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Detecting in this remark a criticism of his caution, Big George turned about and faced the speaker; but as he met Emerson's eye he checked the explosion, and, seizing his cap, bolted out into the cold to walk off his mad rage. "When is the boat due at Uyak?" Emerson asked. "'Most any time inside of a week." "How far is that from here?" "It ain't so far only about fifty miles."
"How?" growled the big man, sourly. "There's a large open skin-boat, an oomiak, down on the beach. We'll hire a crew of Indians to put us across to Uyak." "Can't be done," said Big George, still gruffly. "It's the wrong season. You know the Shelikof Straits is a bad place even for steamships at this time of year. They're like that Pass up yonder, only worse." "But it's only fifty miles across."
Bad weather held us fast several days, but we finally made the southeast corner of the island, and from there had good wind to Kadiak. On our way we passed Uyak, one of the blue fox islands. Raising these animals for their fur has become a regular business, and when furs are high it pays well.
It may take us forty-eight hours of constant paddling against wind and tide to make Uyak. George and I are fit enough, but you know you aren't " "Fingerless" Fraser turned violently upon the speaker. "Now, for Heaven's sake, cut that out, will you? Just because you happened to give me a little lift on this cussed Katmai Pass, I s'pose you'll never get done throwing it up to me.
Answer me!" The rotund man shrugged his fat shoulders. "She's got to call at Uyak Bay going east." Emerson looked up quickly, "Where is Uyak Bay?" "Over on Kodiak Island," Big George answered; then turned again to vent his spleen on the trader. "What right have them steamboat people got to cut out this place for an empty cannery? Why, there ain't nobody at Uyak.
"They don't have to come back that way; they can wait at Uyak for the next trip of the steamer. Why, I'm offering them more pay than they can make in ten years." "Better get them to do it," urged Big George. "You'll get the coin all back from them; they'll have to trade here."
It was nearly noon on the following day when the watchman at the Uyak cannery beheld a native canoe creeping slowly up the bay, and was astonished to find it manned by three white men in the last stages of exhaustion so stiff and cramped and numb that he was forced to help them from their places when at last they effected a landing.
Had the boys known it, they were, in their camp near the head of Kaludiak Bay, not more than thirty miles distant across the mountain passes to the head of Uyak Bay, which makes in on the west side of the island, and which was the first great inlet to be searched by the boat crews of the Bennington.
First touching the hatchery at Karluk and then the canneries at Uyak and Chignik, the mail boat visited the settlements on the Island of Unga, and thence covered swiftly the three hundred miles to Dutch Harbor and Unalaska. Again he was fortunate. Within a week he was berthed on a freighter, and on the twelfth day of June set foot in Nome.
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