"Is it growing loose on the top?" he asked.
"No," said Stickine. "It comes right up from the bottom forty or fifty feet, and if there's a sea otter anywhere around you're likely to find him crawling in and out among it. Seen anything yet, Charley?"
A man in a boat astern of them shook his head. "I guess the Aleuts have them all corralled now, though there's no sign of any Indians here," he said. "Anyway, if there is one left this is the kind of place we should find him in."
Besting now and then upon their oars while the boat swung up and clown on the heave that lapped frothing about the reef, they pulled on, until at last the Indian in the bows raised his hand, and for five long minutes after that crouched motionless. No man moved or asked a question, and there was nothing visible but swaying weed and foam, or to be heard but the growling of the sea. Then the Indian signed again, and with oars dipping softly they crept nearer in, the man with the brown face crouching still and impassive with his hands clenched on the rifle barrel, though Appleby, glancing over his shoulder, could see nothing on the face of the froth-swept stone. He, however, knew that no one born in the cities could hope to equal the Indian's powers of vision, for it is the artificial life of an incomplete civilization that dulls the white man's physical faculties, and there were few things in which Donovitch, who lived in close touch with nature, was not a match for the beasts.
Suddenly the rifle went up, moved as the boat swung, and grew still again, while the crouching object in the bows stiffened rigidly. Nobody was rowing now, and the lads, glancing over their shoulders, could see the side of the Indian's face pressed down on the butt, and it and the brown fingers on the barrel were still and lifeless as copper. Then there was a flash, the muzzle jerked upwards, and the smoke was in their eyes, but so intent were they that the report scarcely reached them, and what they heard most plainly was a soft splash in the sea. As Appleby looked down something that left a train of bubbles behind it seemed to flash beneath the boat, and passed beyond his vision into the waving weed.
"Did you get him?" a voice rose from the other boat.
"No. Pull in between him and the second rock," said Stickine, and there was a splash of oars as Charley's boat slid away.
Then the Indian stood upright in the bows staring at the sea, and for a time the boats swung with the lift of swell, while the water trickled from the oars. Every eye was fixed on the long heave, but no more bubbles rose up, and there was nothing to be seen save when a great streamer of weed whirled and swayed beneath them as though it were an animate thing. How long this lasted the lads did not know, but the intent bronzed faces, smears of froth, grey sea, and drifting haze had all grown hazy before their straining eyes, when a rifle flashed in Charley's boat, and there was a shout, "Heading your way, played out!"
"Pull," said Stickine. "In towards the rock a stroke or two."
The boat slid forward and stopped. Once more the Indian's rifle flashed, and a hazy shape showed for a moment beneath them in the water. Then there was a shout from Charley, "Stop right where you are. One of us will get out on the rock."