A Pioneer Alaska Highway Vacation
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A Pioneer Alaska Highway Vacation |
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Chapter III
Sunlit snow tipped peaks were sliding past the porthole the following morning when I woke soon after five, but an hour later when I came on deck, they were invisible in an encroaching grey white mist. For a few moments we slipped on along a path of sunlight, but with the swift fall of a curtain the fog enclosed us. Our speed dropped to a mere forward movement as the ship felt her way in the dank, white folds. The radio on her bridge was twirling, as with hands outstretched one feels the way in a strange, darkened room. The siren sounded once, then again a few moments later in a hurried series mounting in urgency. The Captain was leaning out of the wheel house window, his head bent, listening for the echoes that seconds later reverberated from unseen islands. “Hullo! What’s he doing that for?” A young steward was leaning over the rail beside me as the ship swung violently. A small fishing vessel looming to starboard astern supplied the answer before, wraithlike, she sank back into the fog. The steward told me he was doing this job while working his way through college, and that in just such a fog at night on her last return trip, she had narrowly escaped being run down by an American boat. It would have just about cut them in half he calculated, adding cheerily, “makes it more interesting. You don’t always want just a straight trip – nothing to it!” He dismissed the idea with a gesture. “Well, guess its time I hit the hay – been on the job since seven o’clock last night”. He took off whistling. During breakfast, eaten for the most part in the wary silence and observation of their neighbours, which is customary at a first meal on board, a sudden increase of speed told of a rift in the fog. When I came on deck again the sun was making a rainbow in which my shadow was encircled as if framed. By 9 o’clock the fog had parted, weaving and billowing up the mountains with the sinuous grace of a dancer’s scarf. Throughout the morning we followed the fjord-like channel between the mainland and Vancouver Island, forested to the skyline, although many of the lower slopes had been timbered over. The combination of a landslide and heavy snowfalls had gouged a deep gash at one point, forming a natural chute, from which logs could slide into the water. A trucking road ran up beside it and a line of red-roofed, white loggers’ huts fringed the water.
As the sun became stronger we passed one or two bright green or brown fishing boats anchored in a glassy inlet mirrored among gulls, but mostly we were alone, as though on an enchanted lake. Looking back, the way we had come was lost in a maze of mountains glistening in ever changing design. While ahead, others appeared to bar our advance but always a way opened as imperceptibly they moved aside. We were timed to reach our first port of call, Alert Bay on Cormorant Island at noon, but the fog had delayed us. Previously in the small hours, we had slowed for slack water before passing along Discovery Passage and through the Seymour Narrows. In the narrowest part of the mainland, very strong tides prevail and the treacherous, lurking danger of a submerged reef, Ripple Rock threatened. It was after 2 o’clock when, rounding a rocky point a tiny, red-roofed lighthouse came into view. Set on a patch of vivid green, a line of washing slung behind it, its toy like neatness seemed almost childlike. Beyond the point a little settlement fringed the shores of an inlet, a row of tall Indian totem poles set between the sheds and trees. Slowly we approached the wharf where a man in a blue shirt was washing a pile of bright green salmon nets slung across trestles, watched by an old man perched on a bollard. The weed hung wharf timbers reached trembling reflections into the sunlit water, and little box-like white houses huddled up the hillside. Due to the delay there was no time for passengers to land and we hung over the rails watching the crew unload cargo, and peering through glasses at the totem poles. A man beside me tossed a coin to a roguish looking little boy in faded dungarees staring up from the dock. A few bulky packages and a crate of machinery were lowered and a youthful Customs official strolled leisurely up the gangplank, the revolver in his belt looking absurd and incongruous. A short-sleeved assistant appeared from behind a warehouse and shooed away the small Indian, who with two friends took to his tattered heels to peer far from behind a warehouse. A girl passed at the end of a dusty way, pushing a pram. A few voices and the grinding whirr of winches sounded loud in the stillness with only the reflection of the purple quilt dangling like a pansy among the daisies from the line of washing. The Customs youth retraced his unhurried way and with his thumbs stuck in his belt, watched us cast off. The ancient man had not stirred from his bollard and not once had he glanced in our direction. Never had I seen a place that so belied its name – utterly absorbed in its own affairs. Throughout the afternoon the mainland continued to unroll against a sky of cornflower blue, towering peaks, sunlit and stippled with snowfields. Flakes of cloud drifted past and the gulls, as if by invisible threads, hung tirelessly overhead. About four o’clock it suddenly became cold, for at the entrance to Queen Charlotte Sound we were approaching the Pacific and the longest stretch of open water on the voyage. For the last few hours, Vancouver Island had receded to a misty shoreline, and now fell away to the west, leaving only a scattering of spray girdled rocky islets crowned with spruce, the