Harper's Round Table, July 2, 1895 Part 3

"Then it is a great lake."

"I never heard of any lake on this side of the mountains."

"I don't reckon it's the sea; but salt water's mighty nigh," said Jalap Coombs, sniffing the air as eagerly as a hound on the scent of game.

"Whatever it is," said Phil, "we've got to cross it, and I am going to head straight for that opening."

So they again bent to their traces, and a few hours later had crossed the great white plain, and were skirting the base of a mountain that rose on their left. Its splintered crags showed the dull red of iron rust wherever they were bare of snow, and only thin fringes of snow were to be seen in its more sheltered gorges.

Suddenly Phil halted, his face paled, and his lips quivered with emotion. "The sea!" he gasped. "Over there, Serge!"

Jalap Coombs caught the words, and was on his feet in an instant, all his pain forgotten in a desire to once more catch a glimpse of his beloved salt water.

"Yes," replied Serge, after a long look. "It certainly is a narrow bay.

How I wish we knew what one! But, Phil! what is that, down there near the foot of the cliffs? Is it--can it be--a house?"

"Where?" cried Phil. "Yes, I see! I do believe it is! Yes, it certainly is a house."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

THE MOST FAMOUS ALASKAN GLACIER.

That little house nestling at the base of a precipitous mountain, and still nearly a mile away, was just then a more fascinating sight to our half-starved, toil-worn travellers than even the sea itself, and filled with a hopeful excitement they hastened toward it. It was probably a salmon cannery or saltery, or a trading-post. At any rate the one house they had discovered was that of a white man; for it had a chimney, and none of the Tlingits or natives of southern Alaska build chimneys.

While Phil and Jalap Coombs were full of confidence that a few minutes more would find them in a settlement of white men, Serge was greatly puzzled, and, though he said little, kept up a deal of thinking as he tugged at the rawhide sledge-trace. He felt that he ought to know the place, for he did not believe they were one hundred miles from Sitka; but he could not remember having heard of any white settlement on that part of the coast, except at the Chilkat cannery, and this place did not correspond in any particular with what he had heard of that.

At length they rounded the last low spur of the ridge, and came upon the house only a few rods away. For a few moments they stood motionless, regarding it in silence, and with a bitter disappointment. It was roughly but substantially constructed of sawed lumber, had a s.h.i.+ngled roof, two gla.s.s windows, a heavy door, and a great outside chimney of rough stone. But it was closed and deserted. No hospitable smoke curled from its chimney, there was no voice of welcome nor sign of human presence. Nor was there another building of any kind in sight.

"I suppose we may as well keep on and examine the interior, now that we've come so far," said Phil, in a disgusted tone that readily betrayed his feelings. "There doesn't seem to be any one around to prevent us. I only wish there was."

So they pushed open the door, which was fastened but not locked, and stepped inside. The cabin contained but a single large room furnished with several sleeping bunks, a stout table, and a number of seats, all home-made from unplaned lumber. Much rubbish, including empty bottles and tin cans, was scattered about; but it was evident that everything of value had been removed by the last occupants. The chief feature of the room was an immense and rudely artistic fire-place at its farther end.

Above this hung a smooth board skilfully decorated with charcoal sketches, and bearing the legend "Camp Muir."

As Serge caught sight of this he uttered an exclamation. "Now I know where we are!" he cried. "Come with me, Phil, and I will show you one of the grand sights of the world."

With this he dashed out of the door, and ran toward the beach ridge behind which the cabin stood. Phil followed, wondering curiously what his friend could mean. As they reached the low crest of the ridge he understood; for outspread before him, bathed in a rosy light by the setting sun, was a spectacle that tourists travel from all parts of the world to gaze upon.

A precipitous line of ice cliffs of marble whiteness or heavenly blue, two miles long and hundreds of feet in height, carved into spires, pinnacles, minarets, and a thousand other fantastic shapes, rose in frozen majesty at the head of a little bay whose waters washed the beach at their feet. Ere either of the boys could find words to express his delight and wonder, a huge ma.s.s of the lofty wall broke away and plunged into the sea, with a thunderous roar that echoed and re-echoed from the enclosing mountains. For a moment it disappeared in a milky cloud of foam and spray. Then it shot up from the depths like some stupendous submarine monster, and with torrents of water streaming from it in glittering cascades, floated on the heaving surface a new-born iceberg.

"It must be a glacier," said Phil, in an awe-stricken tone.

"It is a glacier," answered Serge, triumphantly, "and one of the most famous in the world, for it is the Muir, which is larger and contains more ice than all the eleven hundred glaciers of Switzerland put together. That cabin is the one occupied by John Muir and his companions when they explored it in 1890. To think that we should have come down one of its branches, and even crossed the great glacier itself without knowing what it was! I believe we would have known it, though, if the snow hadn't been so deep as to alter the whole character of its surface."

