Gulf and Glacier; or, The Percivals in Alaska

With these words he proceeded to tie his victim firmly to a stout young pine that grew close to the edge of the bluff. They placed his face to the trunk, and clasping his hands around it, lashed them tightly together.

“I say,” interposed Dick, as he saw the cords cut into the captive’s wrists, “you needn’t pull ’em so tight! Don’t you see – you’re hurting him awfully!”

Winthrop set his lips together, and said nothing.

“Hurting him!” repeated Mort savagely. “I guess he’ll wish he wa’n’t hurt any more’n that, before I get through with him! Gimme that whip!”

“Don’t whip him!” cried Dick again. “We’ve scared him enough, now. You said you only wanted to frighten him, Mort.”

“Git out o’ the way, will you? I’m running this job, and this slim Sunday-school chap from the city has got to have a little more scarin’ yet.”

“But” —

“If you don’t want a taste yourself, you’ll keep quiet, Dick Stanwood. Phil an’ I’ll duck ye in the river, ’f you say much more!”

“All right,” said Dick, who evidently regretted his part in the matter. “If that’s all the thanks I get, I’m off!” And turning suddenly on his heel, he walked away through the woods.

“Hold on! Stop him, will you, Phil?” cried Mort angrily. But Dick had hastened his steps and was already out of sight.

Still Winthrop said never a word. His face was white, and the two guards thought he was too frightened to speak.

“Strip off his coat and vest,” commanded Mort, brandishing the whip. Phil obeyed his leader like a lamb, untying the captive’s hands cautiously, and, with Mort’s aid, fastening them again more securely than ever.

“Now, then, here’s one for interfering between me and the girl!”

Down came the leather lash across the thinly clad shoulders.

“One more for the lick you gave me between the eyes!”

Again the stinging, burning blow. Still Winthrop did not cry out.

“You want some more, do you?” cried Mort, enraged at his victim’s silence.

The lash was raised again. As Mort raised and swung it, to give the full force of the blow, he stepped backward. The embankment, long ago undermined by the river, crumbled under the bully’s feet; with a shriek of terror he toppled over, and disappeared beneath the black eddies of the pool. Winthrop could not see what had happened, for his back, now smarting as if living coals were bound to it, was toward the bank. From the sound of the falling earth, the cry of his tormentor, and the loud splash that followed, he guessed what had occurred.

“Untie me, quick!” he shouted to Phil, who stood gazing stupidly at the whirling bubbles where his leader had disappeared. “No, cut the rope – take my knife out of my pocket!”

Phil, who was always ready to follow the party in power, obeyed mechanically. In a few seconds Winthrop was free.

“Can’t he swim?” he cried, kicking off the last coils of the rope, as Mort rose, screaming and splashing to the surface, and went under again.

“Not a stroke,” said Phil stoically. “Serves him right, don’t it? Say, Win, I’m awful sorry” —

But he was apologizing only to the pine-tree and the cut cords. Winthrop had sprung into the pool, and even now had his late assailant by the collar and was striking out for the shore lower down, where the bank was not so high.

“Don’t drown me!” yelled Mort, rolling up his eyes. “I didn’t mean” —

“Stop kicking – you’re all right!” gasped Winthrop. “There – put your feet down – can’t you touch bottom?”

“Winthrop, my lad! Here – give me your hand!” cried a new voice; and Puss’s father leaned perilously far over the bank to assist the boy. At the same time Phil and Dick – the latter of whom had brought Mr. Rowan to the scene – helped the choking, crest-fallen, dripping Mort to his feet.

“What does this mean?” demanded the older man sternly, surveying the cords and whip.

“O, Winthrop! – brother!” and the two girls came hurrying down to the river’s edge. Winthrop tried to toss on his coat, but did not succeed before the stains on his poor, smarting back told the story to his sister’s anxious eye.

Of course the picnic was ended for that day. The whole party hurried to the wagon and drove home. On the way, Winthrop begged Mr. Rowan not to have either of his late captors prosecuted, or punished in any way.

“I’m satisfied,” he said, “if they are.”

“Well, I’m not!” burst out Mort suddenly, “and I sha’n’t be, till I get square with you somehow!”

The girls turned and looked at him in new amazement and terror. But Winthrop understood him better.

