BY SNOW-CLAD VOLCANOES 163 



The wind shifted to the northeast, still light, leaving 

 the sea smooth, but with a slight ground-swell from the 

 southwest. Collins and Lovering took advantage of the 

 fair weather to put their bear skins in barrels for ship- 

 ment. I examined my walrus, found them in good con- 

 dition, and spent the rest of the day reading Barnum's 

 ''Grammar of the Innuit Language," which Dr. George 

 B. Gordon, of the University of Pennsylvania Museiun, 

 had sent to me at Nome. 



All sail was hoisted as the wind hauled northwest and 

 freshened. Cape Mohican, the western point of Nunivak 

 Island, was passed within a few miles. 



We were making good progress with a free wind and 

 the weather held promising. All hands were in the best 

 spirits; even the cook, Louis Meyer, had shaken off 

 some of his sea-terror and told us of his adventures. He 

 was over seventy years of age, and called himself an old 

 soldier; not without right, for he had been through four 

 wars: the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian 

 war, the Spanish- American war, and the Boxer Uprising. 



''When I was a yoimg fellow in Germany," he 

 related, "my father heard that soldiers in America on 

 the northern side was getting a dollar a day for fighting, 

 and he says to me, 'Louis, you better go over there and 

 earn that dollar a day,' so I went. I was all through it 

 to Gettysburg. Then I got into the French war and was 

 at the battle of Gravelotte. That was worse than 

 Gettysburg. I'm drawing a pension for that fighting, 

 under my old name of Louis Metz. You see, my father 

 was no good and my mother married again, a man named 

 Meyer, and I took his name afterwards. 



"After I had seen something of the war in Cuba the 

 trouble broke out in China, and I helped loot the inner 

 city of Pekin. 



