Most of that day they spent inside the barabbara waiting for the rain to cease; but as the clouds broke away in the afternoon they ventured out once more to see what was going on along the beach.
“Why, look there!” said Rob, pointing toward the mouth of the bay. “They’re leaving — half of them are gone already!”
Rough as the sea now was, and heavily loaded as were all the boats with the flesh of the whale, it was none the less obvious that members of the party were starting out for home, perhaps disposed to this by the discomfort of life in rough weather with no better shelter than they could find on this somewhat barren coast. These natives nearly always hunt in districts where they know there can be found a barabbara or so, and such huts are used as common property by all who find them, although the loose title of ownership probably rests in the man or family who first erected them. When so large a party as that now present travelled together, it was certain that they could find no adequate shelter unless they constructed it for themselves; and the Aleut, after all, is not like the American Indian, who makes himself comfortable where night finds him, but is rather a village-dweller, who rarely wanders farther from home than a day’s journey or so in his bidarka.
All this, of course, was more or less Greek to the boys who stood watching the thinning party, as one bidarka after another was skilfully run out through the surf and as skilfully put under way in the long swell of the sea. At last a well-known figure detached itself from a group where he had been talking and approached them. The Aleut chief addressed himself once more to Rob.
“My peoples go now,” he said. “Me like-um lifle.”
“When you go Kadiak?” asked Rob.
“Maybe seven week, four week, ten — nine week all light, all light, all light,” said the chief, amiably. “You make-um talk-talk ting. Give me! You give-um lifle now.”
Rob turned to the other boys.
“We’ll hold a council,” said he. “Now, what do you think is best to do?”
The others remained silent for a time.
“Well,” said Jesse, at length, “I want to go home pretty bad. He can have my rifle if he wants it, if he’ll take a letter out to John’s Uncle Dick at Kadiak.”
“I think it’s best,” said John. “We’ll have two rifles left, and that will be all we really need. Let’s go and write the note and take the chance of its ever getting out. Anyway, it is the best we can do.”
They returned to the barabbara, where Rob wrote as plainly as he could, with deep marks of the pencil, as follows:
“Mr. Richard Hazlett, Kadiak.
“Dear Sir, — We are all right, but don’t know where we are, or what date this is, or which way Kadiak is. We came down in the dory. Travelled all night. Are safe and have plenty to eat, but want to go home. Please send for us, and oblige
“Yours truly, —— .”
“Do you think that’ll do all right, boys?” he asked.
The others nodded assent, and so each signed his name. Folding up the paper and tying it in a piece of the membrane which he cut off a corner of his kamelinka, Rob finally gave the packet to the old chief.
“Plenty talk-talk thing,” he said. “You bring peoples — get-um schooner — my peoples give-um flour, sugar, two rifle, hundred dollars.”
Without further comment than a grunt the old chief stowed the packet in an inside pocket of his feather jacket, and swung Jesse’s rifle under his arm, not neglecting the ammunition. He had eaten heavily of whale meat and seemed to be pretty well beyond emotion of any sort. Certainly he turned and did not even say good-bye to his son as he swung into the front hatch of his bidarka, followed by another paddler, and headed toward the mouth of the bay, almost the last of the little craft to leave the coast.
The boys stood looking after him carefully. The presence of these natives had, it is true, offered a certain danger, or at least a certain problem, but now that they were gone the place seemed strangely lonesome, after all. Rob heard a little sound and turned.
Jesse was not exactly crying, but was struggling with himself.
“Well,” he admitted, “I don’t care! I do want to go home!”
XX
THE SILVER-GRAY FOX
After the natives had departed, the young castaways, quite alone on their wild island, felt more lonesome and more uneasy than they had been before. The wilderness seemed to close in about them. None of them had any definite hope or plan for an early rescue or departure from the island, so for some two or three weeks they passed the time in a restless and discontented way, doing little to rival the exciting events which had taken place during the visit of the natives. It was now approaching the end of spring, and Rob, more thoughtful perhaps than any of the others, could not conceal from himself the anxiety which began to settle upon him.
In these circumstances Rob and his friends found the young Aleut, with his cheerful and care-free disposition and his apparent unconcern about the future, of much comfort as well as of great assistance in a practical way. They nicknamed the Aleut boy Skookie — a shortening of the Chinook word skookum, which means strong, or good, or all right. Their young companion, used as he was to life in the open, solved simply and easily all their little problems of camp-keeping. Under his guidance, they finished the work on the bear-skins, scraping them and rubbing them day after day, until at last they turned them into valuable rugs.
It was Skookie, also, who showed them where to get their salmon and codfish most easily. In short, he naturally dropped into the place of local guide. The native is from his youth trained to observation of natural objects, because his life depends upon such things. With the white man or white boy this is not the case. No matter how much instinct he may have for the life of the wilderness, with him adjustment to that life is a matter of study and effort, whereas with the native all these things are a matter of course. It may be supposed, therefore, that this young Aleut made the best of instructors for the young companions who found themselves castaway in this remote region.
Thus, none of the three white boys had noted more than carelessly the paths of wild animals which came down from the surrounding hills to the shores of the lagoon near which they were camped, although these paths could be seen with ease by any one whose attention was attracted to them. One day they were wandering along the upper end of the lagoon where the grass, matted with several seasons’ growth and standing as tall as their shoulders, stood especially dense. They noticed that Skookie stooped now and then and parted the tangled grass with his hands. At last, like a young hound, he left their course and began to circle around, crossing farther on what they now discovered to be an easily distinguishable trail made by some sort of small animal.
“What is it? What’s up, Skookie?” asked John, whose curiosity always was in evidence.
The Aleut boy did not at first reply, because he did not know how to do so. He made a sort of sign, by putting his two bent fingers, pricked up, along the side of his head like ears.
“Wolf!” said John.
“No,” commented Rob. “I don’t think there are any wolves on this island; at least, I never heard of any so far to the West. What is it, Skookie?”
The boy made the same sign, and then spread his hands apart as if to measure the length of some animal.
“Fox!” cried Jesse, with conviction; and Skookie, who understood English better than he spoke it, laughed in assent.
“Fokus,” he said, repeating the word as nearly as he could. Now he traced