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

it slowly sank from sight, even as the school of whales, diving and breaching, also fell astern, still pursued by their savage enemies.

“Well,” said Captain Zim, “I’ve sailed these waters thirty years, but that’s the first time I ever struck a whale.”

“I’ve promised these boys plenty of exciting things,” commented Uncle Dick. “But if you don’t mind, I’d rather you wouldn’t run over any more whales. You’ll be taking the keel out of this ship the first thing you know.”

“I see something else!” called Jesse, who was examining the rolling sea studiously with the field-glasses. “See it—right over there about two hundred yards! It looks like a man standing up in the water.”

“Oh, that,” said Uncle Dick, “it’s only a seal.”

“Couldn’t I shoot it?” asked Rob. “I’d like to get its fur.”

Uncle Dick laughed. “You wouldn’t find its hide worth more than a dollar or so, if you got it,” said he. “That’s only a little hair seal. You won’t find any fur seals until you get a good many hundred miles beyond Kadiak. And that’s a good many hundred miles yet from here. Let the little fellow go, and turn the glasses on that big bunch of whale-birds over there. See them flying—there’s a string nearly a mile long.”

“I see them! I see them!” called out Rob. “There are thousands and thousands of them. I’ve seen them before, and one of the sailors told me that there is always most of them where there are whales around. They seem to feed on the same sort of things in the water, someway.”

“There are plenty of things you see up in this country,” said Uncle Dick, as he turned away. “You may have thought Valdez was pretty much all of Alaska, but I’ll show you it is just the beginning.”

“Do they have shipwrecks up here, Uncle Dick?” asked John. “It looks to me pretty rocky along these shores.”

“Don’t talk about shipwrecks!” replied his uncle. “This coast is full of them. I can show you the skeletons of four ships within two hours’ sail of Kadiak, and how many small boats go ashore, never to be heard of, no man can tell. There are big ships lost, too, up and down this coast. Last year the natives below Kadiak brought in casks and boxes and all kinds of things bearing the name of the steamer Oregon. She was wrecked far to the south of Valdez, but the Japan Current carried her wreckage a thousand miles to the north and west, and threw it on the coast of Kadiak and the smaller islands west of there. It made the natives rich, they found so much in the way of supplies.”

“Are there any bears out there?” asked Jesse, wonderingly.

“Biggest in the world!” replied Uncle Dick. “You’d better keep away from them. We’re sailing now just south of the great Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. There’s bears over there, but mostly black ones. Plenty of moose and caribou in these mountains, and once in a while a grizzly, but the biggest grizzlies are the brown bears of Kadiak and the peninsula on beyond.”

Rob was silent for a time, but at last remarked: “From what I hear of this Kadiak country, I believe we’re going to like it. When’ll we get there?”

Uncle Dick smiled. “Oh, sometime within a week,” he answered. “Distances are long up here, and wind and tide have something to do with even a steamer’s speed.”

IV LOST IN THE FOG

Sure enough, it took five days more of steady steaming before the Nora approached the shores of far-off Kadiak Island. In the nighttime the boys heard the steamer’s whistle going, and knew that Captain Zim was sounding the echoes to get his bearings in the thick weather then prevailing. Sea-captains on those shores, when the fog is thick, keep the whistle going, and when they hear the echoes from the rocks too plainly they make outward to the open sea.

The Nora crawled down the coast of Afognak Island in the fog and the dark, but finally cast her anchor as near as could be told off the entrance to the narrow channel of Kadiak Harbor. Here she sounded her whistle for more than an hour at short intervals, waiting for a pilot to come out. At last, soon after those on board had finished breakfast, they heard the sound of oars out in the fog and a rough voice calling through a megaphone: “Steamer ahoy! What boat is that?”

“Nora, from Valdez,” answered Captain Zim. “Are you the pilot?”

“Ay, ay!” came the voice through the fog.

“Come on board—this way!” called Captain Zim; and once more the hoarse whistle of the steamer boomed out into the fog.

Needless to say, the three boys now were on deck, and they leaned over the rail as there appeared at the foot of the rope-ladder a big dory with two native oarsmen, and a stout, grizzled man, whom the ship’s company announced to be Pete Piamon, the pilot for that coast.

“How are you, Pete?” said Captain Zim. “Can we take her in? I’m late and in an awful hurry.”

Pete grinned. “All the time you ban in awful hurry, Captain Zim. Dis fog awful tick. Yas, we shall take her in if you say so—and maybe so pile her up on de rock. You don’ min’ dat, eh?”

“Where’s the revenue-cutter Bennington lying, Pete?” asked Uncle Dick.

“Inside, beyond de town.” Pete jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, captain,” said Uncle Dick. “I’m in a big hurry to report to my commanding officer on the Bennington, for he’s no doubt been lying here two or three days waiting for us. You keep Pete here, and let me and the boys take his dory and pull in—they’ll take us through the tide-rips all right, if it gets bad. I won’t ask you to put down one of the ship’s boats.”

