As fascinating as the lighthouse-keeper's families were, even more fascinating were the children who lived on sailing ships. Given the danger of whaling, the fact that women and children might be aboard is amazing. Here two isolated girls manage to keep themselves amused.When Dolly Stafford looked out of the door of the deck-house, that December morning, she saw miles and miles of ice—ice in sheets and ridges and hills; in one place there would be a smooth expanse, stretching away as far as she could see; in another direction the splintered heaps sent their jagged pinnacles up in the air like mountain peaks. The air was cold—very cold; little particles of frozen snow were driven through it by the keen wind, and stung the skin like needles. On the deck it was sheltered and free from the driving snow; but the cold wind searched out every corner, and Dolly, after one peep, was glad to run down the companion-way to the warm cabin below.
In the cabin sat Dolly's aunt and uncle: her uncle was Captain Ferry, and the cabin was that of his whaling vessel, the Blackbird. The Blackbird was frozen in the ice, in the Arctic Ocean, north beyond the seventieth parallel of latitude, which is very far north indeed. In the summer the ship had sailed up through the Pacific Ocean, and stopped at Unalaska, that lonely port on Unalaska Island, which is the beginning of the Aleutian islands, the chain which stretches out toward Asia from the end of the Alaskan peninsula. After taking on coal and provisions the Blackbird sailed on through Behring Sea and Behring Strait, into the Arctic Ocean. As long as the short Arctic summer lasted Captain Ferry had cruised about in search of whales, sailing eastward, past Cape Barrow, along the desolate northern coast of Alaska and British Columbia, as far as Cape Bathurst, the rocky, barren end of which runs northward into the sea just west of the big and little islands which make up the frozen Arctic archipelago. When the summer was drawing to an end, and the time was close at hand when the long, northern night would put an end to looking for whales, the vessel's prow was turned westward, and Captain Ferry sailed away to Herald Island, where he intended to stay all winter. When they got to the island Dolly found that it was nothing but a barren land of great rocks, covered with ice and snow; but in the little bay where the Blackbird's anchor was dropped, there were fourteen other ships, whose captains were going to winter there, just as Dolly's uncle meant to do. Everything about the ship was made snug; the sailors built a roof over the deck, and closed the sides, so that it was a house; then the snow fell and covered the ship, until it looked like a white hill, with pathways cut into it where the sailors came and went.
On the Jennie Davis, one of the other ships, lived Jessie Condon, whose father was commander of the Jennie; and Jessie and her mother had come with him for a voyage in the almost unknown seas above the Arctic Circle. Some of the captains of the other ships were accompanied by their wives, but Dolly and Jessie were the only girls in the fleet,—the only white girls, perhaps, within the whole Arctic Circle. Jessie was eleven, just a year younger than Dolly; and the two soon became fast friends. When Jessie was not visiting Dolly on the Blackbird, Dolly was pretty sure to be on board the Jennie Davis with Jessie, until the captains and the captains' wives and the sailors said that they hardly knew to which ship the two girls belonged.
Dolly and Jessie found plenty of ways to play when the mercury did not drop down to forty degrees below zero, as it did, frequently, for days together. Sometimes the sailors bundled them up on Eskimo sledges, and hauled them for miles over the ice; at other times they went fishing, dropping their lines into holes which the sailors cut through thin places in the ice, where it was not more than three or four feet thick. There were Eskimo dogs on the ships, and the sailors trained them to act as pack-mules; two bags were hung on each dog, one on each side, and the fish which were caught were put in these bags; then the dogs trotted along very carefully, so as not to drop the fish. When they got tired they would lie down on the ice to rest, and would get up and trot off without losing a fish. Sometimes the dogs were hitched to sledges, and the girls were whirled over the ice so fast that they clung to the sides of the sledge to keep from falling off.
