252 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside 



Clarke and myself out in story-telling. It was the 

 only comfortable place on the ship out of our state- 

 rooms, and half a dozen of us had it all to ourselves. 

 But at Orca thirty disconsolate prospectors from 

 Copper River came on board and took possession. 

 They had been eighteen months in those swamps. 

 They had scurvy, some of them, but no gold. The 

 smoke-stack with all its delightful associations went 

 glimmering back to take its receding place among 

 the things that were, but are not. 



We had had glaciers galore, scores of them, 

 some of them as wide as the Muir, and volcanoes, 

 but now we looked forward to Mount St. Elias, the 

 highest in America, and the Fairweather range. 

 We were going to sail close up to every one of 

 them, and we did, but we did not get the faintest 

 glimpse of any of them. As I sat gazing at the 

 leaden sky I borrowed the objurgation of my Aleut 

 boatman against the whales, "It is a shame! It is 

 a shame! Hang the fog! I'd rather be in a hurri- 

 cane than in a fog!" The barometer seemed to 

 promise both. It began blowing dead ahead in the 

 forenoon, and by two o'clock we were in a first-rate 

 gale, driving the rain like bird-shot; in short, in a 

 storm at sea. With full steam on, we could not 

 force the ship forward perceptibly. The ship 

 pitched and rolled and creaked. The gale blew 

 tlie top off every high wave and sent it flying. The 

 wheel was out of the water, going like mad, half the 

 time. All through the storm the ship kept repeat- 



