The Young Alaskans by Emerson Hough (best novels to read to improve english .TXT) 📖

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!”

As may be supposed, it was the Aleut chief whom he addressed, and the latter now engaged in a very anxious attempt at explanation. He declared at first that the boys had given him this rifle as a present; then he admitted that he had promised to take a message up to Kadiak, going on to say that he had intended to do this, but that his wife had been sick, that he had been kept at the village by many things, etc.

“He’s an old liar, without doubt,” said Captain Stephens. “Half of this band of natives down here are afraid to come to Kadiak because of the debts they owe the company store. They are wreckers, renegades, and thieves down here, and you can’t believe a word of them. I’ve half a mind to hang the lot of them at the yard-arm, and good riddance of them at that!”

The old chief understood something of what was going on, and now began to beg and blubber.

“Me good mans!” he repeated, beating on his chest.

“He says that he’s got a boy of his own over there with the others in Kaludiak Bay. He’s got a message written out by the boys, but the truth is he was afraid to go to town with it. Says the renegade Aleut over there was a good hunter, but a dangerous man—he stole their sacred whale harpoon here and made away with it—”

“But the message!” insisted Mr. Hazlett.

So at last the old chief fumbled in his jacket, and pulled out a soiled and crumpled paper nearly worn in bits. Enough of it at least remained to show the searchers that when it was written the boys were all alive and well, and were expecting help.

“The old fellow says he was expecting to take the paper up to town sometime this fall,” went on the interpreter. “Says the boys had plenty to eat—fish and birds, and they had killed three bears—”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Captain Stephens.

“Yes, says they had killed an old she bear and two cubs, and had the hides hung up—says the Aleut man had run away when they left—says they all killed a whale before they left, and left the boys as well fixed as they are here in this village. He can’t understand why you should be anxious about them, when his own boy is over there, too. Says he can take you over there all right if you want to go.”

“The little beggars!” said Mr. Hazlett, smiling for the first time in weeks. “We may get them yet.”

“Get them? Of course we will!” growled Captain Stephens. “We’ll have them aboard by this time to-morrow. Their camp isn’t more than seventy-five miles from here at most.”

The whistle of the Bennington once more roared out, and with the rattle of her anchor chains again the cutter pushed on up the coast, carrying with her, without asking their consent, the entire party of natives, who now fell flat on the deck in terror, supposing that they were being carried off to the white man’s punishment for native misdeeds.

XXXII THE DESERTED CAMP

“

So the plucky little dogs killed a bear, eh?” went on Captain Stephens, as he paced up and down the deck. “I’ll warrant they’ve had a deuce of a good time in there all by themselves, and they’ll be sorry to be disturbed. Find them! Of course we will—find them fat as seals and happier than we are!”

In spite of all this both he and Mr. Hazlett were uneasy