Boy With the U. S. Survey

by William Henry Giles Kingston

  CHAPTER XIV

  BREAKING THE ICE JAM

  Roger speedily realized the wisdom shown by Rivers in forcing the marchthrough the entire first part of the trip, for whereas the weather hadbeen favorable, two days after the argument with the mountain goat, thesky, which had been dark and gray for days, suddenly seemed to drop towithin a few hundred feet of the heads of the travelers, and a tinge ofslaty blue came into the over-hanging masses. A hollow booming soundfilled the air, and the Alaskan old-timers hastened to make everythingfast, laying provision close to hand and insuring all the outfit againstthe coming storm.

  All through the day the clouds hung so low that it seemed to Roger thathe could touch them, and the stillness and silence became painful; itwas so quiet that the weight grew oppressive, yet speech or sound of anykind grated on the nerves. Throughout the entire day Rivers scanned thesky closely, and the afternoon was well advanced when he called outsuddenly:

  "It'll be a little east of northeast!" and pointed to the direction.

  Roger's gaze followed and turning, he saw a little swirl of the clouds.Then, as though some gigantic hand had suddenly unclenched and pointedan accusing finger at the little group that had defiantly dared thedangers of its domain, a spume of snow was whipped from the gray above,and with a shriek whose vindictiveness seemed almost personal thetempest struck.

  "Get under, Doughty," called Rivers, who, standing in the lee of one ofthe small trees, was closely watching the nature of the storm, "get intothe tent!"

  But Roger did not want to miss the sight of his first big gale in thenorthern mountains, so risking a reproval for not obeying, he crawledalong the ground against the wind to where Rivers stood.

  "I never saw a real blizzard before," he shouted in his chief's ear, asan excuse for his presence.

  The older man smiled grimly, but seeing that there was as yet no danger,permitted the boy to remain. He pointed, however, to the peak abovethem, which sheltered the camp from the full fury of the storm.

  "How would you like to stand up there and watch it?" he shouted back.

  Roger's reckless spirit prompted him to reply that he wouldn't mind, butbefore he could formulate the words a sudden gust tore up a large treewhose roots had been too near the edge of a precipice and sent itthundering down into the chasm below.

  "I'd like to," he yelled, "but I guess I'd have to be chained down."

  Then one blast, stronger than any that had come before, eddied back fromthe cliff and struck Roger full in the face just as he had steppedforward to reply to Rivers. Some instinct led him to throw both handsover his face, which, leaving him at the mercy of the wind, caused himto be knocked flat like a ninepin, with the same feeling as though hehad been struck by a solid object. But it was the last impulse of thesquall, and before Roger had arisen to his feet, the white glint at thepoint where the gale had been born had disappeared, the clouds felltogether, and quietly and without hurry the snow began to fall.

  WHERE AN ETERNAL GALE RAGES.

  On the topmost crests of the Alaskan Mountains. Working out finecalculations in an icy storm.

  _Photograph by U.S.G.S._]

  "Not hurt, I suppose?" queried Rivers as Roger scrambled to his feet.

  "Not a bit," said Roger breathlessly, "but it seems like a week and ahalf since I got my wind."

  "But why did you let go?"

  "I don't know, Mr. Rivers; it felt as though some one was going to hitme in the face, and I just threw up my hands to defend myself."

  "A man's got to be a pretty good prize-fighter who will go in the ringwith an Alaskan blizzard," said the geologist, amusedly, "and the worstof it for you is that all your wounds are in the back. I should thinkyou would have a few bruises in the morning, for you went down like aJack-in-the-Box goes up."

  The snow was falling steadily and heavily as the two walked back to thetent, and Roger remarked:

  "This will make the trails heavy going, won't it?"

  "It looks to me," replied the other, "as though it would make all travelimpossible. If this storm had struck a few days earlier, or had we beena few days later in getting here, the chances are that the delay wouldhave been considerable."

  "How much, do you suppose?" asked the boy.

  The leader of the party shrugged his shoulders.

  "If it should prove a heavy snowfall," he said, "and had it struck us onthe Sushitna, it might have gone far to spoil the entire season's work.You see a snowfall of four or five inches on the level can be whipped upinto drifts fifteen and twenty feet in height, not only hiding thetrail, but making conditions through which the dogs cannot flounderuntil a crust is formed.

