by Lynn D'urso
Tara’s passengers—bedraggled, sodden, and bruised—stand and sit in various limp poses, dizzy with rebirth, torn between an impulse to celebrate their survival and mourn the prospect of isolation before them.
Lituya Bay lies broad and flat as a meadow. Gusts of wind embroider the gray green water with dark twisting lines. To port and starboard, the land rises steadily eastward until folding abruptly into steep hills.
Ahead, the hump of a single small island sits squarely in the middle of the fjord, which reaches inland several miles before splitting into north and south arms. The top of the T is a massive back wall of scaled granite, veined with vertical, debris-choked ravines that lead down to fans of dirty snow.
The grip of winter still clings to this place, with snow lying hip-deep to the edge of the water except along the beach immediately behind them; the mountains towering above the back wall are laced with frozen waterfalls, their summits strung with cornices of windblown snow. To Hannah, it seems a world impossibly removed from the temperate light and blooming spring forests of Sitka, and she places one slender hand wordlessly across the other atop her belly as if protecting herself from a blow.
“Jesus,” whispers Hans. The sibilant exclamation speaks for each of the prospectors, who face a scene of such grand isolation that their death or survival is rendered inconsequential. For a moment, the power of the prospect strips the group of all worldly concerns: Dutch’s perfidy, the hunger for gold, all ego and alliance—each and every impulse or appetite is forgotten as they stare at the future before them.
Tara chortles through the water, without course and under only the most tenuous control. Slowly Hannah becomes aware of an ache knotting itself into her body; her muscles are shivering, and her skin is growing numb. Wind knifes through her sodden clothes. Hans and Michael, too, are shivering. Dutch, hunched into a dripping ball, quakes so badly he appears to be convulsing. Only Harky seems unfazed. Miraculously, his greasy felt hat still sits on his head, limp and shapeless from its recent soaking. The cold wakes each in turn from the dreamscape around them.
Michael speaks first, his voice low and even. “Hans, would you take the helm? I’ve got to inspect below for damage. That blow when we struck bottom may have sprung something.
“Mrs. Nelson, as soon as I’ve looked things over, you’d best get into some dry clothes. We all need to do the same, but ladies first, hey?”
Hannah marvels at the swing in his mood. An hour past, he was threatening Dutch with murder. Now he is all charm and concern.
A quick inspection proves the integrity of Tara’s construction. The blow from the grounding has started a few small leaks weeping along her keel, and several frames beneath the engine are cracked, but she remains sound and is in no danger of sinking. The condition of the propeller and shaft cannot be ascertained until the engine is repaired and started. Michael builds a roaring fire in the stove, and soon all hands are warming themselves in dry clothes, waiting for a pot of tea to boil.
All of the men except Dutch, who remains flaccid with defeat and shame, show the resilience of soldiers pressed into action. There are vital tasks to take in hand, a situation to control. There is seawater to pump from the bilges, tangled sails and lines to sort out, gear thrown from lockers to secure. The engine must be doctored, the source of its seizure diagnosed and repaired. A hammer and saw must be found to repair the stove-in hatch. Hannah finds herself relegated to mopping and drying, auditing the foodstuffs for water damage.
Michael steers for a bight along the southern shore as the others work to clear the chaos. When satisfied with their position, he rounds into the wind, luffing the jib to take all way off the cutter. Harky wrestles the anchor on deck and lowers away. The fjord is deep, and the entire length of the anchor line slips through his hands before he signals to Michael that it has reached bottom.
There is no rejoicing among the gold seekers, no enthusiasm or excited making of plans to establish a base camp or begin exploration. Hannah cannot bring herself to address Dutch directly. Michael ignores his presence, a contortionist’s task within the confines of the cutter. Hans shoulders Dutch roughly aside whenever they pass. When Dutch attempts to help with the engine, Hans raises a backhand as if to slap him away, and Dutch retreats to the deck. Only Harky acts as before, asking Dutch to lend a hand as he makes repairs to the hatch.
The strain aboard Tara is matched by the atmosphere outside the cabin, where wrinkled gray clouds move across the sky, devouring the blue in great bites. By the time order has been restored to the ship, dark weather slicing in from the western horizon has soured the heavens to the color of a corpse, permeating everything with a flat yellow light that leaves no shadows.