haunt of gulls and seals. On one of these, Pine Island, another small lighthouse marked the entrance to the Sound, and dimly visible across it another, Pine Island light. Only the distant peaks were sunlit now. Among the innumerable rocks and tiny islets a whale spouted and near at hand a sharp black fin cut the water. The ship gave a sudden twist and shuddered, wind creaked through the stays, the deck rose steeply and a fine, cold drizzle drew a veil around us stolidly as the little ship ploughed on to a sudden magnificent crash of falling crockery…I woke nearly an hour later to see spruce lined shore again and sliding past the porthole. We had crossed Millbank Sound and entered Finlayson Channel. That night the dining saloon looked like Christmas Eve. Coloured paper chains stretched above the tables, crackers interspersed the gladioli, and the menu was gaily decorated. When everyone was seated, the Purser, whose jovial ease of manner well befitting his calling, rose to announce that this being the First Night out the Company had arranged a Gala Dinner, and on succeeding nights – he reeled off a list of the entertainments by which the Company proposed to ward off any symptoms of boredom during three days sailing. Finally, on behalf of the Company, he introduced The Old Man. Captivated, the passengers clapped and cheered vociferously as he bowed and sat down. The stewards, ranged along the walls, grinned good-naturedly. The Captain pushed back his chair and rose, alert and slight, straightening his jacket. With practiced ease he echoed the Purser’s welcome, assuring us all of his own and his officers’ desire to please, asking in return only for our co-operation. Facetiously disclaiming responsibility for any discomfort of the late afternoon, and as a final garnish begged leave to introduce his officers, each of whom rose to bow in acknowledgement of the applause greeting each name. First, the Chief Engineer, cheerful, white-haired, gregarious, a fund of information and tales of the coast garnered during twelve years’ experience of its waters, his off duty hours had passed chatting with little knots of passengers. He had spent the morning initiating the honeymoon couple in the finer points of shuffleboard in the intervals of explaining logging operations to a stout lady in blue tweeds and her husband from Victoria, and discussing salmon fishing with another couple from Seattle. He beamed, bowed, and re-seating himself dived forthwith into a dish of olives and conversation with the girl next to him. The First Officer, dark and lean with the expression of an anxious bloodhound managed a rapid bob and shrank towards his soup-plate. The Purser, half rising again, nodded and beamed. Mr. Peters, the Head Steward, a little square man with eyeglasses who had the knack of apparently taking root on whatever spot he was occupying, bowed and smiled tolerantly from his watchful post at the stair foot. The Second Engineer, at whose table I sat, having acknowledged his share of applause with a rather wan smile, pulled a cracker with the Artist’s wife opposite, sank back and thankfully ordered himself a steak. Lastly, by no means least, ‘Our Charming Hostess’, acceding to the Captain’s request that she would now make her own announcement of the films and musical programme, which were her special contribution, rose to recite her proposals. The competent piano playing of an ample lady with greying hair above a youthful face wearing the Company’s badge, had percolated from the Saloon on E. Deck during the half hour preceding dinner, mingling pleasingly with the odour of roast turkey. The atmosphere of hilarious babble now established, I glanced across at the captain sitting at the end of one of the four long tables. He had entrenched himself two deep on either side with male passengers, and deep in conversation with the man on his right, appeared to be eating his dinner with the appetite of a man having achieved his objective. The Second Engineer, finishing his steak in record time and following this with a couple of éclairs and some jelly, now excused himself on the plea of work, and vanished, never in my sight to reappear. Beside me sat the young American, McCarthy. Immense, friendly, kindly, whose laugh resounded from whichever part of the ship he happened to be. He had told me he was on his way from Colorado to Skagway to work on the White Pass and Yukon Railroad. Opposite sat the middle-aged couple, an artist and his wife, who reminded me, small and wiry, of a cheerful terrier. Londoners both, she had told me they came to Canada after the First World War, from which Mr. Dennis had emerged with one leg and ankle permanently disabled. I had met him limping around the decks after lunch. When war broke again, they had returned to England where he had worked in a Red Cross centre in the county bordering mine and yet thousands of miles distant. now learned the outcome of an event which at the time, I had heard only the bald announcement. That a little boy was blinded on his way to school in a bombing raid on a remote country road near my home. I had often wondered if his sight had been saved, and now from Mrs. Dennis, I learned that it was to her hospital he had been brought, where she had nursed him. His sight had been restored. Unlike his wife’s cheerful chatter Mr. Dennis spoke
little, joining rather hesitatingly in the conversation. More often he
sat, an attentive listener, smoking the innumerable cigarettes he lit
from each other in an amber holder. He had spent a good deal of time
painting the Indians of the West Coast and now he and his wife were on
their way to Ketchikan where he hoped to continue painting. Previous Chapter | Next Chapter
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