“All right, old fellow,” he replied simply, holding out his hand to the other.

Mort grasped it and said no more.

“Good story, father!” called out Tom, whose voice, whether for approval or criticism, was never wanting. “I’d like to know how Mort got square with him, though.”

Mr. Percival laughed as he rose. “That is not of so much consequence. In such a case, ‘the readiness is all.’ Does that finish the paper, Mr. Editor?”

“It does,” said Selborne gravely. “And the publication of the ‘Tri-Weekly Chichagoff Decade’ is suspended until further notice.”

CHAPTER XIII.

HOMEWARD BOUND

The voyage southward proceeded without special incident. “Glaciers” were gradually left behind, but “gulfs” and bays, channels and narrow passages were still a part of the programme. The day following the reading of the “Decade” was Sunday. Mr. Selborne at the request of many of the passengers, preached in the cabin, the Percivals organizing a choir which led the singing with their clear young voices.

On Monday the Queen reached Nanaimo, a city and coaling-station for ships, on the east shore of Vancouver’s Island. Tom and Fred hired a team and drove half a dozen miles inland to a trout-brook of which they had heard. Tom could not walk about much, but he enjoyed the ride immensely, and when they reached the brook he limped along the bank to a shady spot, from which he shouted various comments, disparaging and otherwise, on his companion’s methods of angling and rather limited success. They returned tired but happy, with a dozen silvery little fish as trophies. In the late afternoon Randolph and Pet headed a party to explore the city, which they found a hot and dusty one, but, in its upper portions, abounding in wonderfully bright flowers.

At one garden they stopped and bought a great ball of nasturtiums. It was nearly twilight, and as the travelers leaned against the fence, idly watching the owner of the garden as he gathered the nosegay, they saw whole flocks of evening primroses opening their wings like yellow butterflies, one by one.

This gardener, it seemed, was a blacksmith, employed by day in a coal mine which ran out half a mile under the sea. His business, he said, was to keep the mules shod.

The shaft of this great mine came up in the outskirts of the town, and the Percivals, earlier in the day, had seen the huge buckets come rushing up from the bowels of the earth, six hundred and forty feet below, laden with coal and streaming with water.

The evening was memorable for a row in the harbor to an Indian burying-ground, where strange and hideously carved figures kept watch over the neglected graves.

Until a late hour, after their return from this boating excursion, the party remained on deck, talking over the events of the day.

“Do you know,” asked Tom, “how this place started?”

“Well?” said Mr. Percival, who was always pleased to have his boy thorough in looking up the history of a place.

“An Englishman named Richard Dunsmuir, was riding horseback along a trail back on the mountain. The horse stumbled, and when Dunsmuir came to look at the log or stone, it was coal. He started a big mine, with two partners who put in about five thousand dollars apiece. A few years later one of them sold out to Dunsmuir for two hundred and fifty thousand, and afterward the second one sold for seven hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Whew!” whistled Randolph. “I say, Tom, let’s give up Latin and go into the coal-mining business.”

“All right,” says Tom cheerfully. “You buy a horse and gallop through the woods till you both tumble down. Then I’ll pick you up, point out the coal – if it doesn’t turn out to be a stump – and we’ll go halves. Or I’ll sell out now for ten dollars and fifteen cents!”

Just as the steamer cast off her fasts and started her paddles, Selborne announced that the bright sky had, as usual, cajoled them into keeping late hours, for it was now nearly eleven, and in four hours it would be daylight again. Whereupon the deck party broke up.

Next morning they found themselves at Victoria, where they stopped long enough to complete their purchases of miniature totem poles and other Indian curiosities, which were displayed for sale upon the wharf.

All through that bright day the Queen ploughed her way southward through a blue, sunlit sea. It was Puget Sound, said Tom, the cartographer of the occasion. They touched at Port Townsend and at Seattle. At the latter port the ship left half her passengers, as the Excursion was too large to be quartered at one hotel. The rest, including the individuals in whom we are specially interested, kept on to Tacoma. Here they said good-by to the Queen– now as homelike as the “Kamloops” – and took up their abode in a large hotel which they found to be delightfully situated on high ground, with a broad, cool veranda overlooking the Sound.