The voice of the wind rises from a whisper to a dirge, then an octave higher to a grieving wail. Tara tugs at her anchor, shrouds moaning. The stays hum a lament. On shore, trees bend in the gale.
The first rain rattles in with a sound like a handful of gravel being slung across the deck. Within moments, the full force of the front has moved in as a downpour that hisses as it falls, reducing the world to a cacophony of wind and darkness.
Hannah places an open pan on the deck, gathering enough rain in a few minutes to wash the dishes. After the lamps are extinguished, she tries to curl against Hans beneath their damp blankets, but he tosses wildly in his sleep. She tries to pray, but words of supplication will not form in her exhausted mind. Her pillow grows wet with silent tears.
Despair, dear diary, despair.
The hunt for gold has placed us in dreadful circumstances. Lituya Bay presents a stern and awful appearance. It is rugged, dark, and fearsome. Harky’s description of the madman on the voyage from Skagway to Sitka seems applicable, as it does seem a most “heartbroke” bay. Harky also calls this “hungry country,” and I fear he is correct. This place may consume us.
I try to forgive Dutch for the lies which have brought us to this place. He maintains desperately that he did not lie, that he never said straight out that he had found the gold in his possession. I replied that he avoids being a liar by only the most slender of definitions, that he is, nonetheless, a deceiver. Damn him, damn him, damn him, and I do not regret my cursing!
I have, however, begun to regret what error of my own has taken me so far from my home in Bristol. I feel so low and frightened. Hans is distant, and much depressed by our misfortune. We have not been as husband and wife for some time, as there is no privacy in such close quarters. He takes less notice than I.
How I miss my dear friend Victoria and the comfort of our “girl talks,” and Mr. Witt and his music.
It has rained without cease since our arrival two days past. A brief glimpse of the fjord on our arrival has been our only chance to survey the stark terrain, as the downpour obscures the scene at all times. The men row ashore at intervals through the day, but return quickly, soaked to the bone and freezing. Sodden clothing hangs in every space aboard the boat and wets everything about it. If the storm does not abate soon, I am afraid the confinement will infect us all with the malady the miners call “cabin fever.” Mr. Severts says the rain is in our favor, as it will melt a great deal of the snow that covers everything and allow prospecting to begin sooner—an observation which seems most optimistic.
A single shovelful of sand changes everything.
While Hans and Michael mutter of returning to Sitka, shooting Dutch, or both, Harky subdues his dislike of the water, drops a shovel and pan into the skiff, and rows awkwardly for the beach. Dutch, eager to breathe air untainted by animosity, accompanies him.
The day has dawned without storm. The water is flat as a table and the color of tarnished silver. Shreds of mist still hang among the hills, and the farther reaches of the fjord remain hidden behind a veil of rain, but in the west the sun struggles to break through beneath a streak of gold.
In Harky’s hands the oars chop at the water without rhythm or grace, and he steals wary, sidelong glances from beneath the brim of his hat toward the mouth of the bay ha
lf a mile away. Dutch, too, is chary of the current, which they both fear may suck them into the terrible surf. Seals, bug-eyed with curiosity, follow the wandering course of the skiff in its advance toward shore.
Once ashore, Harky tilts the skiff to its side, shoulders its considerable weight by the gunwale, and carries it well up the beach. Michael has given him stern warning of the tide’s ability to rise with speed and stealth behind the unwary, and of its eagerness to steal anything left within reach. Harky accepts the Irishman’s admonition as more proof of the sea’s treachery and urges Dutch to hurry.
Tools in hand, the unlikely duo wanders among a Stonehenge of tall boulders spaced along the concave bight of the shore. Michael’s prediction to Hannah—that the rain would chew at the drifts of snow, exposing the earth to the prospectors’ shovels—has proven only partially correct. Near the mouth of the bay, the snow has grown rotten and crumbling, with portions of open ground visible at the mouths of small creeks, but farther into the bay, where the glaciers chill the atmosphere, the moisture falls as wet snow and the intermittent mutter of distant avalanches can be heard.
