ONE

THE west wind brought a night fog in from the sea,
and the North-Western, under slow bell, steamed
cautiously through the narrows toward Sitka, the old
Russian capital of Alaska.
A black fog,’ grumbled the grizzled night watch-
man who stood beside me in the bow, his brown face
twisting in his effort to see ahead.
But to one not concerned with problems of naviga-
tion it was a splendid, silver mist rolling down over
the tops of encircling mountains. It carried with it
the freshness of upper snows, the redolence of forests I
could not see, the tang of rockweed along the hidden,
river-like channel. To me, a daughter of Alaska, its
breath was the essence of the Northern wilderness,
potent with promises of delightful things — the un-
known, the unexplored, the beckoning. It took me
back to childhood days when home was my father’s
schooner leisurely skirting these green shores of
romance.
It brought to mind many a lazy, sunny afternoon
when the old Tyee lay becalmed in some blue Alaskan
waterway, and my young mother, my two little broth-
ers — and my small self played like tumbling puppies
on top of the cabin. After our sails had hung slack for

an hour or more, my father’s head always popped up
through the companionway and his grey eyes took in
the surrounding water. Then in a voice attuned to a
comic Irish gravity he gave the command : To your
posts, my hearties, and whistle up a wind ! ‘
Instantly we three youngsters scrambled to the edge
of the cabin and seated ourselves in a solemn row, our
chubby legs dangling. With brows puckered over
intense eyes and lips protruding, we broke earnestly
into the moist in-and-out whistling of childhood. If
the sails did not fill immediately, my older brother
Loll — always a daring one — got to his feet and delivered
the magic formula taught him by the mate :
‘ Blow, Divil, blow! And we’ll give you the cook I ‘
There was the thrill of danger in this magic, and we
dared use it only because we had no regular cook
aboard. Each member of our crew took a turn at the
galley stove.
We did not know that Dad never asked our assistance
until his practised eye had detected signs of a coming
breeze ; hence our invariable success convinced us
that on our musical efforts depended the winds that
wafted the Tyee northwest along the beautiful, lonely
coast of Alaska where Dad sailed in search of gold and
adventure.
That was a time which left me with happy memories
— memories of green bays at evening when our schooner
anchored in the reflection of the shore so close that
we could see how deep and limpid were the eyes of
friendly deer that came down to gaze at us. Times
when the tide went out while we all slept and my
father’s clipper-built Tyee, listing over on the sand,

slyly spilled us out of our bunks. Times when strange
ships sailed in to anchor near us at sunset, and, thril-
ling to their mystery, we youngsters climbed into a row-
boat with Dad and went over to board them. In those
days we believed that a ship was the natural home of
children, and we were always expecting to find other
white boys and girls with whom we might play.
But we never found any.
In many of the Indian villages and trading posts
along the coast we were the first white children the
inhabitants had ever seen. I remember a Potlatch, a
Thlinget dancing festival of savage splendour, where
chiefs and their squaws fingered our golden curls with
cluckings of wonder and delight as they tried to buy us
from our parents with sea-otter skins.
In out-of-the-way coves we came on other Indian
villages lone and deserted in the rice grass above the
beach. Decaying tribal houses stood weather-white
against the spruce trees, and ravens croaked soliloquies
among the ruins. In such places we children built
forts, or played hide-and-seek among the crumbling
totem poles standing guard before the rotting thres-
holds. Carved totem faces, smiling in weird serenity
from the forest, were as familiar to us as are billboards
to the city child.