Immediately after supper Tom rushed out to have his kodak refilled. He had already taken nearly a hundred pictures, and reveled in anticipation of showing them, especially the instantaneous and surreptitious views of his unconscious relatives and friends, together with many captive bears, to an admiring circle during the coming winter.

The following day was spent in riding about the city, the planked streets and sidewalks of which struck them as very odd, and in visiting the Indian reservation at Puyallup, a few miles distant. The country was very dry, and forest fires were smouldering all along the road.

At Seattle, the next stopping-place, the historian (“I’m a regular ‘Pooh Bah’ on this trip,” exclaimed Tom) was called on for statistics concerning the city.

“Be accurate, my son,” added Fred; “but above all, be brief.”

“Population rising forty thousand,” rattled off Tom, who had his lesson well this time; “twice destroyed by fire, the last time in 1889. Now nearly rebuilt again. Situated between a big body of fresh water called Lake Washington, and Puget Sound. Always fighting, good-naturedly enough, with its rival Tacoma.”

Oh! the dust, the dust. It lay in the streets four inches deep. It filled the air at every step, and powdered the pretty traveling dresses of the girls.

But it was a wonderful city, with its push and rush and fever of building and money-getting. To-day a vacant lot, to-morrow an eight-story bank building; to-day a peaceful bit of upland pasture, to-morrow a huge hotel, crowded with guests from all parts of the world.

“Nobody can stop to walk, or even ride in carriages,” observed Bess. “It fairly takes away my breath here. You get into a cable car and whirl off at ten miles an hour, up hill and down dale. Do they ever sleep, do you suppose?”

The Percivals had a really enjoyable excursion to Lake Washington, where they sailed and steamed to their hearts’ content. A cable car took them to and from the lake, and beside the road they could see lots of land offered for sale at high foot-rates, with tall forest-trees still standing in them; others, partly built upon, and occupied by fine dwelling-houses, with the back yard full of charred stumps.

The busiest streets of the city, like those of Tacoma, were “paved” with four-inch planks. Electric cars, as well as those run by cable, dashed to and fro with startling speed. The air was so filled with smoke from forest fires that ships in the harbor could hardly be distinguished from the shore. A day’s ride through a wonderfully fertile country brought them to Portland, Oregon, where Randolph’s first move was to hunt up Bert Martin.

Bert and Susie were overjoyed to see their old friends. They lived in a pretty cottage not far from the railroad station, and Randolph had to bring Kittie, Pet, Tom, Fred and Bess to take tea with them.

When supper was finished, and the young people had talked over the dear old Latin School days, and the gay summer at the Isles of Shoals, Bert got a step-ladder and gathered handfuls of red roses from the trellis over the front door, where they grew in true Oregonian abundance.

Tom and Susie got on marvelously well together, and the former showed a singular eagerness to have Bert correspond with him, after he should have arrived home in the East.

From Portland the managers had provided their travelers with a little two-day side trip to the Dalles.

They rode in the cars all one afternoon along the southern shore of the Columbia, stopping to scramble up a steep hillside to the foot of the beautiful Multnomah Falls, and arriving at Dalles just after dark. Randolph and Fred were the only ones who cared to explore the town, which they conscientiously did, traveling miles, they averred, over the plank sidewalks, and hopelessly losing their way on several occasions; but turning up in good season at last at the depot.

The train was side-tracked here, and tooting and puffing engines, shifting freight cars, kept sleep from the eyes of most of the party. At daybreak they rose and made their way sleepily down to the river, where a steamer was waiting for them. Back they went, down the river to Portland. A thick fog hid the “mountainous and precipitous cliffs” and “bold headlands” which the guide-book promised them.

Wearily they boarded the cars standing ready at the Portland depot, and took possession of their comfortable compartments and drawing-rooms for their Eastward journey.

The next morning found them at Tacoma, and then on the Northern Pacific, striking across the new State of Washington. The Cascade Mountains – a long and insurmountable barrier between East and West – had to be crossed, and up went the train, curving, groaning and winding, as the Canadian Pacific had through the Rockies.

“Longest tunnel in America except the Hoosac!” screamed Tom above the din of the cars, as they plunged into the “Stampede.” “Nearly two miles from end to end, and half a mile above the level of the sea.”

And now came the most wearisome part of the homeward journey. The sun rose in a cloudless sky, and disclosed only hot, treeless, rolling prairie as far as the eye could reach. In the cars the mercury stood at ninety-six degrees, and linen dusters were once more brought to light.

