d would have stepped over to look in.
Rob moved in front of him.

"No!" he said. "All good mans here. What you want?"

"No want-um white mans," answered the chief. "Village over dar." He
pointed across the mountains.

Rob guessed that these natives had therefore followed around the
coast-line from their town, although he was not yet clear as to their
purpose in coming hither.

"You got-um bad mans here," said the chief, sternly, at last. "See-um
boat dar." He pointed to the bidarka at the edge of the lagoon.

"What you do with bad mans?" asked Rob.

"Plenty shoot-um!" answered the chief, sternly, slapping the stock of
his gun. "Him steal! Him steal dis! Steal-um _nogock_! All time my
peoples no get-um whale. Him steal-um _nogock_!"

Rob was puzzled.

"Now what in the world do you suppose he means?" asked he of John. "And
what is that thing he's got?"

The chief was holding up a strange-looking object in his hand--a short,
dark-colored, tapering stick, with hand-holes and finger-grips cut into
the lower end, and with a long groove running toward the small end,
which was finished with an ivory tip.

"I saw that thing in the boat," said John. "That must be what he means
by _nogock_. I don't see how they would kill a whale with it, though, or
anything else."

The chief evidently understood their ignorance. With a smile he fitted
to the groove of the short stick the shaft of a short harpoon, whose
head, about a foot and a half in length, they now discovered to be made
of thin, dark slate, ground sharp on each edge and at the point. When
the chief had fitted the butt of this dart against the ivory tip, he
grasped the lower end of the _nogock_ firmly in his hand, steadying the
shaft in the groove with one finger. He then drew this back, with his
arm at full length above his head, and made a motion as though to throw
the harpoon. In short, the boys now had an excellent chance to see one
of the oldest aboriginal inventions--the throwing-stick, used from
Australia to Siberia by various tribes in one form or another. As they
themselves had sometimes thrown a crab-apple from a stick in their
younger days in the States, they could readily see that the greater
length added to the arm gave greater leverage and power.

"I'll bet he could make that old thing whiz," muttered John. "Still, I
don't see how he could hurt a whale with it."

None of them knew at that time anything about the native Aleut method of
whale-killin