5294 THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE KARLJJK 
ently untroubled and even took a curious kind of 
pleasure in my struggles, I was glad to acknowl¬ 
edge myself beaten by the far-famed Alaska mos¬ 
quito. I was literally a sight, my face, neck and 
hands red and swollen the next morning, whereas 
the major and my host showed no evidences that 
there had been any mosquitoes in their neighbor¬ 
hood. 
In the mountainous country near Nome there 
are often sudden showers, accompanied by very 
high winds, so whenever we were out riding we al¬ 
ways carried our oilskins strapped behind our sad¬ 
dles. On one of our rides we saw a storm coming 
up but hoped that it would pass us by; the tail-end 
of it struck us, however, with a deluge of rain and 
a high wind. I had not bothered to get off my 
horse to put on my coat and when the storm was 
upon us I unloosed the coat from behind my saddle 
and started to put it on. Just as I got my arms 
in the sleeves the wind took it and whirled it out into 
a kind of balloon. This frightened the horse and 
he turned suddenly around and started for the 
water. Then he as suddenly changed his mind and 
tore madly down over the outside edge of the em¬ 
bankment while my arms were seesawing back and 
forth as I tried to get them through the coat sleeves. 
After a while I managed to get one arm out, hold- 
