The Bungalow Boys Along the Yukon. Goldfrap John Henry
their elders looked on amusedly, the lads doused the long suffering totem with the ill-smelling oil and danced around the aged figure with mock solemnity, intoning what was meant to be a mystic chant:
"Oh, totem in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy and hard to please;
Now you have had your walrus bath,
Be nice and kind, and smile and laugh;
And kindly watch our destiny,
Northward, toward the Arctic Sea."
CHAPTER VII
AN ADVENTURE OF JACK'S
"What's that yonder, uncle?" asked Tom.
It was the morning after the adventure with the walrus and the Northerner was steaming steadily on toward Valdez, her next port of call on her voyage north. At that place she would take on coal for the final stage of her journey to St. Michaels near the mouth of the Yukon, where the party would be left after the small steamer had been put together.
Tom was a great boy to lean against the rail scanning the sea in search of something that might prove exciting. He had been gazing steadily against the far horizon for some minutes. Mr. Dacre hastened to his cabin and came back with a pair of binoculars.
He raised them and looked fixedly in the direction that Tom had indicated.
"It's a whale," he declared, "or rather a whole school of them, if I'm not mistaken. They are dead ahead of us. If we keep on this course, we shall run almost squarely into them."
He hastened off to inform the captain and Mr. Chillingworth while Tom set out to find his chums. He found them in the wireless room practicing on the key. At his news they speedily jumped up and joined him in the bow.
Within an hour they came into plain sight of what appeared at first to be so many giant logs rolling about in the sea. All at once, among the "logs," which of course were the whales, appeared splashes of white water. The leviathans swam swiftly here and there as though in fear.
"What's the matter with them?" wondered Tom.
"Maybe it's the ship's coming that has scared them," suggested Jack.
"It's the totem at the bow, mon," declared the Scotch boy solemnly.
The captain leaned over the bridge rail and shouted to them.
"There's a school of killers in among them."
"Killers?"
"Yes, the killer whales. They are the enemies of the other kind and just naturally take after them when they meet. Watch close now!"
The boys needed no second bidding. Strangely fascinated by the turbulent scene below, they leaned far out to watch the thrashing water. It was a strange combat of the sea. The monster fish appeared, in their panic at the advent among them of the killers, not to notice the oncoming steamer.
"Look close now and you'll see tall, upright fins moving about among 'em," sung out the captain.
"I see them!" cried Tom. "Are those the killers?"
"That's what. Sea tigers, they ought to call 'em. They're as bad as sharks," was the reply.
Mr. Dacre joined the boys. One of the biggest of the whales appeared to be an especial target for the "killers." They pursued it relentlessly in a body.
"Wow!" cried Tom suddenly, "look at that!" The big whale had leaped clear out of the water, breached, as the whalers call it. Its body shone in the sunlight like a burnished surface. They saw its whole enormous bulk as if it had been a leaping trout.
"He's as big as a house!" cried Jack.
"I've seen houses that were smaller!" laughed Mr. Dacre; "your bungalow, for example."
Down came the whale again with a splash that sent the spray flying as high as the Northerner's mast tops.
"How do they fight the whales?" Tom wanted to know, when their excitement over this episode had subsided.
"They tear them with their teeth," replied his uncle. "They get round them like dogs worrying a cat. They literally tear the poor creatures to bits piecemeal."
"Looks like one of the whale hunts that old 'Frozen Face' here must have had a hand in," said Jack. "Here, old sport, take a look for auld lang syne."
He loosened the lashings that held the totem in place in the bow, and while they all laughed, he tilted the old relic till "old Frozen Face," as they called him, actually appeared to be gazing at the conflict raging about them.
"See, the big fellow is acting kind of sleepy!" cried Jack suddenly.
"Yes, he must have got his death warrant," declared Mr. Dacre.
"Look! He's coming right across our bows!" yelled Sandy.
"Hey! Look out, captain, you'll hit him!" roared out Tom.
But even as he spoke, there came a heavy jar that almost stopped the sturdy steamer. Her steel bow had struck the whale amidships with stunning force. The craft appeared to quiver in every rib and frame.
The party on the fore deck, taken by surprise, went over like so many ninepins. They recovered themselves in a jiffy.
"Goodness! Don't run into any more whales! You'll have the ship stove in the first thing you know," cried Mr. Dacre. "I don't think – "
But a shout from Tom checked him.
"Jack! Where's Jack?"
"He was there a minute ago. By the totem."
"I know, but the totem has gone!"
"Great Scott, it must have gone overboard when that shock came and carried the boy with it."
They darted to the rail where Jack had last been seen. The next instant they set up a mingled cheer and groan. The cheer was in token that Jack was alive, the groan was at his precarious position. Clinging to the totem as if it had been a life buoy, the lad was drifting rapidly astern, and toward him was advancing the mad turmoil of waters that signified the battle royal raging between the killers and their huge awkward prey.
As he saw his friends, the boy on the floating totem waved his hand in a plucky effort to reassure them. He shouted something encouraging that they could not catch. But the peril of his position was only too plain.
Only a short distance separated the killers and their frightened quarry from the drifting boy. Once in the midst of that seething turmoil his life would be in grave danger.
It was a moment for action, swift and decisive. Within a few seconds, although to Jack's excited friends it appeared infinitely longer, a boat had been lowered and the steamer's way checked. This latter was the more easy to accomplish for the huge carcass impending at her bow had almost brought her to a standstill.
Manned by two sailors, the boat flew toward the imperiled boy. In the stern, with pale faces, stood Tom and Sandy, side by side with Mr. Dacre and Mr. Chillingworth. All carried rifles. Jack's position was a grave one as the school of whales, pursued by their remorseless foes, rushed down upon him. But those in the boat were in equal danger. One flip of those giant tails or a chance collision, and the stout boat would inevitably be sent to the bottom with a slender chance of its occupants being saved.
No wonder that little was said as they rowed swiftly toward Jack and that many anxious glances were cast at the waters astern, which were boiling like a maelstrom as the huge bodies of the whales and their foes dashed blindly hither and thither!
CHAPTER VIII
"THE TALE OF A WHALE."
"Give way, men!" implored Mr. Dacre anxiously, as the sailors bent to their task vigorously.
There was small need to admonish the men. The affair had literally become a race for life between the boat and the surging, battling whales. As they came alongside Jack, who was clinging to the totem, he gave an encouraging wave of the hand.
"Gee! I'm glad you've come. This water is pretty cold, I can tell you."
He was hauled on board with