Rob's answer was to make a spring for the top of the ladder, and down he
went hand over hand, followed by the others, each of whom could climb
like a squirrel. The two natives, grinning, reached up and steadied them
as they reached the jumping dory. The boys insisted on having their
blankets and rifles in the boat with them--a part of Alaska education
which had been taught them by old prospectors.

Pete shouted something over the rail in the Aleut tongue. At once the
two natives bent to their oars, and the dory slipped away into the fog.
Uncle Dick, busy with hunting out his luggage for the long-boat, did not
at first miss it from the foot of the ladder.

"Hello! Where did that dory go?" he asked, finally. In the confusion no
one answered him. So at last he concluded his own work in loading the
long-boat and went overside, ordering the boat's crew to give way
together, strongly, in order to overtake the dory.

But when the long-boat, after feeling its way down the narrow channel,
emerged from the fog and pulled up at Kadiak dock there was no dory
there.

"Hello, there, Jimmy!" cried Uncle Dick to the manager of the warehouse
at the dock. "Where's that boat?"

"What boat do you mean, sir?" answered the other.

"Why, Pete's dory. We just sent it in by two natives, with three boys
I've got along--friends and relatives of mine."

"You're joking, sir. You can't have brought boys away up here. Besides,
they haven't showed up here at the dock, nor any dory, either."

"They must have got into the other channel mouth in the fog and gone
down Wood Island way," said Uncle Dick, at last, beginning to be
troubled.

"Well, if an Aleut can do anything wrong, that's what he's going to do,"
answered the dock-master. "We'll have to send a boat over there after
those people yet. By-the-way, Captain Barker, of the _Bennington_, is
waiting for you. And he told me to tell you to come aboard in Pete's
dory as soon as you struck the town."

"But the dory's gone," commented Uncle Dick. "I don't like the look of
this."

Both men, with lips compressed, stood staring out into the heavy blanket
of fog.

V

THE MISSING DORY

What happened was this: The two natives in the dory were unable to
understand English, and of course the three boys knew nothing of the
native language. Yet from the hasty instruction of the pilot, Pete, the
natives had gathered that "the boss gentleman"--that is to say, Uncle
Dick--wanted to go to t