"The Dora's safe!"—but before they could reach the door, messenger and voice would be gone—fleeing on through the town.
At last he reached the Jessie Lee Missionary Home, at the end of the street, where a prayer-meeting was in progress. Undaunted, he flung wide the door, burst into the room, shouting, "The Dora's safe!"—and was gone. Instantly the meeting broke up, people sprang to their feet, and prayer gave place to a glad thanksgiving service.
When the Dora finally reached Unalaska once more, the whole town was in holiday garb. Flags were flying, and every one that could walk was on the wharf. Children, native and white, carried flags which they joyfully waved. Their welcome was enthusiastic and sincere, and the men on the boat were deeply affected.
The Dora is not a fine steamship, but she is stanch, seaworthy, and comfortable; and the islanders are as attached to her as though she were a thing of flesh and blood.
No steamer could have a twelve-hundred-mile route more fascinating than the one from Valdez to Unalaska. It is intensely lovely. Behind the gray cliffs of the peninsula float the snow-peaks of the Aleutian Range. Here and there a volcano winds its own dark, fleecy turban round its crest, or flings out a scarlet scarf of flame. There are glaciers sweeping everything before them; bold headlands plunging out into the sea, where they pause with a sheer drop of thousands of feet; and flowery vales and dells. There are countless islands—some of them mere bits of green floating upon the blue.
At times a kind of divine blueness seems to swim over everything. Wherever one turns, the eye is rested and charmed with blue. Sea, shore, islands, atmosphere, and sky—all are blue. A mist of it rests upon the snow mountains and goes drifting down the straits. It is a warm, delicate, luscious blue. It is like the blue of frost-touched grapes when the prisoned wine shines through.
Sand Point, a trading post on Unga Island, is a wild and picturesque place. It impressed me chiefly, however, by the enormous size of its crabs and starfishes, which I saw in great numbers under the wharf. Rocks, timbers, and boards were incrusted with rosy-purple starfishes, some measuring three feet from the tip of one ray to the tip of the ray nearly opposite. Smaller ones were wedged in between the rays of the larger ones, so that frequently a piling from the wharf to the sandy bottom of the bay, which we could plainly see, would seem to be solid starfish.
As for the crabs—they were so large that they were positively startling. They were three and four feet from tip to tip; yet their movements, as they floated in the clear green water, were exceedingly graceful.
Sand Point has a wild, weird, and lonely look. It is just the place for the desperate murder that was committed in the house that stands alone across the bay,—a dull and neglected house with open windows and banging doors.