r there. See them flying--there's a string nearly a mile long."

"I see them! I see them!" called out Rob. "There are thousands and
thousands of them. I've seen them before, and one of the sailors told me
that there is always most of them where there are whales around. They
seem to feed on the same sort of things in the water, someway."

"There are plenty of things you see up in this country," said Uncle
Dick, as he turned away. "You may have thought Valdez was pretty much
all of Alaska, but I'll show you it is just the beginning."

"Do they have shipwrecks up here, Uncle Dick?" asked John. "It looks to
me pretty rocky along these shores."

"Don't talk about shipwrecks!" replied his uncle. "This coast is full of
them. I can show you the skeletons of four ships within two hours' sail
of Kadiak, and how many small boats go ashore, never to be heard of, no
man can tell. There are big ships lost, too, up and down this coast.
Last year the natives below Kadiak brought in casks and boxes and all
kinds of things bearing the name of the steamer _Oregon_. She was
wrecked far to the south of Valdez, but the Japan Current carried her
wreckage a thousand miles to the north and west, and threw it on the
coast of Kadiak and the smaller islands west of there. It made the
natives rich, they found so much in the way of supplies."

"Are there any bears out there?" asked Jesse, wonderingly.

"Biggest in the world!" replied Uncle Dick. "You'd better keep away from
them. We're sailing now just south of the great Kenai Peninsula of
Alaska. There's bears over there, but mostly black ones. Plenty of moose
and caribou in these mountains, and once in a while a grizzly, but the
biggest grizzlies are the brown bears of Kadiak and the peninsula on
beyond."

Rob was silent for a time, but at last remarked: "From what I hear of
this Kadiak country, I believe we're going to like it. When'll we get
there?"

Uncle Dick smiled. "Oh, sometime within a week," he answered. "Distances
are long up here, and wind and tide have something to do with even a
steamer's speed."

IV

LOST IN THE FOG

Sure enough, it took five days more of steady steaming before the _Nora_
approached the shores of far-off Kadiak Island. In the nighttime the
boys heard the steamer's whistle going, and knew that Captain Zim was
sounding the echoes to get his bearings in the thick weather then
prevailing. Sea-captains on those shores, when the fog is thick, keep
the