"If this is the Muir Glacier," reflected Phil, "I don't see but what we are in a box. We must be to the westward of Chilkat."

"Yes," said Serge. "It lies to the eastward of those mountains."

"Which don't look as though they would be very easy even for us to climb, while I know we couldn't get Jalap and Nel-te over them. I don't suppose any tourist steamers will be visiting this place for some time, either."

"Not for two months at least," replied Serge.

"Which is longer than we can afford to wait without provisions or supplies of any kind. So we shall have to get away, somehow, and pretty quickly too. It doesn't look as though we could follow the coast any further, though; for just below here the cliffs seem to rise sheer from the water."

"No," said Serge, "we can't. We can only get out by boat or by scaling the mountains."

"In which case we shall starve to death before we have a chance to do either," retorted Phil, gloomily, "for we are pretty nearly starved now.

In fact, old man, it looks as though the good fortune that has stood by us during the whole of this journey had deserted us at its very end."

By this time the boys had strolled back to the cabin, which was left by the setting sun in a dark shadow. As they turned its corner they came upon Nel-te standing outside clapping his chubby hands, and gazing upward in an ecstasy of delight. Following the child's glance Phil uttered a startled exclamation, and sprang through the doorway. A moment later he emerged, rifle in hand.

High up on a shoulder of the mountain, hundreds of feet above the cabin, sharply outlined against the sky, and bathed in the full glory of the setting sun, a mountain-goat, with immensely thick hair of snowy white, and sharp black horns, stood as motionless as though carved from marble.

Blinded by the sunlight, and believing himself to be surrounded by a solitude untenanted by enemies, he saw not the quietly moving figures in the dim shadows beneath him.

Twice did Phil raise his rifle, and twice did he lower it, so tremulous was he with excitement, and a knowledge that four human lives depended on the result of his shot. The third time he took a quick aim and fired.

As the report echoed sharply from the beetling cliffs, the stricken animal gave a mighty leap straight out into s.p.a.ce, and came whirling downward like a great white bird with broken wings. He struck twice, but bounded off each time, and finally lay motionless, buried in the snow at the very foot of the mountain that had been his home.

"Seeing as how we hain't got no fire nor no matches I reckon we'll eat our meat raw like the Huskies," said Jalap Coombs, dryly, a little later, as they began to skin and cut up the goat.

"Whew!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Phil. "I never thought of that but I know how to make a fire with the powder from a cartridge, if one of you can furnish a bit of cotton cloth."

"It seems a pity to waste a cartridge," said Serge, "when we haven't but three or four left, and a single one has just done so much for us. I think I can get fire in a much more economical way."

"How?" queried Phil.

"Ye won't find no brimstone nor yet feathers here," suggested Jalap Coombs, with a shake of his head.

"Never mind," laughed Serge; "you two keep on cutting up the goat, and by the time your job is completed I think I can promise that mine will be." So saying, Serge entered the cabin and closed the door.

In a pile of rubbish he had noticed several small pieces of wood, and a quant.i.ty of very dry botanical specimens, some of which bore fluffy seed-vessels that could be used as tinder. He selected a bit of soft pine, and worked a hole in it with the point of his knife. Next he whittled out a thick pencil of the hardest wood he could find, sharpened one end and rounded the other. In a block of hard wood he dug a cavity, into which the rounded top of the pencil would fit. He found a section of barrel hoop, and strung it very loosely with a length of rawhide from a dog harness, so as to make a small bow. Finally he took a turn of the bow-string about the pencil, fitted the point into the soft pine that rested on the floor, and the other end into the hard wood block on which he leaned his breast.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SERGE'S METHOD OF LIGHTING A FIRE.]

With one hand he now drew the bow swiftly to and fro, causing the pencil to revolve with great rapidity, and with the other he held a small quant.i.ty of tinder close to its point of contact with the soft pine. The rapid movement of the pencil produced a few grains of fine sawdust, and this shortly began to smoke with the heat of the friction. In less than one minute the sawdust and tinder were in a glow that a breath fanned into a flame, and there was no longer any doubt about a fire.[2]

That evening, as our friends sat contentedly in front of a cheerful blaze, after a more satisfactory meal than they had enjoyed for many a day, Jalap Coombs remarked that he only wanted one more thing to make him perfectly happy.

"Same here," said Phil. "What's your want?"

"A pipeful of tobacco," replied the sailor, whose whole smoking outfit had been lost with his sledge.

"All I want," laughed Phil, "is to know how and when we are to get out of this trap and continue our journey to Sitka. I hate the thought of spending a couple of months here, even if there are plenty of goats."

"I can't think of anything else we can do," said Serge, thoughtfully.

And yet those who were to rescue them from their perplexing situation were within five miles of them at that very moment.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]