Chapter 13

The older Aleut was standing on the summit of the sea-wall, shading his eyes and looking steadily out over the waves. At last he gave a loud, sharp call, in which an instant later the Aleut boy joined. The two ran first toward the dory, which lay on the sea-beach, where it had been left after the last voyage for eggs, but an instant later they turned back to the lagoon where the bidarka lay, and made motions that this should be carried across and launched.

Rob and John hurried for their rifles. Jimmy caught up his bow and arrows, and the Aleut boy his short spear. They hurried the bidarka across the sea-wall to the open water of the bay. Jimmy resumed his watch from the summit of the sea-wall. For what seemed a half-hour he stood motionless and staring out over the bay. Then again he called aloud and, hurriedly lifting his bow string into the notch, ran down to the bidarka, motioning to Rob to take his seat in the rear hatch.

"You others get into the dory with Skookie," called out Rob, even as the strong sweep of Jimmy's paddle swept them free of the shingle.

To launch the heavy dory was something of a task for the younger boys, but in their excitement they accomplished it, so that the two boats were soon out for yet another of the wild sea-hunts of this far-away coast.

The method of the natives who hunt the sea-otter is to make a surround with a fleet of bidarkas, much as they hunt the whale; but this, of course, was impossible now. None the less, Jimmy, who assumed the position of master of the hunt, motioned to the Aleut boy in the dory to keep off to the left, while he and Rob circled far to the right in the bidarka.

To the Aleut mind nothing approaches a sea-otter hunt, for it affords not only the keenest sport, but the greatest possible financial reward. The method of the hunt is somewhat complicated in some of its features. When the otter dives the boats gather in a circle, and as soon as it appears every bowman does his best to strike it with an arrow. The first arrow to strike the otter makes the latter the property of the lucky bowman, who, of course, knows his own arrow by his mark. As, however, the first arrow may not stop the otter, the "owner," as the boats close in upon the game, may very probably call out what he will pay for another arrow lodged in the body of the otter. Instances have been known where the first bowman has in his excitement pledged away more in arrow-interest than the total value of the skin amounts to, so that he is actually loser instead of gainer by the transaction. The arrow closest to the tail is the one which most prevents the otter from diving; hence the value of the arrows is measured by the distance from the tail, the arrow of each man being so marked that it cannot be mistaken.

All of this etiquette of the otter-hunt was, of course, unknown to the white boys, whose main interest, indeed, was one of sport rather than of profit. They were keen as the natives, none the less, and eagerly watched every signal given by the leader of the hunt.

At last Jimmy held a paddle up in the air, a signal for the other boat to slow down. A moment later Rob spied the otter lying stretched out motionless on the water as though asleep, as indeed likely was the case, since that is the method of sleep practised by this species. Now, a few fathoms at a time, the native edged the bidarka up toward his game, precisely as the Aleut chief had approached the whale. The dory, no longer rowed furiously, but now paddled silently by John and Skookie, approached on the other side. As they now were on a comparatively smooth sea, and not more than fifty yards from the animal, Rob motioned to his companion to allow him to fire with his rifle, but the latter emphatically refused. He knew that an arrow safely lodged is more sure to bring the sea-otter into possession than a rifle-ball, which might kill it, only to cause it to sink and be lost.

Jimmy now laid down his paddle, took up his bow and arrows, and signalled to Rob to paddle ahead slowly. A few yards farther he motioned for the headway to be checked, and just as the bidarka stopped he launched his barbed arrow with a savage grunt.

The weapon flew true! A wide rush of bubbles showed where an instant before the otter had lain.

Both otter and arrow had disappeared, but the Aleut sat waiting grimly, although the boys in the other boat gave a yell of exultation. In a few moments the wounded animal showed a hundred fathoms ahead. Here, stung by the pain of the bone head, which had sunk deep into its back, it swam confusedly for a moment at the surface. The shaft of the arrow had now been detached from the loose head cunningly contrived by the native arrow-makers, and a long cord, which attached the arrow-head to the shaft, and which was wound around the latter, now unreeled and left the shaft floating, telltale evidence of the otter's whereabouts, even when it dived.

