is morning, which was not
enjoyed by any one in the Mission. Mary had gotten up early, and two
fires were already going, one in the kitchen range and one in the
sitting room heater near my bed. It was still dark at half-past seven
and I was awake, thinking seriously of dressing myself, though there was
no hurry, for Mary was the only one yet up, when I saw a shower of large
sparks of fire or burning cinders falling to the ground outside the
window. I rushed into the kitchen telling Mary what I had seen, and she
ran outside and looked up toward the chimney. Fire, smoke and cinders
poured out in a stream, but she satisfied herself it was soot burning in
the sitting-room chimney.

Coming in, she pulled most of the wood from the heater, scattered salt
upon the coals, and by this time all in the house were down stairs,
asking what had happened.

M. says he will also take my attorney paper and stake a claim for me, as
he has decided to go to the Koyuk with the men who came last night from
Nome. They have a horse, but as it is almost worn to the bone and nearly
starved, they hardly think he can travel much farther. M. wants me to
get him some location notices from the Commissioner when I see him. When
coming home from Jennie's lesson this afternoon I was turning the corner
of the hotel when the wind took me backward toward the bay for thirty
feet or more, and deposited me against an old wheelbarrow turned bottom
upwards in the snow. To this I clung desperately, keeping my presence of
mind enough to realize my danger if blown out upon the ice fifty feet
away and below me, where I would be unable to make myself either seen
or heard in the blinding storm and would soon be buried in the snow
drifts and frozen.

In my right hand I carried my small leather handbag containing a dozen
or more deeds and other documents to be recorded for the Commissioner,
and if the wind blew this from my hand for an instant I was surely
undone, for it would never be recovered. I now clung to the barrow until
I had regained my breath and then made a quick dash for the lee or south
side of the hotel out of the gale, and into the living-room again. Here
I sat down to rest, trembling and breathless, to consider the best way
to get home. It was now dark, the snow blinding, and the gale from the
northeast fearful. A stout young Eskimo sat near me, and I finally asked
him to take me home, to which he consented.

The Mission was only a few hundred feet aw