The baritone rumble of the earth falling in on itself and the thunderous quaking of the glaciers dropping icebergs into the bay puts Harky much in mind of cannon fire. He grows nervous at the memory and struggles against the melancholia that rubs against the walls around his heart.
The sand is dark chestnut and littered along the water’s edge with bits of shell. A wandering line of tracks describes the explorations of a cloven-hoofed animal, perhaps a deer or a mountain goat nosing along the interstice of forest and beach before veering inland. Behind a small point of land scattered with broken stones they find the ambling, plantigrade tracks of a grizzly—deep, platter-sized depressions marked across the top with the indentations of non-retractable claws. Harky stops beside a boulder the size of a washtub that has been flipped aside by the bear as it sniffed and dug at some intertidal delicacy. He stamps his boot track over a track and sees that the grizzly’s foot is fully as long and a good deal wider than his own. Dutch peers ahead and behind, then into the woods, wondering aloud if they should return to the cutter for the shotgun. Harky shrugs. He carries his pistol in his coat, but knows the caliber would be woefully inadequate against an animal with a head the size of a keg of nails.
“We best just stay out of the brush. See him on the beach, we’ll head the other way.” He is not eager to return to the confines of the boat or the tippling skiff.
At the mouth of a green, mossy creek that trickles across a fan of pea-sized gravel, Harky punches at the ground with the shovel. The metal blade rings without penetrating the stony surface.
Moving over a pace or two, stepping carefully to keep his balance among the water-slicked stones, he slices into a soft deposit of sand. Garbed in black oilskins that droop on his dissolute frame, Dutch stands like a priest at communion, holding the pan out level to receive the offering from Harky’s shovel. Bending at the waist, he lowers the metal lip of his chalice into the stream at a shallow angle, scoops a few spoonfuls of water into the mixture of sand and gravel, and begins washing.
At first the score remains nothing to nothing. Dutch is poised to tip the contents out on the ground, when Harky reaches out with sausage-fat fingers and tweezes a bright pebble from the pan. The small stone glows green and wet, and Harky briefly considers taking it as a gift for Hannah before dismissing the idea and thumbing the bead back into the pan.
Dipping and rocking, Dutch continues sluicing the lighter elements of the slurry into the stream, working the muck down to a few spoonfuls of sand.
“Wait a minute, Dutch.”
Dutch pauses before pitching out the concentrate. Harky bends down to look, bends closer, then drops the shovel and takes the pan.
Holding it in one hand, he tilts it this way and that, trying the light from different angles, shifting it softly side to side in a subdued panning motion, then probing at the finest black and green bits that linger in the curve of the pan. Among them is a speckle of yellow dust as faint as the scales of a butterfly’s wing. It is gold, fine as flour, but still dense and heavy enough to be segregated from its sister elements by the rocking of a pan.
Harky says, “Guess that’s it.”
And it is.
NINE
Dear Diary,
It has been two weeks since our departure from Sitka, and construction on our home for the summer has begun. Mr. Severts is a wizard with the broadax and saw! He carves wood into thick planks for a table, benches, and a door, while Harky and Dutch work at bringing logs to the beach, where Hans takes them in tow behind the skiff to deliver them to our site. It will be a shanty of wood and mud, but seems palatial after the close quarters of the boat. There will be no fine finish, as the men are eager to begin recovering gold.
Throughout the day, first one, then another of the men—and sometimes all at once—drops all he is doing and wanders off to shovel at the sands. So far our “poke” is only a small glass jar in which a few flakes and grains of gold reside. Hans filled the jar with clear water, which magnifies the appearance of the tiny bits of gold. Everyone enjoys shaking the jar and watching our wealth swirl about, as if it were one of the crystal-and-water snow scenes Poppa used to bring Mama from Paris.
We are eating well, as we must consume all of our eggs, fresh meats, and vegetables before they spoil. Soon it will be flapjacks or bannock bread for breakfast, bannock bread and beans for “lunch” as Americans call it, and beans and bannock bread for supper. I am becoming adept at baking the bread, which is simply flour, water, salt, and baking powder, in the Dutch oven.
