Rob was silent for a time, but at last remarked: “From what I hear of this Kadiak country, I believe we’re going to like it. When’ll we get there?”
Uncle Dick smiled. “Oh, sometime within a week,” he answered. “Distances are long up here, and wind and tide have something to do with even a steamer’s speed.”
IV
LOST IN THE FOG
Sure enough, it took five days more of steady steaming before the Nora approached the shores of far-off Kadiak Island. In the nighttime the boys heard the steamer’s whistle going, and knew that Captain Zim was sounding the echoes to get his bearings in the thick weather then prevailing. Sea-captains on those shores, when the fog is thick, keep the whistle going, and when they hear the echoes from the rocks too plainly they make outward to the open sea.
The Nora crawled down the coast of Afognak Island in the fog and the dark, but finally cast her anchor as near as could be told off the entrance to the narrow channel of Kadiak Harbor. Here she sounded her whistle for more than an hour at short intervals, waiting for a pilot to come out. At last, soon after those on board had finished breakfast, they heard the sound of oars out in the fog and a rough voice calling through a megaphone: “Steamer ahoy! What boat is that?”
“Nora, from Valdez,” answered Captain Zim. “Are you the pilot?”
“Ay, ay!” came the voice through the fog.