sion as third lieutenant and
his appointment as United States Commissioner in his hand, Eric walked
out a full-fledged officer of the Coast Guard and Uncle Sam's
representative in the Arctic seas.

Several weeks later, Eric reported on board the _Bear_. He had broken
his trip west for a couple of days at home and had managed to snatch the
time to run up to his old Coast Guard station and to visit his friend,
the puzzle-maker. He really felt that he owed the initial success of his
career to the old mathematician, and in this he was far more nearly
right even than he imagined. He carried with him into the Arctic the old
man's last advice.

"I'm gittin' old," the puzzle-maker had said to him, "not here when you
come back. Life--he is like figuring, you think him straight, you work
him careful, right every time!"

It was with a keen delight that Eric realized, when he boarded the
_Bear_, that sailorship was not merely a thing of the books. Although he
knew that the Coast Guard vessel was a converted whaler, it had never
fixed itself in his mind that the _Bear_ was a sailing vessel with
auxiliary steam, and that she was handled as a sailing vessel.
Barkentine-rigged, with square sails on the foremast and fore-and-aft
rig on her main and mizzen, Eric found later by experience that her
sailing powers were first-class. His delight in the handling of the ship
added to his popularity with his brother officers, all of whom, as older
men, had been trained in clipper days.

At Seattle the _Bear_ took aboard the mail for Nome and St. Michael.
This consisted of over 400 sacks, an indication of the growth of a city
which in the spring of 1897 consisted only of a row of tents on a barren
beach. At Unalaska, in the Aleutian Islands, five destitute natives were
taken aboard the _Bear_ for transportation to their homes in St.
Michael.

Off Nunivak Island, Eric had his first sight of polar ice, but the pack
was well broken up and gave little trouble. Norton Sound was
comparatively free of ice, however, and the _Bear_ reached St. Michael's
ten days later. As St. Michael's Bay was filled with ice-floes, the
vessel anchored to await favorable conditions for landing mail. A "lead"
or opening in the ice having formed between Whale Island and the
mainland, after a clear night's work, the Coast Guard cutter dropped her
anchors inside the ice. A couple of days later the floes cleared partly
away and the _Bear_ crossed over to Nome.

Endeavo