e might silently materialize at a moment's notice; but we
were not idle. Now and again our paddles beat the water impetuously, and
they hung dripping, while the sea stretched around us as we leisurely
drifted on like a larger bubble in danger of bursting upon an
unexpected rock. We sounded frequently. There was an abundance of
water--there nearly always is throughout the Alaskan archipelago; enough
and to spare; but the abrupt shore might be but a stone's-throw from us
on the one hand or the other.

What was to be done? In the vast stillness we blew a blast on our shrill
whistle, and listened for the echo. Sometimes it returned to us almost
on the instant and we cried, "Halt!" When we halted or veered off,
creeping as it were on the surface of the oily sea, sometimes a faint or
far-off whisper--"the horns of elf-land"--gave us assurance of plenty of
space and the sea-room we were sorely in need of just then. Once we saw
looming right under our prow a little islet with a tuft of fir-trees
crowning it--the whole worthy to be made the head-piece or tail-piece to
some poem on solitude. It was very picturesque; but it seemed to be
crouching there, lying in wait for us, ready to arch its back the moment
we came within reach. The rapidity with which we backed out of that
predicament left us no time for apologies.

Again we got some distance up the wrong channel. When the fog lifted for
a moment, we discovered the error, put about without more ado, and went
around the block in a hurry. Meanwhile we had schooled our ears to
detect the most delicate shades of sound; to measure or weigh each
individual echo with an accuracy that gave us the utmost
self-satisfaction. Perhaps Captain Carroll or Captain George, who was
spying out the land with his ears, would not have trusted the ship in
our keeping for five minutes--but no matter.

Presently the opaque atmosphere began to dissolve away; and as the sun
brushed the webs from his face, and darted sharp beams upon the water
all at once in a shower, the fog-banks went to pieces and rolled away in
sections out of sight, like the transformation scene in a Christmas
pantomime. And there we were in the very centre of the smiling island
world, with splendid snow peaks towering all about us; and such a flood
of blue sky and bluer water, golden sunshine and gilded fields of snow,
of jutting shores clad in perennial verdure, and eagles and sea-birds
wheeling round about us, as can be seen nowh