“Well, we may be able to go inside, hunting, before long,” said Jesse, stoutly. “My father doesn’t care if I go with him.”
“How would you like to go over to Kadiak with me?” asked Uncle Dick, directly, looking at them keenly from his gray eyes.
“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Rob. The three gathered round him.
“Are you going over there right away?” asked Jesse, staring up at him.
Uncle Dick nodded. “Same boat,” he answered. “I’m going on with the Yucatan to Seward, and will take the Nora from there to Kadiak. Chance of your life to spend the summer, if your mothers will say the word. And not to hurry you any, you’ve got just about an hour and a quarter to get ready—that is to say, to get consent and get ready both.”
The three boys hardly stopped to hear the last of his words. They were off, running at top speed across the long sidewalk toward the town. Uncle Dick followed them at his leisure, talking and telling the news to his acquaintances, of whom he had many in the town. He explained to these that the government work in soundings would be done by the revenue cutter Bennington, along the shores of Kadiak Island, for the next four months. Now, although to those unfamiliar with Alaska, Valdez may seem as far away as Kadiak, the latter really is some hundreds of miles farther to the northwest, and near the base of that long peninsula which tapers to a point in the Aleutian Islands. A dweller in a coast town in Alaska knows what goes on immediately about him. There were few in Valdez who knew more of Kadiak than they did of Kamchatka.
“G’long there, ye young rascals!” called out a hearty voice at the fleeing boys. Captain John Ryan waved a cap toward them as he came down the gang-plank. But the boys, usually ready enough to visit with him on his stops at Valdez, were now too much excited to more than wave their hands as they disappeared.
“So ye’re plannin’ to take the rascals along with us, west, are ye?” asked Captain John Ryan of Uncle Dick. “A summer out there would be the makin’ of the youngsters.”
Uncle Dick’s eyes wrinkled in a smile as he and the sturdy sea-captain started on down and walked to the town. At the farther end they were met by the three boys and by three nice-looking ladies, each prosperous-looking and well dressed, and each bearing a very anxious expression of countenance.
“I tell you it’s absolutely absurd, Richard,” began one of these, as they approached—“your putting such notions into the heads of these boys.”