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Updated: July 28, 2025
Now, a few fathoms at a time, the native edged the bidarka up toward his game, precisely as the Aleut chief had approached the whale. The dory, no longer rowed furiously, but now paddled silently by John and Skookie, approached on the other side.
When pressed for room, the Aleut has been known to crawl head foremost, body whole, right under the manhole and lie there prone between the feet of the paddlers with nothing between him and the abysmal depths of a hissing sea but the parchment keel of the bidarka, thin as paper.
"There are no splendid forests on the island as there are on the mainland, but the grasses are superb, for the fog and rain here keeps them green as emerald." "What a queer canoe that Indian has!" exclaimed Ted. "It isn't a bit like yours, Kalitan." "It is bidarka," said Kalitan. "Kadiak people make canoe out of walrus hide. They stretch it over frames of driftwood. It holds two people.
You all remember the day, when the gulls flew low, and the wind blew strong from the land, and I could not hold my bidarka against it. I tied the covering of the bidarka about me so that no water could get in, and all of the night I fought with the storm. And in the morning there was no land, only the sea, and the off-shore wind held me close in its arms and bore me along.
They sit in small hatch with apron all around their bodies, and the bidarka goes over the roughest sea and floats like a bladder. Big bidarka called an oomiak, and holds whole family." "Some one has called the bldarkas the 'Cossacks of the sea," said Mr. Strong. "They skim along like swallows, and are as perfectly built as any vessel I ever saw."
But Koogah, shoving Nam-Bok clear of the beach, tore the shawl from her shoulders and flung it into the bidarka. "It is cold in the long nights," she wailed; "and the frost is prone to nip old bones." "The thing is a shadow," the bone-scratcher answered, "and shadows cannot keep thee warm." Nam-Bok stood up that his voice might carry. "O Bask-Wah-Wan, mother that bore me!" he called.
"He's going to clean 'em out. They make all sorts of things. For instance, that hood around the bidarka is made out of this sort of thing, I believe. And then they make other outfits " "Kamelinka!" said Jimmy, suddenly, holding up a part of the intestines and smiling. He motioned to his own sleeves. "Da! Da!" exclaimed John, in Aleut language. "Yes, that's so! Sure!
Jimmy puts on his kamelinka, and gets in the bidarka and ties the hood around his waist, and there he is, no matter how high the sea runs. No water gets into the boat, and when he comes home he is dry as when he started. Pretty good scheme, isn't it?" They watched Jimmy for a time at his work before they finished stretching all the meat.
His gun, a rusty old affair, he left lying on the ground at his side. Rob kicked it away as he approached. They now saw how the Aleut had reached them. His boat, a long, native bidarka, lay in the creek, up which the native had paddled silently on his own errand of discovery. This boat interested the boys very much.
No one made any attempt to pursue the whale after that. The chief, carefully wiping off the sacred nogock, again wrapped it up in its coverings, made some mysterious passes over it, and restored it to its place in his bidarka, whence, as Rob now began to understand, the guilty Jimmy had some time since stolen it.
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