IN TOUCH WITH THE WORLD AGAIN 281 
wind spring up and make it necessary for him to up- 
anchor with all speed and put to sea again. 
I bade good-by to the baron and to my other 
kind friends at Emma Harbor and we started for 
Alaska. The distance across Bering Sea at that 
point is about 240 miles. When we reached the 
edge of the ice off Nome on the twenty-fourth we 
found that we could not steam in near enough to the 
land for me to get ashore. There was nothing to 
do but to lie off shore about twelve miles and hope 
for the ice to break up enough to enable the ship to 
be worked in nearer the town. There is no harbor 
at Nome; it is simply an open shore, unsafe for 
vessels in any kind of bad weather, and conditions 
have to be exactly right before a ship can venture 
in. For three days we lay there, while my patience 
underwent a severe test; all I could do was to read 
the magazines and gaze at the shore, twelve miles 
away. 
Finally, during the afternoon of the twenty- 
seventh the captain decided to go to St. Michael’s, 
and we got under way again and steamed across 
Norton Sound. Early the next morning we ar¬ 
rived off St. Michael’s, but on account of thick fog 
had to anchor and wait. At six p. m. the fog lifted 
and we steamed in to a point about a mile off shore. 
The harbor ice was still frozen solid, but we got 
out a boat and rowed to the edge of the ice and 
