Blue Envelope

by Roy J. Snell

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE VISIT TO THE CHUKCHES

  It was with a feeling of strange misgiving that Marian found herself onthe evening of the day they left the wreck entering the native villageof East Cape. Questions continually presented themselves to her mind.What of the bearded stranger? Was he the miner who had demanded theblue envelope? If it were he; if he appeared and once more demandedthe letter, what should she say? For any proof ever presented to her,he might be the rightful owner, the real Phi Beta Ki. What could shesay to him? And the natives? Had they heard of the misfortunes of thepeople of Whaling? Would they, too, allow superstitious fear toovercome them? Would they drive the white girls from their midst?

  This last problem did not trouble her greatly, however. They wouldfind a guide at once and begin their great adventure of crossing fromthe Old World to the New on the ice-floe.

  An interpreter was not hard to find. Many of the men had sailed onAmerican whalers. They were told by one of these that there was butone man in all the village who ever attempted the dangerous passage ofBering Straits. His name was O-bo-gok.

  O-bo-gok was found sitting cross-legged on the sloping floor of hisskin-igloo, adjusting a new point to his harpoon.

  "You tell him," said the smiling college boy, "that we want to go toCape Prince of Wales. Can he go tomorrow?"

  The interpreter threw up his hands in surprise, but eventuallydelivered his message.

  The guide, a swarthy fellow, with shaggy, drooping moustache and apowerful frame, did not look up from his work. He merely grunted.

  "He say, that one, no can do," smiled the interpreter.

  The college boy was not disturbed. He jingled something in his hand.Marian, who stood beside him, saw that he held three double eagles.She smiled, for she knew that even here the value of yellow disksmarked with those strange pictures which Uncle Sam imprints upon themwas known.

  The man, dropping his harpoon, began to talk rapidly. He waved hishands. He bobbed his head. At last he arose, sprang from the sleepingcompartment and began to walk the space before the open fire. He wasstill talking. It seemed as if he would never run down.

  When at last he had finished and had thrown himself once more upon thefloor of the sleeping-room, the interpreter began:

  "He say, that one, he say, 'Wanna go Cape Prince Wales two month, threemonth, all right, maybe. Go now? Not go.' He say, that one, 'Wannago now; never come back.' He say, that one, 'Two, three, four dayscome ice. Not plenty ice,' say that one. 'Some water, some ice. Seewater. Too much water. Wanna cross. No cross. Quick starve. Quickfreeze.'

  "'He say, that one, 'Tide crack spirit all-a-time lift ice, push icethis way, that way. Wanna kill man. No can go.'

  "He say, that one, 'Great dead whale spirit wanna lift ice, wanna throwice this way, that way, all way. Wanna kill man. Man no go CapePrince Wales.'

  "He say, that one, 'Wanna go Cape Prince Wales, mebby two month, mebbythree month. Mebby can do. Can't tell,' he say, that one."

  The college boy smiled a grim smile and pocketed his gold.

  "Which all means," he said, "that the ice is not sufficiently compact,not well enough frozen together for the old boy to risk a passage, andthat we'll be obliged to wait until he thinks it's O. K. Probably twoor three months. Meanwhile, welcome to our village! Make yourselvesat home!" He threw back his shoulders and laughed a boyish laugh.

  "Oh!" exclaimed Marian, ready to indulge in a childish bit of weeping.

  "Yes," smiled the boy, "but think of the sketches you'll have time tomake."

  "No canvas," she groaned.

  "That's easy. Use squares of this sealskin the women tan white formaking slippers."

  "The very thing!" exclaimed Marian. She was away at once in search ofsome of this new style canvas, in her eagerness to be at work on somewinter sketches of these most interesting people, quite forgetting theperil of natives, the danger of the food supply giving out, theprobability of an unpleasant meeting with the bearded stranger.

  Lucile, always of a more practical frame of mind, at once attacked theknotty problem of securing comfort and food for her little party. Thequestion of a warm shelter during these months of sweeping winds andbiting frost was solved for them by the aged chief Nepos-sok. Hefurnished them with a winter igloo. An interesting type of home theyfound it and one offering great comfort. An outer covering of walrusskin was supported by tall poles set in a semicircle and meeting at thetop. The inside of this tepee-like structure was lined with a greatcircling robe of long-haired deerskin. The hair on these winter skinswas two inches long and matted thick as felt. When this lining hadbeen hung, a floor of hand-hewn boards was built across the rear sideof the inclosure. This floor, about six by eight feet, was coveredwith a deerskin rug, over which were thrown lighter robes of soft fawnskin and out-of-season fox skins. Above this floor were hung curtainsof deerskin. This sleeping room became a veritable box of long-haireddeerskins. When it was completed the girls found it, with a seal oillamp burning in it, warm and cozy as a steam-heated bedroom.

  "Who could dream of anything so comfortable in a wilderness like this?"murmured Lucile before falling asleep in their new home on the firstnight.

  Phi was given a place in the chief's sleeping room.

  The space in the igloo before the girls' sleeping room was given overto stores. It was used too as kitchen and dining room. Here, by asnapping fire of dwarf willows, the three of them sat on the edge ofthe sleeping room floor and munched hardtack or dipped baked beans fromtin cans.

