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Farther on is the bay Ittimnekoktok, where it grew dark before we found a suitable anchorage. The wind was high, and some of our company went on shore in the skin-boat, in order to pitch their tent, and spend the night. 7th.
They hastened away to seas unknown, not to return for months. The little mail steamer came hooting its way around the Point. It brought a letter of the utmost importance to Marian. While in Nome the summer before she had made some hasty sketches of the Chukches, natives of the Arctic coast of Siberia, while they camped on the beach there on a trading voyage in a thirty-foot skin-boat.
After leaving the camp of the girls he had wandered in the woods and along the beach for two weeks. He had at last been picked up by some honest fishermen who turned him over to the revenue cutter which made Alaskan ports. By the cutter he had been carried to Nome and from there made his way, little by little, by skin-boat, dog-team, and reindeer back to his native village.
On rising, to our great surprise, we found ourselves left by the tide in a shallow pool of water, surrounded by rocky hills; nor could we at all discover the situation of our skin-boat, till after the water had begun to rise, and raised us above the banks of our watery dungeon, when, with great astonishment, not having been able to find it on the surface of the sea, and accidentally directing our eyes upwards, we saw it perched upon the top of a considerable eminence, and apparently on shore.
Off in the distance, indeed, was an innocent-looking native skin-boat. There were, perhaps, ten natives aboard. "Thought so," chuckled Dave. "You thought what?" demanded the Doctor. Every eye was turned on the young commander. "Thought we'd been shot by natives with a whale-gun. Took us for a whale, don't you see? Whale-gun throws a bomb that explodes inside the whale and kills him.
"How?" growled the big man, sourly. "There's a large open skin-boat, an oomiak, down on the beach. We'll hire a crew of Indians to put us across to Uyak." "Can't be done," said Big George, still gruffly. "It's the wrong season. You know the Shelikof Straits is a bad place even for steamships at this time of year. They're like that Pass up yonder, only worse." "But it's only fifty miles across."
The ouimiack, or skin-boat, is a clumsy-looking contrivance, but not to be despised on that account; from the buoyancy of the materials of which it is built, the ouimiack stands a much heavier sea than our best sea-boat. This kind of craft is rowed by women, and used for the purpose of conveying families along the coast.
Several of our people were in the skin-boat, and the fury of the wind and sea would not permit them to come to our assistance. The weather also became so thick and foggy between the islands, that we were unable to see to any distance.
The skin-boat was intended as a refuge, in case of any accident happening to our own boat, and was useful in landing, as we never brought the large boat close in shore. The first four families belong to Hopedale, Thukkekina and his wife to Okkak. They considered it as a great favour conferred on them to be permitted to accompany us.
The summits of the hills had no wood upon them, but much reindeer-moss. On our return, being about a mile from our landing-place, we saw our skin-boat in the middle of the bay, and fired a gun as a signal for it to come to us. The Esquimaux had five rein-deer in the boat, which Uttakiyok had perceived on the opposite bank.
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