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Kio had never been so far; he had never been farther than this junction of the two streams, Towaskook had informed Jacques. So it was not fear that held David. It was the aloneness. He was taking a long mental breath. And, meanwhile, he was repairing his boots, and doctoring Baree's feet, bruised and sore by their travel over the shale of the mountain tops.
Barry, and the four seamen arrived at the beach, they saw the crew jumping into the sea; the truth now, with all its horrors, flashed upon his mind, that the vessel was attacked, and in an instant they jumped on board the boat and pushed off; at the same time a friendly rajah named Po Adam, sprang into the boat; he was the proprietor of a port and considerable property at a place called Pulo Kio, but three miles distant from the mouth of the river Quallah Battoo.
Kio wanted to make the warmth of the valley beyond, but those new muscles in David's legs and back declared otherwise. Strawberries were ripening in the deeper valleys, but up where they were it was cold. A bitter wind came off the snow on the peaks, and David could smell the pungent fog of the clouds.
But with its extension beyond the circle of official dignitaries, and its consequent severance from tradition and religious associations, whether real or nominal abdication changed its name. It was no longer termed 'niu do, but 'in kio, the old word being retained only in its strict religious meaning, and 'inkyo' is the term in use to-day.
In a few minutes the City of Washington, Kio Grande, Cherokee, Iroquois and Whitney followed. As these boats picked their way through the anchored fleet men shouted and bands played. Every vessel elicited a wild display of enthusiasm. These were the only vessels to depart in the forenoon, some of them going over to St. Petersburg to procure water.
Kio was not like his eyes. He turned out, very shortly, to be a communicative and rather likable young fellow. He was ignorant of the white man's talk.
But he was a master of gesticulation; and when, in climbing their first mountain, David discovered muscles in his legs and back that he had never known of before, Kio laughingly sympathized with him and assured him in vivid pantomime that he would soon get used to it. Their first night they camped almost at the summit of the mountain.
Early on the eleventh day they came to the confluence of the Pitman and the Stikine rivers, and a little later Kio turned back on his homeward journey, and David and Baree were alone. This aloneness fell upon them like a thing that had a pulse and was alive. They crossed the Divide and were in a great sunlit country of amazing beauty and grandeur, with wide valleys between the mountains.
It was as vast as the mountains that shut him in. Somewhere, miles to the east of him now, was Kio. That was all. He knew that he would never be able to describe it, this loneliness or aloneness; one man, and a dog, with a world to themselves.
Jacques had assured him of that, and Kio had pantomimed it, pointing many times at the broad, shallow stream that ran ahead of him. All he had to do was to follow the river. In time, many weeks, of course, it would bring him to the white settlement on the ocean. Long before that he would strike Firepan Creek.
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