Jimmy tried a long shot as the bidarka swept ahead under Rob's paddle, but this time he missed, and down went the otter again. It did not dive deep, however, and the shaft of the arrow told where it might be expected. As its round head, with bright, staring eyes, thrust up above the water, there came the twang of the young Aleut's bow, and the second arrow chugged into the body of the otter. Even the older hunter greeted this shot with applause.

The otter, however, is hard to kill with an arrow of this sort, since its skin is loose and tough. The creature dived once more, but the second floating shaft now began to handicap its motions. Both boats followed it from place to place as it swam. At last, almost exhausted, it showed once more, and the older Aleut sent home an arrow at the back of its head which killed it at once. He hauled up across the bidarka deck the body of the otter, a dark-brown creature, even at that season fairly well furred, and in weight about that of a good-sized dog.

Now and again calling out in sheer exultation at the success of this strange hunt, they all now turned ashore. That day they had plenty to do in skinning the otter and making a rude stretching-board for the great skin. The boys were all astonished to see how much larger it stretched than had seemed possible from the size of the body of the animal itself; but the hide of the sea-otter lies in loose wrinkles, so that it may bend and turn freely as a snake when making its way in the water. They found the skin to be more than six feet long from tip to tip.

The young friends engaged in some speculation as to how much the skin might bring at the Seattle market. One thing of value it seemed to establish beyond doubt--Jimmy and Skookie, as they both worked at fleshing the hide, had dropped their mutual suspicions and become hunting companions.

XXIX

UNCERTAINTY

Midsummer came and passed, and still no sign from the outer world came to relieve the growing anxiety of the boys so long marooned on these unfrequented shores. They had kept very small account of the passing of the days, and perhaps none of them could have told how many weeks had elapsed since the beginning of their unwilling journey from Kadiak. They no longer knew the days of the week; and, indeed, had any of their relatives seen them now, with their shoes worn to bits, their clothing ragged and soiled, and not a hat or cap remaining between them, they might have taken their sun-browned faces and long hair to be marks of natives rather than of white boys of good family.

It is not to be supposed, however, that they had given up all hope, or that at any time they had allowed themselves to indulge in despondency. Rob especially, although serious and quiet, all the time was thinking over a plan. This, one day, he proposed to the others.

"I have resolved," said he, "that if you other boys agree, we will start for home just one month from to-day."

They sat looking at him in silence for some time.

"How do you mean?" asked Jesse, his eyes lighting up, for he was the one who seemed most to feel homesickness.

"I mean to start back to Kadiak, where we came from!"

"Yes, and how can we tell which way Kadiak is?" inquired John.

"I'll tell you how," said Rob. "We will travel, of course, in our dory, which will carry our camp outfit and food enough to last for a great many days, even if we should prove unable to take any codfish or salmon along the coast."

"But which way would we go?" insisted John.

"The opposite of the way we came," smiled Rob. "A tide brought us into this bay. The same tide on the turn would carry us out of the bay. To be sure, the wind may have had much to do with our direction, but it is only fair to suppose that if we came down the east coast of Kadiak on an ebb we would go up that same coast on the flood. At least, if we could do no better, we would be leaving a place where no word seems apt to get to us."

"It would be a risky voyage," said Jesse. "I didn't like it out there on the open sea!"

"There is some risk in staying here," was Rob's answer. "Whether or not those natives took our message to Kadiak, they certainly will tell all the other villagers that we are here. In time they will know we are helpless. It may be only a matter of days or weeks before they will come and do what they like with us--steal our guns and blankets, and either take us far away, or leave us to shift for ourselves as we can."

"Could we send Jimmy out with another message?" suggested John.

