High Stand by Hammond Innes

Author:Hammond Innes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

Skagway in the late afternoon of that dismal day was as near to the Styx as I shall probably ever get in this lifetime. The rail tracks, depot and sheds, the quay and the waiting ferry, all lay close under beetling cliffs, the bare rock black with the drizzle that was falling, and beyond was the water of Chilkoot Inlet, grey and flat as polished steel, low cloud cutting everything off, a grey curtain that made it seem the end of the world. And Skagway itself, built on the silt flats of the river and hemmed in by the damp slopes on the far side, was a somewhat phoney version of a gold rush town in limbo, boarded sidewalks and wooden buildings that belonged to the dead world of Soapy Smith.

Since we were booked on the ferry to Prince Rupert, and only in transit through Alaska, customs and immigration clearance was little more than a formality. We dumped our bags at an Edwardian hotel and walked along the Broadway until we ran out of shops and houses. The cloud and the damp were all-pervading and our two friends watched us from the shelter of a doorway. Whether they still had the guns Tom had handed back to them I don't know. He had disposed of the magazines somewhere along the track where the train had crossed a small torrent that ran in from Mount Hefty and the Denver Glacier. Back at the hotel we had a very expensive beer, then went on board, the ferry sailing promptly at 19.45 local time. It was almost dark then and by the time we had had a meal we were docking at Haines, first of the five ports of call on the Panhandle route south.

We had cabins booked and by the time we left, Tom had already turned in. Throughout our cafeteria meal he had seemed to withdraw deeper and deeper into himself so that I was quite glad to be left on my own to wander round the ship. The vehicle deck was still barely half full and the big lounges that would have been crowded in the season looked almost deserted, row upon row of empty seats and only here and there the poorer passengers settling down for the night, our two followers among them. The throb of the engines, the beat of them against the soles of my feet, the knowledge that next day, and the day after, we would be moving through coastal passages that Cook, and later Vancouver who had sailed with him, had first explored it was all tremendously exciting, and it would probably have remained so all the way to Prince Rupert and on down to Bella Bella if I hadn't chanced on something that virtually forced Tom Halliday to open up and tell me the whole pitiful and appalling story.

Some time in the early hours of Sunday morning we reached Juneau. We left at five-thirty and when I surfaced a couple of hours later I

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