When Phil Ryder stepped from the bidarrah, or big open boat, in which he had made the six-mile trip from St. Paul to Walrus Island, and clambered up over the slippery rocks of the latter, he was nearly stunned by the volume of sound that ceaselessly rises from it. The shrieks of myriads of startled sea-fowl, the rapid beating of their pinions resembling a low roll of thunder, the gruntings, croakings, and hissings of sitting birds that refused to leave their splotched and dirt-smeared eggs, the roar of walrus, and the boom of surf, combined to form a pandemonium of sound at once deafening and distracting.
“How can I spend a night here?” thought Phil; “and what a fool I was to come.”
He was standing, bewildered by the awful racket, with arms bent above his head, to defend it from the whizzing flight of clumsy birds that shot through the air in every direction; two enraged burgomaster gulls, whose nests his feet were invading, were pecking savagely at his legs, and he was just meditating a retreat, when some one pulled his sleeve. Turning, he was amazed to see the sea-lion hunter, who could speak English, and whom he had left nearly two hours before on Northeast Point.
As the latter could not make himself heard above the horrible din, he was pointing to the tiny cove in which lay the bidarrah. There, to Phil’s greater surprise, he saw his friend Serge Belcofsky fending off from the rocks a two-holed bidarkie that tossed, light as an egg-shell, on the heaving waters.
“What on earth brought you here?” he shouted, as soon as he had scrambled to his comrade’s side.
“You did,” answered Serge. “The Phoca is about to sail, and I’ve come for you. So step in quick, and let’s be off. The hunter who came with me is going to stay in your place, and come back in the bidarrah.”
“All right,” replied Phil; “I’m more than willing to leave this beastly rookery, and more than anxious to start for Sitka. I must have a few of those eggs, though, for I promised Miss Matthews some for her collection.”
Within two minutes as many dozen eggs of all sizes and varieties had been collected and stowed in the after-part of the bidarkie. Phil slipped into the forward hatch and fastened his kamleika about its coaming, while Serge assumed his position aft, and made the second hatch equally water-tight with the hunter’s over-garment which he had borrowed.
It was nearly dark, and they could see a fog-bank rolling sullenly in from the southward. Even the native who held their canoe began to grow apprehensive. “Me fraid you no get,” he said; “mebbe you stay here better till morning.”
“Oh, we’ll get!” shouted Phil, confidently. “Anyhow, I’d rather run the risk than to miss our one chance of a passage to Sitka. So shove off, Serge. Good-bye!”