"I doubt it," answered Rob. "If he wanted to leave here he could take the bidarka almost any night and escape, but I believe he is afraid to leave the bay lest he may be found by some of these villagers whom he has offended. I don't think Skookie would go anywhere with him. As it is, one is a foil to the other here with us, but each is afraid of the other _away_ from us!"

"But don't you suppose that Skookie's people will come back after him sometime?"

"True enough, they may; but who can tell the Aleut mind? I don't pretend to. Of course, by the late fall, say November, when the snows come and the fur is good, I don't doubt these people will come back here to trap foxes, for that is evidently a regular business here; but that would mean that we would have to winter either with them or by ourselves; and I want to tell you that wintering here alone is an entirely different proposition from summering here, now when the salmon are running and we can go out almost any day and get codfish, not to mention ducks and geese. Besides, our people would be driven frantic by that time. On the other hand, if we were lucky enough to make it to Kadiak we would get there in time to find your uncle Dick, or at least to get a boat home to Valdez sometime within a month after we got to Kadiak. Of course, we don't know anything about the country between here and there. The whole coast may be a rock wall, for all we know."

"The steamers have government charts to tell them where to go," mused John; "but we haven't any chart, and we don't even know in what direction of the compass we ought to sail, even if we had a compass."

"Before ships could have charts," said Rob, "it was necessary for some one to discover things all over the world. I suppose that's the class we're in now--we're the first navigators, so far as help from any one else is concerned. In Alaska a fellow has to take care of himself, and he has to learn to take his medicine. Now none of us is a milksop or a mollycoddle."

"That's the talk!" said John. "For my part, if Jesse agrees, we'll try the journey back in the dory. But if we're going to undertake it we ought to begin now to lay in plenty of supplies."

"I have been thinking of that," said Rob, "and so I move we begin now to get together our provisions."

From that time on they all worked soberly and intently, with minds bent upon a common purpose. They hunted ducks and geese regularly now, curing the breasts of the wild fowl on their smoke-rack. Codfish they did not trouble to take for curing in any great quantity, as they knew they could secure them fresh at almost any point along these shores. Salmon they smoked in numbers, for now the run of the humpback salmon was on, replacing the earlier one of the smaller red salmon. Part of their dried bear meat, now not very palatable, they still had left. They even tried to dry in the sun some of the bulbs which the natives occasionally brought in. Their greatest puzzle was how they could carry water, for, since they knew nothing of the coast ahead, they feared that they might be obliged to pass some time without meeting a fresh-water stream. At last John managed to make Jimmy understand what they required, and he, grinning at their ignorance, showed them how they could make a water-cask out of a fresh seal-skin, of which they now had several from their hunting along the coast.

"Now," said John, when finally they had solved that problem, "we've got to have a sail of some sort."

"And not a piece of canvas or cloth as big as your hand," said Rob, ruefully. "I admit that a sail would be a big help, for we could rig a lee-board for the dory. Then, if the wind was right, we could get back to Kadiak in a day, very likely; for we couldn't have been much more than that time in coming down here without a sail."

It taxed John's ingenuity as interpreter for a long time to make the natives understand what he now required. At last, by means of his clumsy attempts to braid a sort of mat out of rushes and grass, they caught his idea and fell to helping him. That week they finished a large, square mat, fairly close in texture, which they felt sure could be used as a square-rigged sail. They prepared a short mast and spars for this, and as they reviewed the progress of their boat equipment they all felt a certain relief, since all of them were more or less familiar with boat-sailing.

"I hate to go away and miss all the foxes we could get at the carcass of that whale this fall," said Rob one morning, as he stood at the sea-wall and watched three or four of these animals scamper off up the beach when disturbed at their feeding on the carcass. "In fact, I feel just the way we all do, pretty much attached to this place where we've had such a jolly good time, after all; but we've got to think of getting home some way. We've got our water-cask ready, and our sail is done, and we've got two or three hundred pounds of fairly good provisions. We'll pull the dory up to the beach here opposite our camp and get her loaded. What time do you say, John? And what do you think, Jesse? What time shall we set for the start?"