When Dolly went outside the ship she looked more like a little Eskimo than like the girls at home. She wore the heaviest of woolen clothes in the cabin, but these were not enough to keep her warm when she and Jessie went on the sledges or went fishing. At such times she put on a coat of deerskin, which went to her feet; it was lined with flannel, and trimmed with fur, and had a hood which could be pulled over her head and face; the hood was lined with wool and trimmed with the fur of the wolverine. Woolen stockings and gloves covered her feet and hands, and on top of these she wore Eskimo boots of fur, and deerskin mittens lined with wool. Jessie dressed in the same way; but her coat was trimmed with mink, and her boots were of sealskin.
Out on one of the ice-hills, old Tom Barks, the boatswain of the Blackbird, who made it his special duty to look after Dolly and Jessie, made them a toboggan slide, down which their sledges would rush, to sweep far out on the ice-plain; then some of the sailors would haul them back and to the top again, for another swift, breathless dash down the glassy slope. In the mornings there were lessons to be learned and recited, for Dolly's aunt did not believe in "all play and no work"; so Dolly, and Jessie too, had geography and spelling, arithmetic and reading, just as though they were not hundreds of miles away from any school. Dolly studied French, also; and both of them were learning to play on the mandolin and guitar, for several of the captains' wives had their instruments with them, and were accomplished musicians.
One day Captain Ferry had killed a great white bear; and Dolly and Jessie had watched the whole hunt from the top of the deck-house, and had been so excited that they nearly fell off. The bear had been prowling around the ships all the night before, and Captain Ferry said he was going after it because he wanted its shaggy, white-furred skin for a rug, and because it was a dangerous animal to be in the neighborhood of the ship. So in the morning he started off, going in a boat part of the way, for the wind had caused a wide crevasse to open in the ice not far from the ship. The bear was lying down behind a hummock of ice when the captain shot it; it did not seem to mind the bullet, but got up and started after the captain, who ran as hard as he could toward the boat, into which he jumped, and the sailors pushed off. The angry bear did not stop at the water, but plunged in and began to swim after the boat. The sailors had not got a good start, and the bear swam so fast that it got one paw on the boat before the captain could shoot it.
But Dolly was not thinking of the fishing, or lessons, or even of the bear-hunt, this morning, for her mind was full of plans for Christmas, which was only three days away. She and Jessie had determined, with the consent of her aunt and Jessie's mother, to have this Christmas different from other Christmases. This had been decided upon several weeks ago, and since that time the very air had been full of mystery; and the girls had gone about with faces which seemed to say that the two bore all the responsibility of the whole fleet on their shoulders. Mrs. Ferry had given them the use of one of the staterooms, into which no one but the girls was allowed to enter without permission; and they bustled in and out of it all day, smuggling in mysterious bundles and packages; and from the room came shouts of laughter or ecstatic squeals of delight as their plans seemed to be progressing to their satisfaction. They had held deep conferences with the boatswain; and old Tom had been called into the mysterious stateroom, and had emerged therefrom with his face purple with suppressed laughter.
Something seemed to be going wrong this morning, however, to judge by Dolly's face; and she had climbed up and down the companion-way three times, looking for Jessie, who finally came, all muffled up until she seemed an animated bundle of furs.
"What are we going to do?" demanded Dolly, as soon as Jessie had taken off her wraps, and the two were in their own especial room. "We can't have any tree."
"Not have any tree?" said Jessie, her eyes growing big with astonishment. "Did your aunt say we should n't?"
"Why, no; of course not. We can do anything we please, so long as we don't set the ship on fire. But where are we going to get a tree?"
"Where?"
"Yes—where? Here we have been going ahead as if we could go down to the market and buy one; or else have some one chop down a tree out in the woods. And there are no woods!"
"I never thought of that."
"Neither did I, until I asked Tom if he would n't get us a tree; and he said there was n't a tree within six hundred miles."
"Oh, and we 've gone and invited all the people, too;" and Jessie looked as though she were going to cry. For the girls had said that this was going to be their Christmas, because the older ones made Christmases for them at home, and they wanted to make Christmas for them up here, where everything was different.
"We must do something; we just have to do something. They 'll all say we had to come to them for help, after all. I 'm going to call Tom; and while I 'm gone you think as hard as ever you can."
