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Updated: June 28, 2025
He continued to repeat these last words as though they would serve for the rest of the conversation. Rob, willing enough to accept his assurance of friendship, shook him by the hand, all the time, however, keeping his eyes open for the wild-looking group around him. "Come dat ways, bidarka!" said the chief, pointing to the beach beyond the sea-wall. "Hunt bad mans. You see-um bad mans? Him steal."
As the chief thrust the long, narrow craft into the water, steadying it with his paddle, Rob sprang in behind the rear hatch. In an instant they were off! Rob looked around to see Jesse and John both crowded together in the rear hatch of yet another bidarka, where they did what they could to help a swarthy boatman to propel their craft.
"I, too, have strange tales to tell," Nam-Bok stated insidiously. And, as they wavered, "And presents likewise." He pulled from the bidarka a shawl, marvelous of texture and color, and flung it about his mother's shoulders. The women voiced a collective sigh of admiration, and old Bask-Wah-Wan ruffled the gay material and patted it and crooned in childish joy.
Wherefore we send thee away, that our heads may remain clear and strong and be not troubled by the unaccountable things." "These things thou speakest of be shadows," Koogah took up the strain. "From the shadow-world thou hast brought them, and to the shadow-world thou must return them. Thy bidarka be ready, and the tribespeople wait. They may not sleep until thou art gone."
The head bidarka now passed steadily and swiftly on toward the great bulk of the whale, which lay plainly visible not more than a quarter of a mile away. As the other boats came on in squadron close behind, Rob could hear a sort of low, rhythmic humming, as though all the natives were joining in an incantation.
But the women and children laughed loudly, and there was a gentle mockery in their laughter, and her voice dwindled till her lips moved without sound. Koogah lifted his grizzled head from his bone-carving and followed the path of her eyes. Except when wide yawns took it off its course, a bidarka was heading in for the beach.
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 two ran first toward the dory, which lay on the sea-beach, where it had been left after the last voyage for eggs, but an instant later they turned back to the lagoon where the bidarka lay, and made motions that this should be carried across and launched. Rob and John hurried for their rifles. Jimmy caught up his bow and arrows, and the Aleut boy his short spear.
"If each bidarka were as a grain of sand," Nam-Bok defiantly continued, "and if there were as many bidarkas as there be grains of sand in this beach, still would they not make so big a canoe as this I saw on the morning of the fourth day. It was a very big canoe, and it was called a schooner. I saw this thing of wonder, this great schooner, coming after me, and on it I saw men "
The method of the natives who hunt the sea-otter is to make a surround with a fleet of bidarkas, much as they hunt the whale; but this, of course, was impossible now. None the less, Jimmy, who assumed the position of master of the hunt, motioned to the Aleut boy in the dory to keep off to the left, while he and Rob circled far to the right in the bidarka.
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