w present travelled
together, it was certain that they could find no adequate shelter
unless they constructed it for themselves; and the Aleut, after all, is
not like the American Indian, who makes himself comfortable where night
finds him, but is rather a village-dweller, who rarely wanders farther
from home than a day's journey or so in his bidarka.

All this, of course, was more or less Greek to the boys who stood
watching the thinning party, as one bidarka after another was skilfully
run out through the surf and as skilfully put under way in the long
swell of the sea. At last a well-known figure detached itself from a
group where he had been talking and approached them. The Aleut chief
addressed himself once more to Rob.

"My peoples go now," he said. "Me like-um lifle."

"When you go Kadiak?" asked Rob.

"Maybe seven week, four week, ten--nine week all light, all light, all
light," said the chief, amiably. "You make-um talk-talk ting. Give me!
You give-um lifle now."

Rob turned to the other boys.

"We'll hold a council," said he. "Now, what do you think is best to do?"

The others remained silent for a time.

"Well," said Jesse, at length, "I want to go home pretty bad. He can
have my rifle if he wants it, if he'll take a letter out to John's
Uncle Dick at Kadiak."

"I think it's best," said John. "We'll have two rifles left, and that
will be all we really need. Let's go and write the note and take the
chance of its ever getting out. Anyway, it is the best we can do."

They returned to the barabbara, where Rob wrote as plainly as he could,
with deep marks of the pencil, as follows:

"_Mr. Richard Hazlett, Kadiak_.

"DEAR SIR,--We are all right, but don't know where we are, or what
date this is, or which way Kadiak is. We came down in the dory.
Travelled all night. Are safe and have plenty to eat, but want to
go home. Please send for us, and oblige

"Yours truly, ----."

"Do you think that'll do all right, boys?" he asked.

The others nodded assent, and so each signed his name. Folding up the
paper and tying it in a piece of the membrane which he cut off a corner
of his _kamelinka_, Rob finally gave the packet to the old chief.

"Plenty talk-talk thing," he said. "You bring peoples--get-um
schooner--my peoples give-um flour, sugar, two rifle, hundred dollars."

Without further comment than a grunt the old chief stowed the packet in
an