Midsummer came and passed, and still no sign from the outer world came
to relieve the growing anxiety of the boys so long marooned on these
unfrequented shores. They had kept very small account of the passing of
the days, and perhaps none of them could have told how many weeks had
elapsed since the beginning of their unwilling journey from Kadiak. They
no longer knew the days of the week; and, indeed, had any of their
relatives seen them now, with their shoes worn to bits, their clothing
ragged and soiled, and not a hat or cap remaining between them, they
might have taken their sun-browned faces and long hair to be marks of
natives rather than of white boys of good family.
It is not to be supposed, however, that they had given up all hope, or
that at any time they had allowed themselves to indulge in despondency.
Rob especially, although serious and quiet, all the time was thinking
over a plan. This, one day, he proposed to the others.
"I have resolved," said he, "that if you other boys agree, we will start
for home just one month from to-day."
They sat looking at him in silence for some time.
"How do you mean?" asked Jesse, his eyes lighting up, for he was the one
who seemed most to feel homesickness.
"I mean to start back to Kadiak, where we came from!"
"Yes, and how can we tell which way Kadiak is?" inquired John.
"I'll tell you how," said Rob. "We will travel, of course, in our dory,
which will carry our camp outfit and food enough to last for a great
many days, even if we should prove unable to take any codfish or salmon
along the coast."
"But which way would we go?" insisted John.
"The opposite of the way we came," smiled Rob. "A tide brought us 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!"