he coast,
the folks in authority would have a record of it. They would call the
thing piracy--and, in a sense, they'd be justified."

He was silent for a few moments, and then looked up again wearily.

"I wonder," he remarked, "how that boat's crew ever got across to
Kamtchatka. It was north of the islands where the man brought Dunton the
message."

Dampier understood that Wyllard desired to change the subject, for this
was a question they had often discussed already.

"Well," he replied, "I still hold to my first notion. They were blown
ashore on the beach we have just left, and made prisoners. Then a supply
schooner or perhaps a steamer came along, and they were sent off in her
to be handed over to the authorities. The vessel put in somewhere. We'll
say she was lying in an inlet with a boat astern, and somehow our
friends cut that boat loose in the dark, and got away in her."

He broke off for a moment to look at his companion significantly.

"You can find quite a few points where that idea seems to fail," he
added. "They were in Kamtchatka, but I'm beginning to feel that we shall
never know any more than that."

Wyllard made a gesture of concurrence, but in his face Dampier saw no
sign that he meant to abandon his project. He seemed to sink into sleep,
and the skipper, who went up on deck, paced to and fro a while before he
stopped by the wheel and turned to the helmsman.

"You can let her come up a couple of points. We may as well make a
little southing while we can," he said.

Charly, who was steering, looked up with suggestive eagerness. "Then
he's not going for the Aleutians?"

"No," answered Dampier dryly. "I was kind of afraid of that, but I
choked him off. Anyway, this year won't see us back in Vancouver." He
paused. "We're going to stay up here until we find out where those men
left their bones. The man who has this thing in hand isn't the kind that
lets up."

Charly made no answer, but his face hardened as he put his helm down a
spoke or two.

Next day the wind fell lighter, but for a week it still held westerly,
and after that it blew moderately fresh from the south. Crippled as she
was, the _Selache_ would lie a point or two south of east when they had
set an old cut-down fore-staysail on what was left of her mainmast. The
hearts of her crew became lighter as she crawled on across the Pacific.
The men had no wish to be blown back to the frozen North.

The days were growing shorter rapidly,