Dolly hurried out of the room; and Jessie, with her elbows on her knees and her chin on her palms, proceeded to think as deeply as she could. Her thinking did not seem to result in anything, for her face got longer and longer; and she was on the verge of tears and despair when Dolly came flying back, with the boatswain following her.
"Oh, Jessie, something perfectly splendid! And Tom says we can do it, too."
"What is it? Get a tree from the Mazinkas? Oh, Tom, can you?"
The Mazinkas were an Eskimo tribe, members of which had been hanging around the ships, begging for food, or knives, or old iron; and the girls had learned to talk to them in their strange, guttural language; and had played with the funny little babies, which were carried in the hoods on the backs of their mothers' fur coats.
"No, miss; them poor Mazinkas can't get any more trees than we can," said the boatswain; "they 'd have to make a mighty long trip to get to where anything like trees grow; and then they 'd only be little bushes, not what we 'd call trees."
"What is it, then?"
"Oh, it 's lovely," said Dolly; "perfectly lovely. Is n't it, Tom?"
"Yes, I guess it is," chuckled Tom; "and Chips, he—"
"Don't talk so loud; they 'll hear you. Come over here."
The two curly heads and the grizzled one came together in a corner; and Dolly unfolded her plan, interrupted by Jessie's exclamations of delight and the boatswain's chuckles and comments and advice, delivered in a rumbling whisper, his good-natured, weather-beaten face all wrinkled with laughter as at a good joke.
The next two days were busy ones for the girls. Lessons had been laid aside for the Christmas week, and they could devote all their time to their preparations. There was much going to and fro between the ships; frequent conferences with the boatswain, and with Chips, the ship's carpenter, who was called into consultations from which he came with a broad smile on his face; and he and the boatswain were busy with some mysterious work down below,—work which could not be done without frequent visits from Dolly and Jessie, and much chuckling on the part of the two old sailors. Then there were visits to the Mazinka village, made in Tom's charge, when much trading was done, and the girls gave pieces of iron, old knives, and gay-colored calico for various specimens of Eskimo handiwork. Sometimes they ventured into the curious, round huts of the villagers,—huts made of earth and stones, and entered by a tunnel-like way, through which the girls crawled on their hands and knees; but the huts were so dirty, and the stone lamps, which swung from the low roof and served both for heat and light, gave out such a fishy, oily smell that the girls preferred to do their trading in the open air.
On the day before Christmas the girls and Tom decorated the main cabin of the Blackbird. Evergreens were not to be had; not the smallest bit of greenery could they find in that desolate region; so they draped the walls with flags, of which each vessel had a plentiful store. Russian and German and English ensigns made a brilliant showing, but above them all and brighter than any was the Stars and Stripes, the brave old flag, which, to the two girls, thousands of miles from home, meant more than ever before; and Tom handled it with the touch that comes to those who have sailed under its folds or marched beneath it, for Tom had been a man-o'-war's man in days gone by, and the flag to him was home and friends and country.
When the decorating was all done, the girls asked Captain and Mrs. Ferry to go in their stateroom, and stay there for half-an-hour, saying that part of the Christmas had to come through the cabin, and that no one must see it until everything was ready. Then came most mysterious bumps and thumps on the companion-ladder, and a sound of hauling, followed by a subdued noise of hammering, and delighted exclamations from the girls, so that the captain and his wife wondered what was going on, and looked around with much curiosity when, at last, they were told that they might come out. But nothing rewarded their looking, for they could see nothing but the flags, and those they had seen before; and the two girls only laughed and skipped excitedly when asked what was going on.
The guests began to arrive before eight o'clock, and all of them were soon there; there were the captains of all the ships, and half-a-dozen women who sailed with their husbands, and, in the background, were the sailors of the Blackbird and the Jennie Davis, who had taken the girls fishing, or had hauled them on their sledges. All were in their best clothes, smiling broadly, and a little nervous at being in the cabin.
