er or so apiece, which Rob doled
out to them from their scanty supply.

"We ought to keep what we have as long as we can," said Rob. "For
instance, we've only a couple of boxes of matches, and we must not waste
one if we can help it. We'll look around after awhile and see if we can
scare up a frying-pan. But now I move that the first thing we do be to
explore our country just a little bit."

"Agreed," said John, who was now well fed and contented. "Suppose we
walk down to the mouth of the creek over there."

Following along the winding shores of the small stream, which here at
high tide was not above the level of the sea, they found themselves
finally at the angle between the creek and the open bay, beyond the end
of the low sea-wall which has earlier been mentioned. The creek here
turned in sharply toward the foot of the mountain, and across from where
the boys stood a sheer rock wall rose several hundred feet. This shut
off the view of a part of the bay on that side, but in other directions
they could see the white-topped waves rolling, eight or ten miles across
to the farther side, where there were many other bays making back among
the mountains.

Out in the bay where the stream emptied, schools of salmon, apparently
thousands in number, were flinging themselves into the air as they
started toward the mouth of the creek. At the last angle of the stream,
where it turned against the rock wall, there was a pool perhaps fifty
feet across and twenty feet in depth, and as the boys looked down into
this it seemed literally packed with hundreds and thousands of great
salmon, which swam around and around before picking out the current of
the stream up which they were to swim.

"Here's fish enough for us whenever we want any," said Rob. "We can
catch them here without much trouble, I think."

"I don't know, we may not be so badly off here for a while, after all,"
admitted John.

"Just look at the gulls," said Jesse, idly shying a pebble at one great
bird as it came screaming along close above them, to join its kind in
the great flocks that circled around above the salmon, which they were
helpless to feed upon, not being equipped with beak and talons like the
eagles.

"Yes," said Rob, "thousands of them. And every pair of them with a nest
somewhere, and every nest with two eggs, and a good many of them good to
eat. Do you see those tall, ragged rocks out there? That looks to me
like their nesting-ground."

"But we c