  "Then you see, Doughty, it's getting late for a good snow-crust, and wemight have had to wait down there until the break-up. Then, instead ofgoing on down the Jack River as we shall be able to do now, we wouldhave had to track our way up Indian Creek against all the force of thespring floods, portage across the pass with the ground in bad condition,and then find little water in the Jack River instead of reaching herecomfortably by 'mushing.'"

  "It's lucky then," said Roger, "that we're not later in getting here."

  "It's not," objected Rivers. "It may be lucky that the storm didn'tstrike earlier, but it isn't luck that brought us to this place in somuch shorter time than had been allotted. That wasn't luck, that waswork. I've noticed, too, that luck and labor go together oftener thanluck and loafing."

  On reaching the tent they found everything snuggled down for winterquarters, and Roger was subjected to some mild chaffing over what Mageecalled his "one round bout with a gale," but the lad took itgood-naturedly enough, knowing from previous experience that his turnmight come. He promised himself, however, that before the trip was overhe would notice some slight misadventure on the part of others whichwould enable him to return the compliment of banter.

  But while Roger had been out when the snow started and had seen thedense clouds and felt the weight behind them, he was not prepared tosee, the following morning, a sheet of snow several inches deep over theentire landscape. Other members of the party had been up during thenight, but the boy had not wakened, and when, stepping outside the tent,his foot sank in soft snow halfway to his knee, his amaze was great.Twelve and a half inches of snow had fallen in the single night, and thebright May sun shining over the glittering expanse made necessary thesnow glasses with which each member of the party was hastily equipped.

  "I should not like to be without glasses to-day," said the boy toGersup, as they stood by the door of the tent.

  "There would be fewer skeletons on the Alaskan hillsides," replied theother, "had it not been for the madness caused by the intense pain ofsnow-glare on the eyes."

  "Is it so acute?"

  "It is torture unendurable, because any light, no matter how faint,aggravates it, and it is not possible to live without light. Don't makeany mistake, snow-blindness is an awful thing."

  This gave Roger pause, for he saw at once how many fatal errors he hadbeen saved by being connected with a party wherein all the details oftravel had been so carefully arranged, and all sorts of contingencies,which would have been unforeseen to him, provided against. He had beeninly contemptuous of the smoked glasses, when a pair had been given himat the beginning of the trip, but now he realized their immenseimportance, for by this time the May sun had begun to make itself feltwith intense heat and the days grew long.

  It seemed as though the snowstorm had been the last effort of winter, asample to show what it could do if necessary, a comparison against theheat of the summer days to come. The rays of the sun soon honeycombedthe snow and Roger realized how rotten it had become and saw thatRivers's thankfulness that they did not have to travel over it was wellfounded. Keenly alive to the interests of the expedition, and not havinglearned the patience of later life, he chafed a good deal under thedelay and was continually asking the chief when they should start.

  "Doughty," said the chief to him on one of these occasions, when theboy's restlessness was intense, "
you can't expend energy until you haveaccumulated it. Now in worrying and fretting over not being able tostart you are expending energy at a time when, as far as possible, youshould be gathering your strength for the time when you will need it.And, what's more, every one reckons on losing a couple of weeks duringthe break-up; that is a part of the consumption of time on the trip."

  But the rapid advance of spring added a new source of surprise to thelad. From the stillness and silence of the days when they first madecamp at the head of the pass, the air became filled with the myriadvoices of life, and the primal solitude became vibrant with tinysongsters. The golden sparrow was there with his piercing plaint, mademusical by distance, and the trilling warble of Townsend's fox sparrow,and the varied strain of the hermit thrush, seemed quite homelike.Before the snow was gone the rosy finch was to be seen, his quick flightgiving a gay spot of color to the landscape, and that the moreutilitarian side might not be omitted, the snowy ptarmigan formed awelcome addition to the larder of the camp.

  Quite a torrent was beginning to flow over the ice in the Jack River,and on the morning of May 16th, when Roger had gone out with Gersup thetopographer, to map out with greater detail a little piece of countrywhich had been passed by on a previous expedition, he saw that thecenter of the ice in the river was bulging up like a hog-backed bridge.

