AT FLAXMAN ISLAND IN SUMMER 283 



Sachawachick became so excited when he saw us that he 

 uttered some English words which we never before had heard 

 him use. He talked and talked, Eskimo and white man's 

 language mixed together, and shook hands with us again and 

 again. His honest face was beaming with delight while he 

 wished us welcome, fluently in his own language and very 

 brokenly in ours. 



Mr. Leffingwell made an arrangement with Ned Erie that 

 he was to go with him to the mountains, and we promised Ned 

 to take care of his wife, give her what food she needed, and not 

 let her want for anything. Before Mr. Lefnngwell started on 

 May 17 he looked over the vessel with Storkersen and myself, and 

 we came to the conclusion that we could do nothing with her 

 but break her up and get as much timber out of her as possible. 

 It was a sad sight to see our little ship lying there a wreck, with 

 the water rising and falling in her according to the tide, with 

 the cabin in which we had spent so many pleasant hours half 

 full of water and ice. On the deck were large drifts of snow 

 which had gathered there ; the forecastle was dismantled and 

 the rigging slack. It is always a pitiful sight to see an aban- 

 doned vessel, and especially in this case, where the vessel was 

 our own, and its wreck interfered to such an extent with our 

 future plans. But there was nothing to be done with her, at 

 least not with the material we had at hand, and we commenced 

 to break her up. 



Such was the end of the Duchess of Bedford after a somewhat 

 adventurous existence. She was built in Yokohama out of the 

 remains of an old Japanese war vessel, used for a while as 

 a poacher on the Russian seal grounds ; then, when she became 

 too well known there, she traded for pearls and copra among the 

 South Sea Islands, and was wrecked on the Japanese coast 

 on her return from the South Seas. Then she was bought 

 by Captain Grant, who used her for sealing in Behring Sea 

 until we took her over, fitted her up as a yacht, and brought 

 her into the Arctic. We had come to like the vessel ; we 

 associated so many sorrows and joys with her that it cut 

 us to the heart to see her dismasted and full of water, a wreck 

 which in a couple of years would be broken up, while the wood 

 of which she was built, the wood grown in semi-tropical forests, 

 would lie scattered along the beach of the Arctic Ocean. 



