“Yes,” said Jesse, “if we had only thought of it last week, they probably would not have been able to fly at all—flappers, they call those young birds. Then we might possibly have killed some of them in the grass at the head of the lagoon.”
“We could kill all we wanted now with the rifles,” commented Rob; “but, as I said awhile ago, I don’t think we ought to use rifle ammunition for killing birds. No one can tell how much we may need our cartridges later on. No, I don’t think we will get any geese unless we can catch them with our hands. I haven’t much faith in those throwing-cords that Skookie was showing us.”
John turned to his friend Skookie. “S’pose you catch-um geese, Skookie?” he asked.
The Aleut boy surprised them very much by his sudden use of English.
“Sure!” he said. He had perhaps learned this word from associating with whites somewhere down the coast.
His prompt reply made them all laugh, but none the less it was of yet greater interest than this.
“How do you mean, Skookie?” asked Rob. “How can you catch a goose when you have no gun? You can’t get close enough.”
It was always a problem how much English the Aleut understood or did not understand. Now he made his answer by diving into the back of the barabbara and coming out with the curious bunch of thongs which the boys had noticed him carrying when they first encountered him on the beach—a dozen thongs attached to a common centre, each being a couple of yards in length, and each bearing at its extremity a perforated ivory ball perhaps of an ounce or so in weight.
“Well, that don’t look very much like a goose-hunt to me,” said John; “but it seems to me I’ve read about the Eskimos using something of this sort. Maybe it’ll work on geese, though it looks like a mighty funny kind of shot-gun to me.”