As soon as the boys were outside Phil asked, “How do you drive dogs, Serge? Do you have lines to each one, or only to the leader?”
“You don’t drive them with lines at all,” laughed the other. “Nor do you go near them. You sometimes run beside the sledge, but generally behind it, so as to push on the handle-bar over obstructions, or to hang on and hold back in going down steep places. From there you talk to the dogs, and encourage them with a whip of walrus-hide or seal-skin that has a handle about sixteen inches long and a lash of about eighteen feet. To produce the slightest effect on your team you must be able to crack that lash with a report like a pistol-shot in either ear of any dog, or to fleck any one of them on any designated part of the body. You must also learn the language that your dogs are accustomed to, for they will pay no attention to any other.”
“Certainly they are, for without them you would often sink out of sight in drifts, while even in soft snow of moderate depth they are indispensable.”
“Well,” sighed Phil, “it seems as though one had to learn a great deal before he can travel far in this country; but I suppose if others have, I can. So let’s go and borrow a pair of snow-shoes and have a lesson at once. I suppose I might as well begin the Eskimo whip-practice and dog-language, too; for with such a long journey ahead of us we mustn’t waste any more time than is absolutely necessary on preliminaries.”
“Our journey up the river to Forty Mile, and so on to Chilkat, of course. You didn’t imagine we were going to loaf here all winter, did you?”
“But the captain won’t give his consent.”
“Oh, we’ll manage that. Besides, we’ve got to get to Sitka some time, you know, or our parents will be getting anxious about us.”
Phil and Serge dropped very easily into the life of the mission, and quickly became interested in its work. The missionary had always found more or less trouble with the older Indian boys, who were almost ready to take their place in the tribe as hunters, and so felt themselves rather above going to school with the children. When Phil learned of this difficulty he conceived a plan for overcoming it, which, with the missionary’s consent, he at once proceeded to put into execution. It was nothing more nor less than to form the unruly boys into a military company. He had been an officer in his own school company at New London, and even Serge had become fairly well drilled during the year he had spent there.