surf roaring heavily.
Perhaps it was lucky they did not succeed in this attempt, for the boat
would no doubt have been crushed like an eggshell on the rocks. Instead,
they began to float down parallel with the coast, carried on the crest
of the big tide-bore which every day passes down the east coast of
Kadiak between the long, parallel islands which make an inland channel
many miles in extent. As the boys called now they could hear an echo on
each side of them, and indeed could see the loom of the rock-bound
shore; but all about them hissed and danced these fighting waves,
tossing the dory a dozen ways at once, and all the time there came
astern the long roll of the mighty Pacific in its power, the Japan
current and the coast tide in unison forcing a boiling current down the
rocky channel. Escape was hopeless.

"Boys," said Rob, his face perhaps a trifle pale, "we can't get out of
this. All we can do is to run."

The others looked at him silently.

"She's a splendid boat," went on Rob, trying to be cheerful. "She rides
like a chip. I believe if we keep low down she'll be safe, for it
doesn't seem to be getting any worse."

A powerful steamboat, if it were caught under precisely these
conditions, could have done little more than drift down the channel. The
boys resigned themselves to their fate. Now and again the fog shut down.
Wild cries of sea-birds were about them. Now and then the leap of a
great dolphin feeding in the tide splashed alongside, to startle them
yet more. Each moment, as they knew, carried them farther and farther
from their friends, and deeper and deeper into dangers whose nature
they could only guess.

"I wish we'd never left Valdez," said Jesse, at last, his lip beginning
to quiver.

"That's no way to talk," said Rob, sternly. "The right thing to do when
you're in a scrape is to try to get out of it. This tide can't run clear
round the world, because your uncle Dick said this island wasn't over
one hundred and fifty miles long, and there must be any number of bays
and coves. Pull some crackers out of that box and let's eat a bite."

"That's the talk," said John, more cheerfully. "We'll get ashore
somewhere. It's no use to worry."

John was always disposed to be philosophical; but the great peculiarity
about him was that he was continually hungry. He found the crackers now
rather dry and hard to eat, so worried open a can of tomatoes with his
hunting-knife, complaining all the time that the