  "What makes it bulge that way?" asked the boy.

  "You should have been able to figure that out," was the response. "Whenthe ice thaws it increases the volume of water under the ice. The edgesare frozen solid to the land, the middle is more or less elastic, and soof course the sides stay solid and the middle heaves up. In warmerclimates, it is the edge that thaws out first, but up here the rivers,strictly speaking, do not thaw free, the ice is forced from them by thespring floods. It is strictly a break-up rather than a thaw, although itgets warm thereafter very rapidly."

  "It certainly does," replied Roger, mopping his forehead. "It's hotenough now, and this is only the middle of May; while two weeks ago itwas snowing like Billy O."

  On May 18th the ice broke, moved down about a mile and jammed, and a fewhours later broke again, finally clearing from the upper reaches of theJack River on the 19th. Rivers was delighted at the opportunity to getout so soon, as he had feared it might be as late as the first week inJune before he could get away.

  "I think, Doughty," he said to Roger, "that we can count easily now onaccomplishing what we set out to do, and probably get into the ArcticOcean in good time for an early return."

  "That is, barring accidents," put in the topographer.

  "We will make up our minds not to have any," replied the chief of theparty.

  The following morning, therefore, the canoes being all packed, theparty bade good-by to the little camp on Broad Pass, where they hadspent so many quiet, uneventful days, and plunged into the grindingforced march that was to occupy every waking moment for so many monthsto come. The stern reality of Alaskan work became potent to Roger beforethey had been half an hour on the trail. The Jack River, though swollenby the spring currents, had worn an erratic bed, and was filled withbars on which the canoes stranded. Then there was nought to do but wadeinto the snow-fed stream, with large chunks of ice roaring down at him,and the chill of the water such as to make the boy gasp and turneverything black before his eyes, while his legs became numb and hurtcruelly. But he gritted his teeth and buckled to it, well aware that theother members of the party were watching him, awaiting a sign ofweakening.

  The entire morning was spent wading, helping the canoes over a series ofsmall bars with a fairly steep gradient, but the work was slow, andRivers seized eagerly any chance to increase the pace. Shortly after themidday halt, a reach fairly free from obstacles presented itself, andthe party climbed into the boats and shot down the stream. AlthoughRoger had not done any canoe work since he had been on the Survey, hewas brought up beside a stream and had handled a paddle nearly all hislife, and his delight was great when he found that he had not lost theknack. Not only was he quite at home in a few moments, but he found thathis toughness and maturer strength told in every stroke. Harry, theIndian, who was in the stern, nodded approvingly, after ten minutes'work.

  MORNING AFTER THE BLIZZARD.

  The camp on Broad Pass where the party awaited the break-up.

  _Photograph by U.S.G.S._]

  "Heap nice," he said, as he found how keenly the boy judged the weightof the stern paddle and followed his intentions; "light weight and goodpaddle, go through rapids all right, sure."

  And Rivers, who had kept a close eye on the boy, gave a snort ofsatisfaction.

  "I guess you did learn what I bade you," he said, referring to theirconversation in Washington a year before; "I think I told you that youshould know how to handle a canoe."

  "Yes, Mr. Rivers," said Roger, smiling at the remembrance, "but youimplied that the Alaskan streams were a whole lot worse than Niagara."

  "You won't complain of their not being bad enough, before long," saidthe chief grimly, "and from the general look of the place right now, Ithink we are going to run into rough water."

  The warning served to sharpen the boy's wits, and it was time. The riverwas rushing about ten miles an hour over a winding bed, where the bowcould not see ahead for more than twenty or thirty yards, a spacecovered in a few seconds' time. Suddenly Harry gave a mighty backstroke, and Roger following suit almost instantaneously, the canoe wasbrought up with a jerk as though some mechanical brakes had been set.There was not much room to spare, for across the river a big tree hadfallen, and behind it the ice had jammed, not enough to dam the waterabsolutely, but affording no possible passage for a canoe.

  A landing was made, though it was extremely difficult, and the canoesportaged past the obstruction, Rivers having found that the tree hadjammed on a harsh and shallow rapid, over which they could not havetaken the boats. Then the chief ordered two of the men to cut throughthe jammed tree so as to break the dam.

