky shore, but it was to windward instead of under their lee.

"We were to weather of the island, Stickine," said Appleby.

"Oh, yes," said the Canadian. "But there wouldn't be much left of the man who tried to land on that side of it, and Jordan's running under the lee of it now."

"But it's beastly thick, and we've scarcely seen the land since morning," said Niven.

Stickine laughed. "It's about six hours since I had a glimpse of it myself, but that don't count for much," he said. "Ned Jordan got a bearing, and he'd tell you right off what the schooner had made every tack. Tie him up with a sack round his head, and she'd be just where he wanted her when he brought her up. I guess we've 'bout got there now."

Almost as he spoke Jordan's voice rose up. "Jib to windward, and get the boats over soon as she loses way. Don't hang around a minute after you're through with the water."

"Will we take the rifles?" asked Stickine.

"One," said Jordan dryly. "If you fire quick twice I'll send off another boat to you, but you've got to remember I don't want to. We've nothing against the Americans just now, and I'm not going round looking for trouble with anybody."

They swung two boats over, and Appleby managed to slip on board one before he was noticed by anybody except Niven, who sprang into the last one as the men got the oars out.

The skipper's dark figure showed up for a moment as he looked down from the bulwarks of the rolling schooner.

"You're going for water, boys, and if you bring one holluschack along you'll take it right back ashore," he said. "That's quite plain?"

There was a murmur which did not suggest altogether willing obedience, but no one could mistake the little ring in Jordan's voice, and Stickine signed to the men.

"You heard him, boys? Now, stretch your backs," he said.

They had pulled a few strokes, and the schooner was melting into the haze astern when one of the men looked round.

"Who've we got there in the bows?" he asked.

Appleby, who had hoped to escape their notice for a while, told him. "I fancied my place was in this boat," he said.

"Well," said Stickine dryly, "if I'd seen you before you'd have gone right back with a run. Hello! have you got the other lad, Montreal?"

"Sure!" came back the answer, and Donegal laughed.

"There was no keeping them out," he said. "It would not take a minute to pitch them over."

"We'll try it next time," said Stickine. "Pull in along our wake, Montreal. It's not a nice beach to land on."

After that nobody said anything for a while, and only the splash of oars marked the passage of the boats. Appleby crouched aft on the floorings where he could see the men sway through the dimness above him, while another sound grew louder than the hoarse growl of the seas that seethed about the reefs. It was scarcely like anything he had heard before, though once it faintly resembled the whistling of scores of engines and then swelled into a roar. He surmised it was made by the seals.

"The rookery's just thick with the bulls," said somebody.

"Hold on," said Stickine. "I guess you're here to row, and any talking that's wanted will be done by me."

They lurched on, seeing nothing, into the haze, but Stickine appeared to know where he was heading for, and by the easier rise and fall Appleby guessed they were pulling closer in under the sheltered side of the island.

Still, it was evident by the dull booming sound which grew louder that the swell lapped round to leeward too, and there would be a difficulty in making a landing.

Suddenly, however, the men stopped rowing, and the splash and thud ceased astern, while Stickine sharply turned his head as another sound that none of them had expected to hear came out of the haze. It was a dull grind and a rattle that jarred through the roar of the surf, and then stopped again. Appleby recognized it, and surmised that it meant peril to all of them.

"A gunboat," said Stickine half-aloud. "They're giving her more chain."

They lay on their oars a minute, staring about them and breathing hard, but could only see the sliding haze, and no sound that suggested man's presence in those misty waters reached them now.

"She's to windward. They wouldn't have heard us, boys," said Stickine quietly.

They went on, the oars splashing softly, while they strained their eyes, knowing that it was quite possible the gunboat's officers had gone ashore, and they might blunder upon her cutter. Still, there was no sound but that the seals made and the swelling roar of surf, until a wavy strip of whiteness heaved against the mist in front of them. Then Stickine laughed curiously as he turned his head and stared at the haze.

"I don't know if we'll find a cutter on the beach, but we have got to get the water, and we are going in," he said.