The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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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,