The discovery of gold has seen Dutch somewhat forgiven, but he remains much subdued. The cutter lies at anchor, the pendulousness of its mast drawing arcs against the sky, as the miners pack the remaining goods and cargo ashore. The smell of mildew clings to everything, even wood and metal, and seems particularly strong on the pages of Hannah’s journal. On the first clear, bright day she drapes the green branches of spruce trees near the camp with blankets and clothing, hoping the odor will dissipate in the crisp air.
Logs of wrung-out silver driftwood are notched to lie neck to ankle across each other in the rude shape of a cabin. Moss gathered from the forest floor is used to chink the uneven spaces between the logs. Squirrels chitter in indignation from the trees.
The carpenters have no patience, nor is glass available, for such niceties as windows. The interior of the cabin would be dark and dreary were it not for the roof, formed by stretching the cutter’s canvas jib over a low framework of poles and weighting it in place with boards and stones. Hans wants to cover the roof with sod as well, but Michael argues that this will rot his sail. Sunlight through the sailcloth bathes the interior in dim yellow light. Harky must hunch his neck to pass through the door.
The dirt floor of the cabin measures twelve by sixteen feet. Michael drives four short poles into the ground with the flat of an ax, fastens horizontal planks to the posts with wooden pegs, and uses a brace and bit to bore a line of holes through each plank. With a coil of small-diameter line, he weaves an open netting between the planks by passing the rope from hole to hole across the frame and covers this with a layer of resinous spruce branches to form a bed for Hans and Hannah. Michael, Harky, and Dutch will continue to bunk on Tara, but the woodstove is moved into the cabin for Hannah to cook on. Only Dutch complains of the cold.
He is also the one to discover the shattered wreckage of a boat strewn among the debris of the shore and all hands fall-to with saws and crowbars to salvage what they can of the weathered planks. From the size of the planks, Michael estimates the craft to have been larger than the cutter. There is no evidence of the cause of the ship’s end or the fate of its crew, but its planks go to good use as shelves and a food locker in the new cabin. Hans sets aside the longest and best to build a sluice box and shaker, saving many hours of hewing and sawing that would otherwise be required to produce lumber from logs. The silvered bones o
f the ruined vessel remain a stark reminder of their isolation from the outside world.
After a night of heavy rain the tracks of a grizzly are found close by, crisp and sharp in the sand. Hans and Harky decipher the animal’s path, tracing where the grizzly pawed at a shovel left out in the rain, approached the wall beyond which Hans and Hannah slept, circled the cabin as far as the door, then departed the way it came.
The tracks are well defined, unsoftened by the rain—clear evidence the visit occurred only a short time before Hans opened the door at first light. The prospectors marvel that the Nelsons heard nothing.
Michael brings his shotgun ashore and leaves it with a carton of shells.
It is Dutch who suggests that the bulk of the food be returned to the cutter. “No sense baiting a bear into bed with you, is there Mrs. Nelson?” says Dutch. “Old Elijah smells that bacon, he’s liable to come in without knocking.”
Most of Dutch’s suggestions are brushed aside without consideration, but this one makes sense to all, and the potatoes, meat, cases of canned goods, and sacks of beans and flour are taken back to the boat for safekeeping.
In the time it takes to build the cabin, the earth tilts a bit more toward the sun and the days grow longer and brighter. Dawn comes before four, the sun falls into the western sea each evening after nine o’clock, and its tenure in the sky extends daily.
Michael discovers a small creek that flows in the shape of a fan across a flat slope of exposed bedrock before entering a pool. The new long days of sun heat the smooth, black bedrock, which in its turn warms the shallow water trickling across its face to a temperature suitable for bathing. After a long day of labor, the sensation of emerging from the warm water into the cool, crisp air delights Hannah’s skin in a fashion she experiences as exceedingly carnal.
One evening, Hannah sees a blue-backed swallow darting and skimming above the straw-colored grass, which has been exposed by the melted snow. She points it out to the men, who are busy sharpening axes and saws. The next day, Harky and Michael surprise her by trimming a small opening into an empty tin can, nailing it to a tall pole, and erecting the makeshift birdhouse beside the cabin. By evening a swallow has begun inspecting the offering. The next day it returns, accompanied by a mate. With this sure sign of spring, the prospectors begin to chafe with an eagerness to take the land by the scruff of the neck and shake the gold from its pockets.