In the evening they reached Spokane Falls, and set forward their watches one hour. It gave the travelers a queer sensation to arrive at a station at nine o’clock, stop half an hour, and start on at half-past ten.

The following day they recrossed the Rocky Mountains and descended the eastern slope, through a pleasant farming country, to the city of Helena. Here there was a stop of several hours, and the boys had a good swim in the great tank which was fed by hot springs.

When they were on board the train and in motion once more, Tom was called on for the “probabilities.”

“To-morrow morning,” he announced, “we shall be in Cinnabar, seven miles from the Mammoth Hot Springs. There we shall divide up into parties, and ‘do’ the Yellowstone Park in four-horse mountain-wagons, taking about five days for the job. It’s going to be one of the biggest things on the whole trip, too.”

But we must leave Yellowstone Park, surnamed “The Wonderland of America,” for another chapter.

CHAPTER XIV.

WONDERLAND

“Hurrah!” cried Tom, who had now fully recovered from his recent unpleasantness with the silver-tip. “Hurrah! Here we are in Cinnabar.” He had jumped from the car, and was tapping at Kittie’s curtained window.

Kittie waved her hand to signify assent and keep him quiet, and before long all the passengers were hurrying through their breakfast and preparing for the long coach journey through the park. While this is going on, in the now motionless Northern Pacific train, we have time for a few words regarding the great reservation itself.

About one thirtieth of the new State of Wyoming – the extreme northwest corner – is reserved by the United States Government for the “Yellowstone National Park.” Nearly the whole area thus set apart remains a virgin wilderness, traversed only by rough and narrow carriage roads, and hardly affording shelter to the increasing number of tourists each summer in its hastily erected hotels. The whole park is about the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.

The Government, through the Secretary of the Interior, has issued certain regulations regarding the conduct of travelers in the park. These relate chiefly to camping, destroying trees, etc. One of the most stringent rules forbids the discharge of firearms within the limits of the Reservation. Mounted soldiers of the regular United States Army are scattered all through the park, doing police duty; and if you are caught firing a gun, or even having one (unsealed) in your possession, good-by to your fowling-piece and good-by to the park. The former is at once confiscated, and you are marched out of the latter without ceremony. Those travelers who wish to take firearms are obliged to have the lock sealed by a Government official, at the entrance of the park.

The result of this wholesome regulation is that wild game of all sorts is on the rapid increase, in this favored spot. About one hundred and fifty buffalo, the remnant of the immense herds that once roamed the Western prairies, are peacefully quartered somewhere among these wild hills – nobody knows exactly where.

Most of these facts Tom hastily repeated to his companions in the “Broadwater,” as the dining-car was called. The ride over to Mammoth Hot Springs was full of interest, the road following a wild mountain-stream, and finding its way farther and farther into the wilderness.

At one point an exclamation from Randolph called the attention of the rest to an eagle’s nest on a jutting cliff that almost overhung the road. The heads of the young eagles could be plainly seen over the edge of the nest, and far overhead soared the parent birds.

On making up the wagon parties at the hotel, the Percivals found to their delight that all could go in one team, including Mr. and Miss Selborne. Off they went with shouts and cheers, leaving the wonders of the “Mammoth” district for their return trip.

Up and up, along the edge of frightful precipices, where the road was built of planking, with great props, sheer out around promontories of rock; up and up, to the high tablelands of the park; through evergreen forests, along silent lakes, haunted by beavers and strange water-fowl; beside black cliffs of volcanic glass, or “obsidian”; across unbridged streams where the horses plunged into the swift-running waters, and the wagon lurched from side to side, hub-deep in the flood. So onward until they had covered twenty-two miles, and reached the Norris Geyser Basin, where dinner was served in a long, shed-like structure called a hotel.

As soon as the meal was over, the young people hurried ahead on foot, to see their first geysers. A quarter of a mile walk, and a sudden turn of the road brought them into view. Strange, uncanny things they were, bursting upward at intervals through the treacherous and chalk-like “formation,” and throwing their jets of steaming water into the air with hollow gurgles and growls from their hot throats.