When all the guests had come, and the heavy coats and furs, the hoods and deer-skin mittens had been laid aside, Dolly, who, with her aunt and Jessie, had been busy welcoming each new arrival, stood up by a chair; and, holding to the chair-back for courage, said: "You know this is Jessie's and my Christmas; and we 're very glad to see you all. We want it to be like Christmas eve at home, because home is so far away; and— and— now Jessie will recite 'The Three Kings.'" Dolly, blushing rosy red, sat down, while all clapped hands; and the big German Captain Amberg rumbled something in his great, flaxen beard about "madchen" and "heimweh," and thought of the three girls across the wide seas, who, he knew, were thinking of their father at this Christmas time.
After Jessie had told how "Three kings came riding from far away, Melchior and Gaspar and Baltazar," Captain Ferry got up, red and bashful at first, in spite of years of experience and danger, and reverently read: "For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given"; and, as he read, his great voice, which could roar out commands above the shrieking of a tempest, became low and hushed and gentle; and his strong, weatherbeaten face was tender as a mother's, so that a little hush fell on the captains and the sailors, who knew what it meant to "go down to the sea in ships" and witness the power and "wonders in the deep," and so have a knowledge above the learning of landsmen.
Then came the soft chords of Dolly's and Jessie's guitars; and, from copies of the song which had been handed around by the girls, the guests all sang:
When shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground,
The angel of the Lord came down,
And glory shone round.
When the sailors caught the tune they sang lustily, and the big German captain grumbled a ponderous bass, so that the cabin rang.
When the last note had died away, Dolly said: "Now, Tom!" and the boatswain disappeared within the mysterious stateroom. There was a moment of waiting. Then every one leaned forward to see what was coming.
The door swung wide, and a ship came sailing toward them: not a little ship, but a ship so large that it could hardly pass through the door; candles burned brightly upon every mast and yard; gay ribbons took the place of ropes; flags fluttered bravely from every possible place, and ran in a rainbow from bow to stern. On a sea of blue canvas it sailed, but from beneath came a sound suspiciously like wooden wheels. On the deck were piled odd-looking packages and knobby bundles; and at the helm stood a most life-like steersman, which a second look showed to be one of Jessie's dolls.
A shout of laughter and applause went up, and every one crowded around to get a closer view of the mimic vessel.
"Dolly thought of it," said Jessie; "and Chips made it out of boards and canvas; and Tom helped."
"Jessie did lots, too," Dolly exclaimed, determined that Jessie should share in the glory; 'and the presents are from her just as much as from me. Now, if you 'll all please sit down, we 'll hand 'round the things."
There proved to be a present for everybody; when the pile on deck gave out, the girls reached down into the inside of the ship and brought out more. There were neck-cloths and little bags of smoking tobacco and clasp-knives and pipes from the ship's stores for the sailors; match-safes, embroidered handkerchief-cases, neckties, little pads of shaving paper, dust-cloths, all sorts of gifts, funny or useful, for the others, made by Dolly and Jessie; or queer articles of Eskimo manufacture, which they had bought from the Mazinkas.
Every one laughed and compared presents; and they all laughed more than ever when, with a look of utter amazement, the girls began to bring to light various packages on which their own names were written.
"We had our little secret, too," said Mrs. Ferry. "And Tom—"
"I did n't tell. Indeed I did n't," broke in Tom.
"Neither did I," asserted Chips. "Tom and I both kept mum, Miss Dolly."
"I just took the things and packed 'em away under the other bundles," the boatswain said. "I did n't let on a word."
And out of that wonderful ship's hold came presents for the girls from every vessel in the fleet; the captains' wives gave them pretty articles they had made themselves; the captains had all contrived to find some gift; and the sailors gave bits of carved walrus ivory, funny articles which they had whittled out of wood, and all manner of quaint things which they fished out of the depths of their sea-chests.
Then the sailors went to their own quarters, while the rest talked and laughed and sang, and almost forgot that they were so far from the Christmases of home. Then, suddenly, 'Hush!" said Captain Ferry. Through the great silence of the Arctic night came the sound of bells, the bells of the ships, ringing midnight; and Christmas day came softly in.
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