John and Jesse stood, each breaking a bit of dried grass between his fingers as he talked. At last John looked up.

"Any time you say, Rob," he answered, firmly.

"To-morrow, then!" said Rob.

They stood for a moment, each looking at the other. For weeks they had been in anxiety, for many days extremely busy, most of the time too methodical or too intent to experience much enthusiasm. Now a sudden impulse caught all three--the spirit of resolution which accomplishes results for man or boy. Suddenly John waved his hand above his head.

"Three cheers!" he exclaimed.

They gave them all together.

"Hip, hip, hurrah!"

XXX

"BLOWN OUT TO SEA!"

Meantime, what had happened in the outer world during all these months? What had been the feelings of Mr. Hazlett on that day in early spring as, hour after hour, he walked Kadiak dock and peered into the fog in vain, waiting for the boat which did not appear? And what of his feelings as all that day and night passed, and yet another, with no answer to his half-frenzied search of the shores close to the town, of the decks of the still lingering steamer, and of the surroundings of the Mission School across the strait? None could answer his questions, and no guess could be formed as to the missing dory and its crew, until at last there were discovered the two natives who had rowed the dory away from the _Nora_.

These told how the boat had disappeared while they were absent. They had thought that the boys had made their way back to town. Now, finding that such had not been the case, they expressed it as their belief that when the latter had pitted their weak strength against the Pacific Ocean they had failed and had been blown out to sea.

"Blown out to sea!" How many a story has been written in that phrase! How could this anxious watcher face the parents of those boys and tell them news such as this? At least for a time he was spared this, for no boat would go back to Valdez within a month, and those who awaited news were Alaska mothers and knew the delays of the frontier. None the less, Mr. Hazlett had borne in upon him all the time the feeling that he himself had been responsible for this disaster. Even as he set to work to organize search-parties he felt despair.

The natives, not clear as to the instructions given them, had supposed that they were to go in search of the revenue-cutter _Bennington_; yet as a matter of fact that vessel was moored on the western instead of the eastern side of the island at the time, whereas it seemed sure that the dory with the missing boys must have been carried along the east coast of the island, and not through the straits to the westward.

Mr. Hazlett knew well enough the strength of the outgoing Japan Current here. A boat might be carried to Asia, for all one could tell to the contrary, although its occupants must long ere that have perished from hunger and thirst. And what chance had a small boat in waters so rough as those of this rock-bound coast, risky enough for the most skilled navigators and in the best of vessels? Was not all this coast-survey work intended to lessen the danger of navigation, even for the most skilled commanders? What chance had these, weak, young, and unprepared, who had thus been thrust into such perils? All that could be held sure was that the boys had disappeared as completely as though the sea had opened up and swallowed boat and all!

Duty now required that Mr. Hazlett should report on board the _Bennington_; so, after a few days spent in fruitless searching within reach of Kadiak town, he took the pilot-boat and hastened over to the west side of the island where the _Bennington_ lay at anchor, with her boat crews engaged in the tedious work of making coast soundings.

Mr. Hazlett laid before Captain Stephens the full story of the mysterious loss of his young charges. The face of the old naval officer grew grave, and for some moments he turned away and engaged in thought before he spoke. Then he turned sharply to his executive officer.

"Call in the boat crews, sir!" he commanded. "We move station within the hour!"

"Then you mean that you are going to help search for them?" asked Mr. Hazlett.

"With all my heart, sir!" said the rough commander. "I have boys of my own back in New England. We'll comb this island rock by rock, and if we suspect foul play we'll blow every native village off the face of it!"

The hoarse roar of the _Bennington's_ deep-throated signal-whistles echoed along the rock-bound shore. Within an hour her boats were all stowed, and with each man at his quarters the trim cutter passed slowly down the west coast of the island.