  The problem of securing a variety of food was a difficult one. Thesupply from the ship was found to be over-abundant in certain lines andwoefully lacking in others: plenty of beans and sweet corn in cans,some flour and baking powder but no lard or bacon; some frozen andworthless potatoes; plenty of jelly in glasses; a hundred pounds ofsugar. So it ran. Lucile was hard pressed to know how to cook with nooven in which to do baking and with no lard for shortening.

  She had been studying this problem for some time when one day shesuddenly exclaimed, "I have it!"

  Drawing on her parka she hurried to the chief's igloo and asked forseal oil. Gravely he poured a supply of dark liquid from a woodencontainer into a tin cup.

  Lucile put this to her lips for a taste. The next instant she withgreat difficulty set the cup on the floor while all her face wasdistorted with loathing.

  "Rotten!" she sputtered. "A year old!"

  "Eh--eh," grinned the chief, "always eat 'em so, Chukche." Thoroughlydisheartened, she left the igloo. But on her way back she came upon awoman skinning a seal. Seeing the thick layer of fat that was takenfrom beneath the animal's skin she hastened to trade three cans ofbeans for it. Bearing this home in triumph she soon had the fat tryingout over a slow fire.

  Seal oil proved to be quite as good cooking oil as lard. Evendoughnuts fried in it were pronounced delicious by the ever-hungry Phi.

  Experimenting with native food was interesting. Seal steak was notbad, and seal liver was as good as calf's liver. Polar bear steak andwalrus stew were impossible. "Wouldn't even make good hamburger," wasPhi's verdict. The boiled flipper of a white-whale was tender aschicken. But when a hind quarter of reindeer meat found its way intothe village there was feasting indeed.

  In a land so little known as this one does not seek long foropportunities to express strange and unusual things. Marian had notbeen established a week with Lucile in their igloo, when an unusualopportunity presented itself.

  Among the supplies brought from the ship was found a well-equippedmedicine-chest. During her long visits in out-of-the-way places,Marian had learned much of the art of administering simple remedies.She had not been in the village three days before her fame as a doctorbecame known to all the village.

  She had learned, with a feeling of great relief, that the beardedstranger who had posed as a witch-doctor had gone away from thevillage. Whether he had gone toward Whaling, or south to some othervillage, no o
ne appeared to know. Now that he had departed, it seemedobvious that she was destined to take his place as the villagepractitioner.

  It was during one of her morning "clinics," as she playfully calledthem, that a native of strange dress brought his little girl to her fortreatment. The ailment seemed but a simple cold. Marian prescribedcough syrup and quinine, then called for the next patient. Patientswere few that morning. She soon found herself wandering up the singlestreet of the village. There she encountered the strange native andhis child.

  "Who are they?" she asked of a boy who understood English.

  "Reindeer Chukches."

  "Reindeer Chukches?" she exclaimed excitedly. "Where do they live?"

  "Oh, mebby fifteen miles from here."

  "Do they live on the tundra as they used to?"

  "Yes."

  "Are there many of them?"

  "Not now. Many, one time. Now very few. Not many reindeer. Too muchnot moss. Plenty starve. Plenty die."

  "Ask the Chukche," Marian said eagerly, "if I may go home with him tosee his people."

  The boy spoke for a moment with the grave-visaged stranger.

  "He say, that one, he say yes," smiled the boy.

  "Tell him I will be back quick." Marian was away like a shot.

  Tearing into their igloo she drove Lucile into a score of activities.The medicine chest was filled and closed, paints stowed in their box,garments packed, sleeping-bags rolled up. Then they were away.

  Ere she knew it, Lucile was tucked in behind a fleet-footed reindeer,speeding over the low hills.

  "Now, please tell me where we are going," she asked with a smile.

  "We are going to visit the most unique people in all the world--theReindeer Chukches. They are almost an extinct race now, but the timewas when every clump of willows that lined the banks of the rivers ofthe far north in Siberia hid one of their igloos, and every hill andtundra fed one of their herds.

  "Long before the Eskimos of Alaska thought of herding the reindeer,short-haired deerskin and soft, spotted fawn-skins were traded acrossBering Straits and far up along the Alaskan coast. These skins camefrom the camps of the Reindeer Chukches of Siberia. Many years ago theMikado of Japan, in the treasure of furs with which he decorated hisroyal family, besides the mink, ermine and silver fox, had skins ofrare beauty, spotted skins, brown, white and black. These werefawn-skins traded from village to village until they reached Japan.They came from the camps of the Reindeer Chukches. And now we are tosee them as they were many years ago, for they have not changed. And Iam to paint them! Paint them! Think of it!"

  "Yes, but," Lucile smiled doubtfully, "supposing the ice gets solidwhile we're gone. Suppose Phi takes a fancy to cross without us? Whatthen?"

  Marian's face sobered for a moment. But the zeal of a born artist andexplorer was upon her.

  "Oh, fudge!" she exclaimed, "it won't. He won't. I--I--why, I'llhurry. We'll be back at East Cape in no time at all."

