Читать книгу The Untamed American Spirit: Historical Novels & Western Adventures - Emerson Hough - Страница 23

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Of course the boys could not help joining the hurrying throng which now was thickening about the stranded whale. John and Jesse were much excited, but Rob remained more sober and thoughtful, even as they finally stood on the beach where the Aleuts were working at the giant carcass of the whale, which, pierced by a half-dozen lances and bristling with short harpoons, was now quite dead, and fastened to the shore by a score of strong hide lines.

“There’s the whale all right,” said he to his two friends. “It’s a good thing for these people, I suppose; but it’s a very bad thing for us.”

Jesse looked at him in inquiry, and Rob went on:

“Don’t you see that they’ll camp here now for days, and maybe weeks? They’ll eat this thing as long as it is fit to eat, and probably a good deal longer; and meantime they are not going to take out any word from us to the settlements, if they really intend to go there at all.”

“That’s so,” said John. But his hopeful temperament cast off troubles readily. “We can’t do anything more than just wait, anyhow; and I suppose that our friend here” — he motioned to the Aleut boy — “will see that we get our share of the whale meat.”

The boys now saw that whale-hunting among the Aleuts is a partnership affair, a whole village sharing equally in the spoils. Every man of the party now went to work. Some of them mounted the slippery back of the dead whale and hacked away at the hide, laying bare strips of the thick white blubber. Skilfully enough, for those possessing no better tools, they got off long strips of the blubber, which they carried high up the beach above the tide. Some of them carefully worked at the side of the whale where the deadly harpoon had done its work. Cutting down, they disclosed the broken head of slate buried deep in the body of the whale, the wound now surrounded by a wide region of inflamed and bloodshot flesh. This they carefully cut out for a distance of two or three feet 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 now 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 inside pocket of his feather jacket, and swung Jesse’s rifle under his arm, not neglecting the ammunition. He had eaten heavily of whale meat and seemed to be pretty well beyond emotion of any sort. Certainly he turned and did not even say good-bye to his son as he swung into the front hatch of his bidarka, followed by another paddler, and headed toward the mouth of the bay, almost the last of the little craft to leave the coast.

The boys stood looking after him carefully. The presence of these natives had, it is true, offered a certain danger, or at least a certain problem, but now that they were gone the place seemed strangely lonesome, after all. Rob heard a little sound and turned.

Jesse was not exactly crying, but was struggling with himself.

“Well,” he admitted, “I don’t care! I do want to go home!”