"I'm not supposed to be a relief expedition," muttered Captain Stephens, "and I s'pose we'll all lose our jobs with Uncle Sam; but until we do, I figure that Uncle Sam can better afford to lose three months' time of this ship's crew than it can three bright boys who may grow up to be good sailors sometime.

"We'll skirt the island in the opposite direction from that in which the youngsters probably went," said he, turning to Mr. Hazlett. "We'll have to stop at every cannery and settlement, and the boat crews will need to search every little bay and coast."

"You talk as though you hoped to find them," said Mr. Hazlett, catching a gleam of courage from the other's resolute speech.

"Find 'em?" said Captain Stephens. "Of course we'll find 'em; we've _got_ to find 'em!"

XXXI

THE SEARCH-PARTY

It should be remembered that the coast of the great Kadiak Island is here and there indented with deep bays, which at one point nearly cut it in two. Had the boys known it, they were, in their camp near the head of Kaludiak Bay, not more than thirty miles distant across the mountain passes to the head of Uyak Bay, which makes in on the west side of the island, and which was the first great inlet to be searched by the boat crews of the _Bennington_. The total coast-line of so large a bay is hundreds of miles in extent, and broken with many little coves, each of which must be visited and inspected, for any projecting rock point might hide a boat or camp from view.

On this great bay there were two or three salmon-fisheries in operation, and as these always employ numbers of natives who come from all parts of the island, Captain Stephens had close inquiries made at each; but more than two weeks passed and no word could be gained of any white persons at any other portion of the island.

"Naturally we won't hear anything on this side," said Captain Stephens to Mr. Hazlett. "Not many natives from the east coast come over here to work, and from what I know of the prevailing tides and winds I am more disposed to believe that they have been carried off toward the southeast corner of the island. The land runs out there, and, granted any decent kind of luck, the boys probably made a landing--if they could keep afloat so far."

"But what may have happened to them before this?" began Mr. Hazlett.

"Tut, man! We've all got to take our chances," replied the old sea-dog. "They've done their best, and we must do our best, too."

Week after week, hour after hour, and, as it seemed, almost inch by inch, the cutter crawled on around the wild coast of Kadiak, tapping each arm and inlet, literally combing out the full extent of the broken shore-line. So gradually they passed below the southern extremity of the island, worked up from the southeast, and one day came to anchor not far from the native settlement known as Old Harbor. Here a breakdown to their machinery kept them waiting for ten days. Meantime, the boat crews were out at their work. One day a young lieutenant came in and with some excitement asked to see the captain.

"I have to report, sir, that I think we've got word of those boys!" he said, eagerly, as he saluted.

"How's that? Where? Go on, sir!"

"There's a big boat party back from Kaludiak Bay, sir. They were in there on a whale-hunt several weeks ago. They saw a camp with three white boys and one refugee Aleut."

"Arrest every man Jack of them and bring them in!" roared Captain Stephens.

"Already done that, sir!" reported the lieutenant. "They are in the long-boat alongside."

"Then bring them here at once!"

A few moments later he and Mr. Hazlett found the deck crowded with a score of much-frightened natives.

"Who's the interpreter here?" commanded the captain.

A squaw-man who for some years had lived with the natives was pushed forward. He was none too happy himself, for he expected nothing better than intimate questions regarding certain wrecking operations which for years past had gone on along this part of the coast.

"Now tell me," began Captain Stephens, "what do you know about those boys over there? Why didn't these people bring out word to the settlement? What are you looking for here? Do you want me to blow your village off the rocks? Come, now, speak up, my good fellow, or you'll mighty well wish you had!"

Suddenly Mr. Hazlett uttered an exclamation and sprang toward one of the natives who carried a rifle in his hand.

"That gun belonged to Jesse, the son of my neighbor Wilcox at Valdez!" he exclaimed. "Tell me where you got it, and how!"