  No wildest nomadic dream could have exceeded the life which the twogirls lived in the weeks that followed.

  Trailing a reindeer herd over hills and tundra; camping now in a clumpof willows by the glistening ice of a stream, now beneath some shelvingrock, and now in the open, wind-swept tundra; eating about an openfire, while the smoke curled from the top of the dome of the tepee-likeigloo, they reveled in the strange wildness of it all. Here was apeople who paid no rent, no taxes, owned no land yet lived always inabundance. In the box beside the sleeping platform were tea and sugar.Over the fire hung a copper teakettle of ancient design. In thesleeping-box, which was made of long-haired deerskins, were many robesof short-haired deerskin, fawn-skin and Siberian squirrel.

  To all these the two girls were more than welcome. Their guide and hisdaughter did not live alone. A little tribe whose twenty igloos dottedthe tundra traveled with him. These people were sometimes in need ofsimple remedies. For these they were singularly grateful. They, theirwomen and their children, posed untiringly for sketches. But one thingMarian had not taken into consideration; these people seldom visitedthe village of East Cape. Although she did not know it, their herdswere at this time feeding away from this trading metropolis of theStraits region. Each day while she seized every opportunity to sketchand hastened her work as much as she could, found them some ten milesfarther from East Cape.

  When at last, by signs and such native words as she knew, she indicatedto her native friends that she was ready to return to East Cape, theystared at her in astonishment and indicated by a diagram on the snowthat they were now at a point three days' journey from that town andthat none of them expected to return before the moon was again full.

  No amount of gesturing and jabbering could make them understand that itwas necessary for the girls to return at once.

  "We'll never get back," Marian mourned in despair, "and it's all myfault."

  "Oh, we'll make it still," encouraged Lucile, cheerfully. "Probablythe Straits are not fully frozen over yet anyway."

  However, after a week of inaction, even Lucile lost her cheerful smile.

  One morning, after they had reached what appeared to be the finaldepths of despair, they heard a cry of, "Tomai! Tomai! Tomai," risein a chorus from among the tents. By this they knew that visitors hadarrived. They hurried out to find the villagers grouped about threefur-clad figures standing beside three reindeer hitched to sleds of astrange design.

  By a few words and by signs they were made to understand that thesepeople came from a point some two hundred miles farther north, avillage on the north coast of Russia.

  As ever, eager to look upon some new type, Marian crowded through thethrong when, to her immense surprise, the smaller of the three, inreality only a boy, sprang forward, and, kneeling at her feet, kissedthe fur fringe of her parka.

  This action, so unusual among these natives, struck her dumb. But oncehe had looked up into her face, she understood all; he was none otherthan the strange brown boy who had come swimming to them from the seaoff the coast of Washington.

  She was so surprised and startled at first sight of him that she foundherself incapable of action. It seemed to her that she must be seeinga ghost. It appeared entirely incredible that he should be in this outof the way place when they had left him, months before, on a desertedisland of Puget Sound.

  Her second reaction was one of great joy; here was someone who reallyowed them a debt of gratitude. Might they not hope to receiveassistance from him in solving the problem of making their way to theshore of Bering Straits?

  Springing to his feet, the boy mingled native dialect with badly spokenEnglish in his expression of joy at meeting them again.

  At last, when the crowd had gone its way and the girls had invited himto their tent, he told them in the few words of English he had learnedsince seeing them, and with many clever drawings, the story of hisadventures.

  He was a native of the north coast of Russia; a far away point wherewhite men's boats never come. One whaleship had, however, been carriedthere by the ice-floes. After trading for the natives' furs and ivory,and having found an open channel of water to the east, the captain hadkidnaped him and carried him from his home. He had been made thecaptain's slave.

  So badly was he treated, over-worked, kicked, cuffed and beaten, thatwhen at last he saw land off the coast of Washington, dressed only inhis bird-skin suit, he had leaped overboard when no one was looking andhad attempted to swim ashore.

  The ship had passed on out of sight. He had been swimming for twohours when the girls rescued him from what was almost sure to have beena watery grave, for he was almost ready to give up hope.

  He had been missed from the ship and the captain, fearing the strongarm of the law if he were rescued by others, sent three seamen tosearch for him along the island. How he had fared with these, thegirls knew well enough.

  After leaving the camp of the girls he had wandered in the woods andalong the beach for two weeks. He had at last been picked up by somehon
est fishermen who turned him over to the revenue cutter which madeAlaskan ports. By the cutter he had been carried to Nome and fromthere made his way, little by little, by skin-boat, dog-team, andreindeer back to his native village. When he had finished telling hisstory he turned to Marian and said:

  "Idel-bene?" (yours) meaning he would like to hear their story.

  Marian was not slow in telling their troubles.

  "Me, I will take you back," the boy exclaimed as she finished. "To-daywe go."

  Two hours later, with sleds loaded, they were discussing two possibletrails, one leading down a river where blizzards constantly threatened,the other a valley trail through wolf-infested hills. The lattercourse was finally chosen, since it promised to be the least dangerousat that time of the year. Then they were away.