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