  "Why?" queried Roger of Bulson, as he was cutting and shaping a giganticwooden crowbar for himself, while a couple of the other men werehacking through the tree; "why is it necessary to take all that troubleafter we have got by?"

  "Supposing we got some distance down the river," was the reply, "whereit wasn't easy to make a landing, and this jam broke above us and camepounding down the river, where would we be?"

  "But it wouldn't be going any faster than the stream, and we could keepahead of it with paddles."

  "And if you came to a portage?"

  "That's true," said Roger, "I hadn't thought of that. We might getnipped between the ice behind and rocks in front."

  "You see," said Bulson, as he stepped on to the jam, "it's never wise toleave dangers at your heels."

  The tree having been cut through, all save a few inches, one of thechoppers returned to the shore, while the other stood ready, watchingBulson. The latter, who was standing on the blocks of ice behind thetree, was studying their positions, how they were jammed, and what wasthe best way to free them without getting caught himself in theresultant turmoil.

  Presently he seemed satisfied for, inserting his huge crowbar betweentwo pieces of ice, he yelled:

  "Cut!"

  The axman brought down his blade with his full strength three times, andthe fibers of the tree cracked and began to give way. Back over theslowly moving tree came Magee, leaving Bulson alone on the jam. Suddenlythe tree parted with a sharp crack and as it did so there arose agrinding roar, and the blocks of ice which had been jammed behind thetree seemed to leap up and fling themselves over the rapid. It did notseem possible that any man could ride that furious clashing of the jam,but Roger noticed that Bulson, making his way to shore over the grindingice, yet had coolness to stop and give a shove here and a heave there,unlocking the jam, as it were, until, standing on the ice nearest theshore, he gave one last mighty shove and sprang to the bank just as witha seeming disappointed roar the whole jam broke and sped down thefoaming river.

  "That, Mr. Rivers," said the boy, a
s Bulson quietly threw his impromptucrowbar into the river, "is one of the things I did not learn to do."

  "Bulson's very good at that sort of thing," was the chief's quietcomment.

  But the river below the jam was far less kind to the travelers than ithad been above. Progress was only possible by careful paddling and shortportages. Half the time was spent in the icy water and half on thefrozen bank, and though the water was cold beyond belief, and hands andfeet were heavy and numb, the sun burned fiercely upon head andshoulders as though it were the height of midsummer, a condition theharder to be borne because it was so early in the season that no one wasas yet acclimatized to the heat.

  It was the most fatiguing day Roger had yet spent on the Survey, noteven excepting the famous trip across the Grand Canyon, for in thelatter the pace had been his own, while in this he had to play an equalpart with exceptionally vigorous and seasoned men, coping with amountain torrent. The dusk was falling as, once more in boats, andpassing through a small gorge, the party reached the confluence of theJack and Cantwell Rivers. Although the distance traversed had been buttwenty-eight miles, and the party had been traveling with the current,so arduous and rough had been the way that eleven hours had been spentin making the journey.

  After supper Rivers came to Roger and said to him, not with criticism,but in a kindly manner:

  "Are you tired, Doughty?"

  The boy would have longed to be able to reply "No," but he knew he couldnot do so with any pretense at honesty, and so he replied fairly:

  "Yes, Mr. Rivers, I am a little tired, but I'll soon get toughened up."

  "Well," said the chief of the party, "I just wanted to let you know thatthis really has been a hard day, and that no one need be ashamed offeeling tired. We are all conscious of having done a day's work. Ithought perhaps you might worry a little at the thought that, if it wasto be all like this, you would not be able to keep up. But it won't, andyou did well."

  So Roger lay down to sleep and tucked himself in his sleeping bag withabsolute happiness. The next day proved to the boy how right the chiefhad been. For the first forty miles of its passage the boy found theCantwell River, into which they had run, to have a fair channel and goodbanks; and of course, at this season of the year it was full tooverflowing, so that the only difficulty of its upper reaches, shoals,was set aside by the volume of water in the stream. That day's trip wasrapid and easy. Camp was made that night beside the river, just whereanother tributary called the Yanert joins, leaping a twenty-foot falljust before reaching the main stream.

