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Updated: July 28, 2025
Two of the men hoisted the bidarka on their shoulders and carried it up to the fire. Nam-Bok walked by the side of Opee-Kwan, and the villagers followed after, save those of the women who lingered a moment to lay caressing fingers on the shawl. There was little talk while the feast went on, though many and curious were the glances stolen at the son of Bask-Wah-Wan.
"All right!" agreed their leader. "Here, you, Jimmy, catch hold here! I'll show you a better way of getting this hide up to camp than carrying it there." He motioned that they should put the hide on the deck of the bidarka, and in time this was done, although the great weight of the green hide, a load for two strong men, sunk the bidarka so deeply that half its deck was covered.
Look! a bidarka, and one man who drives clumsily with a paddle!" Old Bask-Wah-Wan rose to her knees, trembling with weakness and eagerness, and gazed out over the sea. "Nam-Bok was ever clumsy at the paddle," she maundered reminiscently, shading the sun from her eyes and staring across the silver-spilled water. "Nam-Bok was ever clumsy. I remember...."
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.
He had long had a death feud with people of the next totem, but the bold warrior Yakaga, chieftain of the tribe, married the toyon's daughter, and there was no more feud. Zampa was the son of Kat-haya-koochat, and his pride. He built for this son a fine bidarka, and the boy launched it on the sea. His father watched him sail and called him to return, lest evil befall.
The whole contrivance is peculiarly aboriginal and unsuited to the uses of white men; and, while unusually seaworthy, the bidarka requires more skill in the handling than does a Canadian birch bark, hence the wits of the three travellers were taxed to the utmost.
"Ever did I say Nam-Bok would come back." "Ay, it is Nam-Bok come back." This time it was Nam-Bok himself who spoke, putting a leg over the side of the bidarka and standing with one foot afloat and one ashore. Again his throat writhed and wrestled as he grappled after forgotten words. And when the words came forth they were strange of sound and a spluttering of the lips accompanied the gutturals.
He lapsed into sullen silence again, and Opee-Kwan nudged Koogah, who shook his head with slow amazement and murmured, "It is very strange." Nam-Bok took the bait. "That is nothing," he said airily; "you should see the steamer. As the grain of sand is to the bidarka, as the bidarka is to the schooner, so the schooner is to the steamer. Further, the steamer is made of iron. It is all iron."
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.
None too happy, the boys now proceeded to paddle the bidarka up the creek to its old resting-place in the lagoon, after which they busied themselves rather half-heartedly about camp work, a part of which was further fleshing of the bear hides. As they were engaged at this they heard a faint rustling in the dry grass near at hand.
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