Pete looked at Captain Zim, who answered: “Oh, all right, if you’re in such a hurry; though you might wait and let us all go in together. How are you going to get all of your hand luggage and all four of you into that dory, though?”

“You couldn’t spare us a ship’s boat?”

“Sure I can,” answered obliging Captain Zim. “I’ll tell you—put the boys in the dory, and I’ll send you and the luggage over in the long-boat.”

“Get down there, boys,” commented Uncle Dick, briefly, pointing to the rope-ladder. “Are you afraid to go down the ladder?”

Rob’s answer was to make a spring for the top of the ladder, and down he went hand over hand, followed by the others, each of whom could climb like a squirrel. The two natives, grinning, reached up and steadied them as they reached the jumping dory. The boys insisted on having their blankets and rifles in the boat with them—a part of Alaska education which had been taught them by old prospectors.

Pete shouted something over the rail in the Aleut tongue. At once the two natives bent to their oars, and the dory slipped away into the fog. Uncle Dick, busy with hunting out his luggage for the long-boat, did not at first miss it from the foot of the ladder.

“Hello! Where did that dory go?” he asked, finally. In the confusion no one answered him. So at last he concluded his own work in loading the long-boat and went overside, ordering the boat’s crew to give way together, strongly, in order to overtake the dory.

But when the long-boat, after feeling its way down the narrow channel, emerged from the fog and pulled up at Kadiak dock there was no dory there.

“Hello, there, Jimmy!” cried Uncle Dick to the manager of the warehouse at the dock. “Where’s that boat?”

“What boat do you mean, sir?” answered the other.

“Why, Pete’s dory. We just sent it in by two natives, with three boys I’ve got along—friends and relatives of mine.”

“You’re joking, sir. You can’t have brought boys away up here. Besides, they haven’t showed up here at the dock, nor any dory, either.”

“They must have got into the other channel mouth in the fog and gone down Wood Island way,” said Uncle Dick, at last, beginning to be troubled.

“Well, if an Aleut can do anything wrong, that’s what he’s going to do,” answered the dock-master. “We’ll have to send a boat over there after those people yet. By-the-way, Captain Barker, of the Bennington, is waiting for you. And he told me to tell you to come aboard in Pete’s dory as soon as you struck the town.”

“But the dory’s gone,” commented Uncle Dick. “I don’t like the look of this.”

Both men, with lips compressed, stood staring out into the heavy blanket of fog.

V THE MISSING DORY

What happened was this: The two natives in the dory were unable to understand English, and of course the three boys knew nothing of the native language. Yet from the hasty instruction of the pilot, Pete, the natives had gathered that “the boss gentleman”—that is to say, Uncle Dick—wanted to go to the revenue-cutter Bennington. Accordingly they concluded that the boys also were bound directly for the cutter, and so instead of heading to the channel which led to the town, they proposed to take a cut-off behind Wood Island, best known to themselves. Thus they rowed on for more than half an hour before any of the boys suspected anything wrong. Rob made signs to them to stop rowing. All the boys looked about them in the fog. They were still in the roll of the open sea, and the dory pitched wildly on the long swell, but, listen intently as they might, they could hear no sound from any quarter.

“We ought to have stayed with Uncle Dick,” suggested Jesse.

“That’s right!” admitted Rob. “But the question is, what ought we to do now? They pointed out town that way from the Nora, and I know we’re not going the right direction.”

To all inquiries and commands the natives did nothing but shake their heads and smile pleasantly. At last they resumed their oars and began to row steadily on their course. The sea now came tumbling in astern in long black rolls, broken now and again by whitecaps. Like a cork the dory swung up and down on the long swells, and all the boys now grew serious, for they had never been in so wild a water as this in all their lives.

They progressed this way a little while, until Rob bethought himself of the plan employed by the captains when skirting the shore in fog. He put his hands to his mouth and gave a loud, drawn-out shout, and then listened for an echo. Sure enough it came, faint and far off, but unmistakable.

“We’re running down the coast, or else the channel is wide here,” said Rob, “because the echo is only on one side.”

From time to time they renewed these tactics, and for mile after mile kept in touch of the shore, on which now and then they could hear the waves breaking wildly. At last Rob set his jaw tight in decision.

“I tell you what,” said he; “we’re going the wrong way. We ought to have been at the town long before this. I’m for going ashore and waiting till the fog lifts.”

Both Jesse and John agreed to this, for now they were thoroughly alarmed. Rob made motions to the two native oarsmen that they should head the dory inshore. They, always disposed to be obedient to the white race, agreed and swung the dory shoreward.“Karosha,” said the older of the two men; by which they later learned he meant to say, “All right.”

The two natives were well used to making a landing through