on each side of the wound, and this seemed to be all the attention they
paid to the preparation of the flesh for food. As the rain was now
falling steadily they did not pause to build fires, but here and there a
man could be seen eating raw whale meat, cutting off the strip close to
his lips with his knife, in the curious fashion which always seems to
the white race so repulsive.

The young Aleut looked among the pieces of flesh as they were carried
high up the bank of sea-wall, and at last selected a few smaller
portions which he carried with him when at last the boys turned back
toward the barabbara. He also got a good-sized sack of salt and one or
two battered cooking utensils. It was plain that whatever his relatives
might wish to do, or whatever right they had to turn intruders out of
their own barabbara, he himself intended to cast in his lot with the
white boys.

The latter knew no alternative but to allow matters to stand as they
did. The gloomy weather, however, oppressed their spirits. They had now
been gone from civilization for a considerable time, and if truth be
told they were becoming not a little uneasy about their situation. They
had no means of telling how far the settlement might be, and they were
indeed as completely lost as though they were a thousand miles from any
white man's home. As a matter of fact, the part of the great island
where they now were cast away had scarcely been visited by a white man,
on an average, once in twenty years since the days of the Russian
occupancy.

Most of that day they spent inside the barabbara waiting for the rain to
cease; but as the clouds broke away in the afternoon they ventured out
once more to see what was going on along the beach.

"Why, look there!" said Rob, pointing toward the mouth of the bay.
"They're leaving--half of them are gone already!"

Rough as the sea now was, and heavily loaded as were all the boats with
the flesh of the whale, it was none the less obvious that members of the
party were starting out for home, perhaps disposed to this by the
discomfort of life in rough weather with no better shelter than they
could find on this somewhat barren coast. These natives nearly always
hunt in districts where they know there can be found a barabbara or so,
and such huts are used as common property by all who find them, although
the loose title of ownership probably rests in the man or family who
first erected them. When so large a party as that no