visited other beaches, only to detect the death-scent of human
footprints, although they had been washed by waves and covered by
tides. In far-away Oonalaska, he sought the entrance of a sea cave in
whose winding depths, many years before, he had found refuge. As he
thrust his head into the hidden opening, his sturdy breast struck the
strands of a net made of sea-lion sinews, so soaked and bleached by
salt water that it bore even to his matchless nostrils no smell of
danger. With a warning chirp, he halted his mate following close
behind, and backed out carefully, without entangling himself among the
wide meshes.
Agonizing for sleep, the little band turned back and journeyed wearily
to the far-away islet of Attoo, the westernmost point of land in North
America. In its lee was a sheltered kelp-raft never broken by the
waves, although too near shore to be a safe refuge except in a storm.
There, in the very centre of the heaving bed, with the waves booming
outside, the otter family slept the sleep of utter exhaustion, their
heads buried under the kelp-stems and their shimmering bodies showing
on the surface.
At the foot of a high bluff on Kadiak Island crouched Dick Barrington,
on his first otter-hunt. Dick was the son of a factor of the Hudson
Bay Company, which, in spite of kings and parliaments, still rules
Arctic America. With him as a guide was Oonga, the chief of a tribe of
Aleutian hunters.
"Stick to old Oonga," the factor had advised. "He knows more about sea
otter than any man in his tribe. At that there's only one chance in a
thousand that you'll get one."
The old chief had allowed the rest of the band to slip away one by
one, each choosing the islet or bit of shore where he hoped to draw
the winning number in this lottery of the sea. Hour after hour went
by, and still the old man sat huddled under the lee of the cliff. At
last, he suddenly stood up. Although the gale seemed still at its
height, his practised eye saw signs that it was about to break, and in
a moment, with Dick's help, he had launched the triple-pointed,
high-sterned _bidarka_, a little craft made of oiled sea-lion skins,
and as unsinkable as any boat could be.
A few quick strokes of the paddle, and they were beyond the breakers.
Then, straight across the bay, through the rush and smother of the
storm, they shot toward Attoo. Steering by unknown ranges and glimpses
of dim islands, old Oonga held his course unfalteringly, until, just
as the gale began to slacken, they reached the kelp-bed in the lee of
the little island. Across the hollow tendrils the old chief guided the
bidarka silently, in a zigzag course. Suddenly he stretched out his
paddle, and, touching Dick on the shoulder, pointed to a dark spot
showing against the kelp a hundred yards away.
With infinite care the two edged the canoe along, until there before
them lay asleep the mother otter, her cub clasped tight in her arms.
Even as they watched, the little otter nuzzled its small white nose
against its mother's warm breast. As she felt its touch, without
opening her eyes she clasped the cub tighter in her arms, with a
curiously human gesture, and wrapped it close in her long silky fur,
which had a changing shimmer and ripple through it like watered
silk--a pelt with which a man might ransom his life.
As Dick gripped the short heavy club which the old chief had placed at
his feet at the beginning of the voyage, and looked down upon the
pair, it seemed to him as if the great sea had taken him into her
confidence and entrusted the sleeping mother and child to him.
Suddenly, in the silence, with sea and sky watching, he knew that he
could no more strike down that mother sleeping before him with her
dear-loved cub in her arms, than he could have killed a human child
entrusted to his care. With a quick motion, he splashed the water over
the sleeping otter with the end of his club. So swiftly that the eye
could scarcely follow her motion, the great otter flashed out of sight
under the kelp, with her cub still held close. Once again, mother-love
had been too strong for death.