The atmosphere was charged with sulphurous odors, and while the travelers were fascinated with the novelty and mystery of the scene, they were glad to enter their wagons once more and press forward on their journey. They all felt the rarity of the air, being about a thousand feet higher than the summit of Mt. Washington, above the level of the sea. It became very cold, too, as the sun went down. The girls were glad to don their sealskin capes, and the boys turned up their coat-collars.

Eighteen miles over the wildest country they had yet seen, brought them to the Lower Geyser Basin.

That night the hotel was so crowded that each room was shared by three or four occupants. Tom, Randolph, Fred and Rossiter were allotted to a chamber in an outbuilding. They had to reach it by an outside stairway, and I grieve to state that all four – not excepting the Reverend Rossiter Selborne – told stories and laughed over them until very nearly midnight.

Next morning Rossiter left the room before the boys were up, and walked out in the clear, cold air. He had not taken a dozen steps when he saw Bess and Kittie emerging from the main building, which was dignified by the term “hotel.” Hailing them merrily, he was soon at their side, and the three walked down to the Firehole River, from whose sulphurous waters there arose a warm, faint odor, as it foamed along its white-and-yellow-streaked bed.

Over they went, one by one, on a narrow log bridge to the further bank, which they followed down to a little fir grove. There they had a tiny camp-fire, taking great precautions to keep the blaze down and use only dry twigs, so as not to make a smoke.

After breakfast the teams were ready again, and the journey was resumed. For twelve miles they rode among geysers and springs, through low fir woods, over chalky formation, to the Upper Basin, where they were to spend the night.

On the way, it should be mentioned, they stopped to view a singular mud spring, called the “Mammoth Paint Pot.” There was a bowl-shaped crater nearly filled with gray, pasty mud, through the surface of which great bubbles slowly forced themselves, as in a boiling kettle of molasses candy, nearly done. As one of the guide-books said, there was “a continuous bubbling up of mud, producing sounds like a hoarsely whispered ‘plop, plop.’” Travelers were further informed that these bubbling circlets of mud fell into beautiful floral forms; but Kittie could find in them no resemblance to anything but electric bell knobs; while her mother plaintively declared they looked like nothing so much as old-fashioned doughnuts.

That evening Tom caused great merriment at the supper-table by gravely asking Mrs. Percival to “pass the plops,” he having previously ordered doughnuts for that purpose.

But if I were to tell you of all the wonders the Percivals visited and heard with their ears and saw with their eyes, I might be accused of writing a guide-book myself. I can only add that during the next forty-eight hours our friends became intimately acquainted with a dozen or more great geysers, knowing their names and the times for their appearance to the hour, if not the minute.

There was the “Excelsior” (this was passed on the right between the Lower and Upper Basins), the largest geyser in the world; the “Giant,” throwing a huge volume of scalding water high into the air every eight days; the “Grotto,” with a crater of strange, irregular walls as if built by gnomes; the “Castle,” to the brink of which two of the girls climbed and gazed fearlessly down into the terrible throat; and “Old Faithful” which spouts a hundred feet once every sixty-five minutes, and has probably been as prompt as a clock, scientific men tell us, for the last twenty thousand years.

A comical incident occurred as the party were standing near the last-named geyser waiting for it to “erupt.” Tom had timed it by his watch, and had given out word that it would begin to play in just three minutes and a half.

While the words were on his lips, a man was seen approaching from a camp near by, carrying a bucket and some clothes which he evidently intended to wash in warm water from one of the many pools near the crater’s mouth. It was then merely a hole, some four or five feet in diameter, from which came occasional wreaths of steam, and an ominous gurgling growl which the new-comer disregarded altogether.

“You wait!” cried Tom to the rest. “He isn’t near enough to get hurt, but he’ll be about the most astonished man in Wyoming in just one minute and three quarters.”

The camper proceeded to dip up a bucket full of water with great coolness, and, having taken a comfortable seat on a ridge of “formation,” was just proceeding to immerse his wash, when up came “Old Faithful’s” head. In less time than it takes to tell it, the great, roaring, boiling jet was hurling itself far aloft, and descending in floods of hot, sulphurous water. The man had given one startled look over his shoulder at the first outbreak, and then fled like a deer, leaving his property to be reclaimed later in the day. The sight of his ludicrously startled face and flying heels was irresistible, and the boys screamed with laughter.