  The turbulent manner of the Yanert's union, however, was an augury oftrouble. It seemed as though the larger river had been led into badhabits by the new arrival, for it became a wild scramble of water,rushing through the canyons and gorges of the Alaskan Range withterrifying speed. Two or three nasty rapids had been shot, in each ofwhich Roger acquitted himself very creditably, but the water had grownrougher and harder to deal with at each successive step, so that when ashort beach a few miles long closed in a harsh and ragged-edged canyon,Rivers called a halt and went forward to reconnoiter from the summit ofthe gorge whether it were safe for passage. Taking Roger and Magee withhim, he followed the west bank of the river, sending Gersup, Bulson, andHarry, along the other bank to determine the possibility of the rapidbelow, and also to find out which was the better side for a portage,should that be deemed necessary.

  To Roger's uninitiated eye, the water below seemed a seething witches'caldron of confusion, but he could see that the chief did not regard itas being impossible. Suddenly the geologist turned to him:

  "Doughty," he said, "do you think you could run that rapid?"

  "If you told me to," answered the boy sturdily.

  "You mean that you would try to do it, whether you thought it possibleor no, if I told you?"

  "No," said Roger, "that would be unreasonable. What I mean is that ifyou told me to go it would be possible, and if it is possible I am quiteready to try it at any time."

  The older man said no more, but tried to force his way along the densegrowth by the gorge's edge. The underbrush was very thick, and if aportage was to be made on that side the road would have to be cut almostthe entire distance. So the three turned back to the canoes and waitedthe return of the topographer.

  "Well?" inquired the chief as the party hove in view.

  "I shouldn't care to tackle it," said Gersup, "but Harry says he cantake the boats through, but not loaded. They would have to go down lightand the loads portaged. There is a fair carry on that side, but it'sthrough small trees pretty close together, and the canoes would beawkward to take through. It's about a twelve-mile portage, too, as Ishould judge, before we can strike a place where the boats could land."

  "That's just about what I expected you to say," commented the geologist."I thought so, too, but there's a bad carry on this side. Well, Isuppose Harry and Bulson had better take the boats through."

  But when the canoeists were approached Bulson shook his head.

  "Of course, if you say so, Mr. Rivers," he replied, "there's no more tobe said, but as I understand it, the boats have got to go through light.Now I tip the scale at a trifle over two hundred and twenty pounds, andyou couldn't very well call that light. Besides, if it comes to aportage, I can carry a whole lot more than any one else could do. If Imight suggest----"

  "Go ahead, man," said Rivers impatiently.

  "Send the boy, then. He knows just as much about a canoe as I do andhe's seventy-five pounds lighter. That's an awful difference in the bowof a canoe. Then, too, he isn't as hefty for the carry. I think you'dbetter let Harry and the boy try it."

  "But it's a man's job. What do you think, Harry--because, after all, youwill lead the way?"

  "Bulson heap good in canoe. Boy all right. Boy light, man heavy, takeboy."

  "You think you can take the boat through all right?" The Indian nodded."I'd like to go with you myself, but I'm nearly as heavy as Bulson. Allright, then, let it go that way; it's only a chance, but we'd better tryit with one boat, rather than spend a week or two cutting a twelve-mileroad through the timber for the boats."

  Orders having been given for the unpacking of the canoes, an early stopwas made, and Harry went off with Bulson to con the rapid from the otherbank. He did not come back till after dark, and then, simply saying toRivers:

  "Sure, can do it all right," he tumbled off to the tent and rolled upfor the night.

  The chief of the party then turned to Roger, and said kindly:

  "I don't want you to do this, Doughty, unless you feel quite up to it,because confidence is one of the most important things needed.However, I have great faith in Harry's knowledge of rapids, and if hesays they are passable I don't think there is any cause to fear. But ifyou are in the least afraid of it, don't hesitate to say so."

  RESTING AFTER A LONG PULL.

  A good place to stop for dinner, though hundreds of miles from any whitesettlement.

  _Photograph by U.S.G.S._]

  "I'd be afraid to tackle it alone, Mr. Rivers," the boy said truthfully,"but I feel that with Harry in the stern I could take the rapids ofNiagara, and the whirlpool into the bargain."