Though I Had Offered No
Objection To Our Experienced Pilot's Plan, It Looked Dangerous, And I
Took The Precaution To Untie My Shoes So They Could Be Quickly Shaken
Off For Swimming.
But after crossing the bar we were not yet out of
danger, for we had to struggle hard to keep from being driven ashore
while the waves were beating us broadside on.
At length we
discovered a little inlet, into which we gladly escaped. A pure-white
iceberg, weathered to the form of a cross, stood amid drifts of kelp
and the black rocks of the wave-beaten shore in sign of safety and
welcome. A good fire soon warmed and dried us into common comfort.
Our narrow escape was the burden of conversation as we sat around the
fire. Captain Toyatte told us of two similar adventures while he was
a strong young man. In both of them his canoe was smashed and he swam
ashore out of the surge with a gun in his teeth. He says that if we
had struck the rocks he and Mr. Young would have been drowned, all
the rest of us probably would have been saved. Then, turning to me,
he asked me if I could have made a fire in such a case without
matches, and found a way to Wrangell without canoe or food.
We started about daybreak from our blessed white cross harbor, and,
after rounding a bluff cape opposite the mouth of Wrangell Narrows, a
fleet of icebergs came in sight, and of course I was eager to trace
them to their source. Toyatte naturally enough was greatly excited
about the safety of his canoe and begged that we should not venture
to force a way through the bergs, risking the loss of the canoe and
our lives now that we were so near the end of our long voyage.
"Oh, never fear, Toyatte," I replied. "You know we are always
lucky - the weather is good. I only want to see the Thunder Glacier
for a few minutes, and should the bergs be packed dangerously close,
I promise to turn back and wait until next summer."
Thus assured, he pushed rapidly on until we entered the fiord, where
we had to go cautiously slow. The bergs were close packed almost
throughout the whole extent of the fiord, but we managed to reach a
point about two miles from the head - commanding a good view of the
down-plunging lower end of the glacier and blue, jagged ice-wall.
This was one of the most imposing of the first-class glaciers I had
as yet seen, and with its magnificent fiord formed a fine triumphant
close for our season's ice work. I made a few notes and sketches and
turned back in time to escape from the thickest packs of bergs before
dark. Then Kadachan was stationed in the bow to guide through the
open portion of the mouth of the fiord and across Soutchoi Strait. It
was not until several hours after dark that we were finally free from
ice.
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