All this, of course, was more or less Greek to the boys who stood watching the thinning party, as one bidarka after another was skilfully run out through the surf and as skilfully put under way in the long swell of the sea. At last a well-known figure detached itself from a group where he had been talking and approached them. The Aleut chief addressed himself once more to Rob.
“My peoples go now,” he said. “Me like-um lifle.”
“When you go Kadiak?” asked Rob.
“Maybe seven week, four week, ten—nine week all light, all light, all light,” said the chief, amiably. “You make-um talk-talk ting. Give me! You give-um lifle now.”
Rob turned to the other boys.
“We’ll hold a council,” said he. “Now, what do you think is best to do?”
The others remained silent for a time.
“Well,” said Jesse, at length, “I want to go home pretty bad. He can have my rifle if he wants it, if he’ll take a letter out to John’s Uncle Dick at Kadiak.”
“I think it’s best,” said John. “We’ll have two rifles left, and that will be all we really need. Let’s go and write the note and take the chance of its ever getting out. Anyway, it is the best we can do.”
They returned to the barabbara, where Rob wrote as plainly as he could, with deep marks of the pencil, as follows: