The Bungalow Boys Along the Yukon Part 11

It was a pity that the boys could not know that the two natives, after a discussion, had decided to set off across the island to a fishing settlement for help. For it was Wolf Island on which the party had landed and the natives had only delayed to get a smoke before starting for aid. But of this the boys knew nothing.

Hour after hour they waited with despairing faces for the two Aleuts, whom they thought had basely deserted them. At length Tom reached a decision.

"Those fellows have left us. We'll leave them," he declared.

"How?" inquired Jack.

"In the dory."

"Which way will we go?"

"Toward the direction from which we came. We are bound to get somewhere, and at any rate the fog seems to be lifting. We can keep track of the sh.o.r.e by the echo, and so find our way back to Kadiak."

"The sea's pretty rough," objected Jack.

"The dory's a good sea boat, and anyway it isn't as rough as it was.

I'm for pulling out of here right away before we waste any more time."

"So am I," agreed Jack, and Sandy, although he looked rather sober at the thought of venturing out on the big swells again, a.s.sented to Tom's plan.

By good luck they managed to get the dory launched on a big sea, and almost before they knew it, they were out on the tossing waves once more. The dory proved heavy and hard to pull, but the boys all had well-seasoned muscles and they made fairly good progress.

They were laboriously toiling in the direction Tom had pointed out, when Jack gave a shrill cry of real fear.

"Look! Look there!" he cried.

For a moment they all stopped rowing and gazed ahead.

Bearing down on them was a towering, walllike ridge of white, foamy waves. They were higher than their heads, even had the boys been standing upright in the boat. The mighty phalanx of water appeared to be rushing down on them with the purpose of engulfing them in its maw.

"What is it?" gasped Jack, cowering.

"More whales!" shouted Sandy.

But it was something far worse than any creature of the deep. Although they did not know it, the mighty waves that it appeared certain would presently engulf them, were caused by the tide-bore, the irresistible wall of water that twice each day sweeps down the east coast of Kadiak between the islands that form what is virtually an inland channel. The mighty forces of the Pacific tide and the j.a.pan current unite to make the t.i.tanic tide-rip which now threatened the boys.

With blanched faces they watched its oncoming. Escape was impossible.

Sandy covered his eyes and crouched in the bottom of the dory. Jack shook with fear. Tom alone kept a grip on his faculties.

"Get her round. Let her head into the wave quartering, or we're goners!" he shouted.

Swirling and breaking and crying out with a thousand voices, the parapet of water marched down on the seemingly doomed boat.

CHAPTER XI.

ADRIFT ON THE OCEAN.

The dory was a better sea boat than they had imagined. In a situation where a craft of another build would not have lived an instant, she succeeded in riding the first onslaught of the tide-bore. In another instant, Tom and Jack had her around with stern to the stampeding seas and were being borne swiftly along.

Alongside, a thousand angry, choppy waves reached up like hungry hands, as though determined to come on board and drag the craft to her doom. The manner in which the boat handled surprised and delighted Tom, and Jack was no less pleased. True their position was still a highly precarious one, but at least the watery grave they had dreaded had not yet engulfed them.

Sandy sat up in the bottom of the boat and looked about with wondering eyes.

"We're all right the noo?" he asked.

"I won't say that," rejoined Tom, "but at least we have got over the first great danger."

"What are we doing?"

"Riding along on the top of the tide-rip, for that's what it must be, and now I remember hearing of such a thing on this coast."

"How long will it keep on, I wonder?" questioned Sandy.

"I don't know. I suppose till the tide is full or till we get out of the pa.s.sage that we must be in."

The others looked at him silently.

"But this is a dandy boat," went on Tom cheerily, plying his steering oar, for there was no need to row in that rushing current, "she rides like a chip."

Even a powerful steamer, if caught where the boys were, could have done little more than they were doing to meet the emergency. Her only course would have been to run before the furious tide. The boys began to be resigned to their fortune. The fog seemed to lift occasionally now and then, shutting down, however, as densely as ever between the intervals of lighter weather.

Wild screams of sea birds that flew by like spirits of mist a.s.sailed their ears. Now and then the herculean splash of a great dolphin feeding in the tide came close alongside and startled them smartly.

True it was that they were still afloat and now appeared likely to remain so, but each moment was carrying them rapidly further from their friends and closer and closer to dangers whose nature they could only surmise.

As Sandy thought of all this, his fears began to return. His lip quivered.

"I wish we'd never left the ship," he said at last.

"That's a fine way to talk," spoke Tom sternly. "When you're in a sc.r.a.pe the only thing to do is to try to get out of it as best you can."

"That's the stuff," a.s.sented Jack, "but if we only had something to eat, I'd feel a little better."

"Maybe there's something under that stern seat," suggested Tom, indicating the place he meant. Sandy raised the seat, which tilted back disclosing a locker, and gave a cry of delight. Two tins of beef, some packages of crackers and a big pie reposed there. Evidently Bill Rainier, the pilot, believed in carrying lunch with him when he went out in a fog.

"Jiminy crickets," roared Jack, as one after another Sandy held up the eatables, "just think, those have been there all this time! Let's eat and forget our troubles."

"Better go slow," admonished Tom, no less pleased, however, than the others at this unexpected good fortune.

Jack cut open the meat tins with his knife and they fell to eating as they discussed their situation. They made a good meal, not forgetting liberal portions of the pie. But the lack of water troubled them.

Crackers and salt beef with dried raisin pie do not make a lunch calculated to allay thirst. But they were in no mood to complain. The food alone heartened them wonderfully and put them in a mood to face their dilemma less despairingly.

Little by little the waves began to grow smaller. The current grew less swift.

"We must have reached some place where the channel widens and the tide can spread out," observed Tom, noticing this. "Now if the fog would only lift, maybe we could get ash.o.r.e some place."