g, steady jerks. Before long he gave a
short grunt and began to pull it in rapidly hand over hand. Rob and
Jesse, gazing over the side, at length saw the gleam of a large fish
deep down in the water. The Aleut, with another grunt, pulled the fish
in, swung it over the sides, and threw it flopping at the bottom of the
dory. It was a fine codfish weighing perhaps a dozen pounds.

"Well, I'll say one thing," said Jesse, finally, smiling: "since we have
to make a living for ourselves, this is about as easy as any country we
could have gotten into. Try it again, Jimmy."

Whether or not Jimmy understood any English they never knew, but at
least he cast over his bone hook once more, and, continuing his
operations as the dory slowly drifted, in less than half an hour he had
eight fine fish aboard.

"That'll do, old man!" said Rob to him, and motioned to him now to row
into the mouth the creek which was nearly opposite. They now could see
John waiting for them on the shore. He had seen them fishing, and
congratulated them on their fine catch, agreeing with Jesse that
certainly they at least would not lack abundance to eat.

"I've heard you can make salt by boiling sea-water," said John, who,
although a hearty eater, was sometimes rather particular about his food.
"That is almost the only thing we need that we haven't got now. Our
little sack won't last forever."

"Yes," said Rob, "it would be all the better for our bear meat in this
moist climate. But we'll have to do the best we can by drying it with
smoke."

They now pulled the dory into the mouth of the little creek, turning it
at the face of the high rock wall, and noticing the thousands of salmon
that swam round and round the deep pool just above the entrance of the
stream. From this point up the crooked bends to the place where the dead
bears lay was perhaps a quarter of a mile. But presently they all met
there.

"There is pretty near a ton of meat," said Rob, looking down at the dead
bears. "We ought to have skinned those young bears yesterday, but will
do that now before they spoil. Then maybe we can make Jimmy understand
what we want to do about saving the meat."

They all fell to work now, the boys at one of the cubs and the Aleut at
the other. The latter, with a grin of triumph, held up his fresh hide
entirely skinned out before the three boys together had finished theirs.
In some way he seemed to understand what they wished to have done about
the meat, perh