The Young Alaskans Part 24

To the Aleut mind nothing approaches a sea-otter hunt, for it affords not only the keenest sport, but the greatest possible financial reward.

The method of the hunt is somewhat complicated in some of its features.

When the otter dives the boats gather in a circle, and as soon as it appears every bowman does his best to strike it with an arrow. The first arrow to strike the otter makes the latter the property of the lucky bowman, who, of course, knows his own arrow by his mark. As, however, the first arrow may not stop the otter, the "owner," as the boats close in upon the game, may very probably call out what he will pay for another arrow lodged in the body of the otter. Instances have been known where the first bowman has in his excitement pledged away more in arrow-interest than the total value of the skin amounts to, so that he is actually loser instead of gainer by the transaction. The arrow closest to the tail is the one which most prevents the otter from diving; hence the value of the arrows is measured by the distance from the tail, the arrow of each man being so marked that it cannot be mistaken.

All of this etiquette of the otter-hunt was, of course, unknown to the white boys, whose main interest, indeed, was one of sport rather than of profit. They were keen as the natives, none the less, and eagerly watched every signal given by the leader of the hunt.

At last Jimmy held a paddle up in the air, a signal for the other boat to slow down. A moment later Rob spied the otter lying stretched out motionless on the water as though asleep, as indeed likely was the case, since that is the method of sleep practised by this species. Now, a few fathoms at a time, the native edged the bidarka up toward his game, precisely as the Aleut chief had approached the whale. The dory, no longer rowed furiously, but now paddled silently by John and Skookie, approached on the other side. As they now were on a comparatively smooth sea, and not more than fifty yards from the animal, Rob motioned to his companion to allow him to fire with his rifle, but the latter emphatically refused. He knew that an arrow safely lodged is more sure to bring the sea-otter into possession than a rifle-ball, which might kill it, only to cause it to sink and be lost.

Jimmy now laid down his paddle, took up his bow and arrows, and signalled to Rob to paddle ahead slowly. A few yards farther he motioned for the headway to be checked, and just as the bidarka stopped he launched his barbed arrow with a savage grunt.

The weapon flew true! A wide rush of bubbles showed where an instant before the otter had lain.

Both otter and arrow had disappeared, but the Aleut sat waiting grimly, although the boys in the other boat gave a yell of exultation. In a few moments the wounded animal showed a hundred fathoms ahead. Here, stung by the pain of the bone head, which had sunk deep into its back, it swam confusedly for a moment at the surface. The shaft of the arrow had now been detached from the loose head cunningly contrived by the native arrow-makers, and a long cord, which attached the arrow-head to the shaft, and which was wound around the latter, now unreeled and left the shaft floating, telltale evidence of the otter's whereabouts, even when it dived.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOTH OTTER AND ARROW HAD DISAPPEARED, BUT THE ALEUT SAT WAITING GRIMLY]

Jimmy tried a long shot as the bidarka swept ahead under Rob's paddle, but this time he missed, and down went the otter again. It did not dive deep, however, and the shaft of the arrow told where it might be expected. As its round head, with bright, staring eyes, thrust up above the water, there came the tw.a.n.g of the young Aleut's bow, and the second arrow chugged into the body of the otter. Even the older hunter greeted this shot with applause.

The otter, however, is hard to kill with an arrow of this sort, since its skin is loose and tough. The creature dived once more, but the second floating shaft now began to handicap its motions. Both boats followed it from place to place as it swam. At last, almost exhausted, it showed once more, and the older Aleut sent home an arrow at the back of its head which killed it at once. He hauled up across the bidarka deck the body of the otter, a dark-brown creature, even at that season fairly well furred, and in weight about that of a good-sized dog.

Now and again calling out in sheer exultation at the success of this strange hunt, they all now turned ash.o.r.e. That day they had plenty to do in skinning the otter and making a rude stretching-board for the great skin. The boys were all astonished to see how much larger it stretched than had seemed possible from the size of the body of the animal itself; but the hide of the sea-otter lies in loose wrinkles, so that it may bend and turn freely as a snake when making its way in the water. They found the skin to be more than six feet long from tip to tip.

The young friends engaged in some speculation as to how much the skin might bring at the Seattle market. One thing of value it seemed to establish beyond doubt--Jimmy and Skookie, as they both worked at fleshing the hide, had dropped their mutual suspicions and become hunting companions.

XXIX

UNCERTAINTY

Midsummer came and pa.s.sed, and still no sign from the outer world came to relieve the growing anxiety of the boys so long marooned on these unfrequented sh.o.r.es. They had kept very small account of the pa.s.sing 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 d.i.c.k, 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 compa.s.s we ought to sail, even if we had a compa.s.s."

"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 cla.s.s 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the wild fowl on their smoke-rack. Codfish they did not trouble to take for curing in any great quant.i.ty, as they knew they could secure them fresh at almost any point along these sh.o.r.es. 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 pa.s.s 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 gra.s.s, 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 carca.s.s 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 carca.s.s. "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 gra.s.s 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!"