62 HUNTING IN THE ARCTIC 



thick about us until the middle of the afternoon. On 

 leaving Providence Bay at four o'clock in the morning, 

 the captain laid his coiu-se to clear Indian Point (Cape 

 Chaplin) by several miles and breakfast time found us 

 running before a heavy wind which had made the 

 schooner behave most uncomfortably during the night. 

 When supposedly abreast of the long, low sandspit mak- 

 ing out from Indian Point he changed his course for 

 the Point according to his dead reckoning. We were 

 now rolling heavily in the quartering sea. The fog 

 shut out everything a few hundred yards distant, and 

 the repeated blasts of om: fog horn brought no answer- 

 ing echo from the cliffs. At any moment we might 

 suddenly see the surf under the bow, and then it would 

 be a question if the flat, underpowered old "Abler" 

 would be able to scratch away from the lee shore long 

 enough to pass the danger. Most of us spent our time, 

 while waiting to see what would happen, playing dom- 

 inoes in the cabin. 



A serious situation had developed between Klein- 

 schmidt and Ed Born which threatened to prevent our 

 having a chance to himt in Siberia. Although the two 

 men were friends fifteen years before and had frequently 

 done business together, they had fallen out on this trip 

 before we boarded the vessel in St. Michael, and Born 

 now refused to enter any more ports in Siberia because 

 we had not found an ofiicial to clear us at Emma Harbor. 

 Kleinschmidt was angered and it looked as if the bad 

 feeling might jeopardize the rest of our trip. Accord- 

 ingly w^hen we casually entered the pilot house and 

 found Born and Larsson there it was not a surprise for 

 the former to say, "Well, I guess we will have to put 

 into Nome." 



