The commanding officer of the United States revenue-cutter Phoca was a far shrewder man than Captain Duff had given him credit for being. Although he had been disappointed at not overhauling the Seamew before darkness hid her from view, he by no means gave up all hope of capturing the saucy schooner, cleverly as she had escaped him for the time being. Watching her through a powerful glass, long after she was lost to the unaided vision, he noted that she was gradually hauling on the wind, and shaped his own course accordingly. Shortly before daylight he stopped his engines, and set a dozen pair of the keenest ears among his crew to listening for any sounds that might come over the fog-obscured waters. He, too, heard the splashing of frolicking seals, and wisely concluded that a skipper who was so anxious to secure a few skins as to be willing to run the risk of hunting them in Bering Sea would, in his present state of fancied security, try for a few more before leaving it for good. Not long after this the correctness of his judgment was proved by the sound of shots borne faintly down the wind through the heavy air. Quickly was the Phoca got under way, and stealthily, like the white ghost of a ship, she sped through the mist in the direction of the shots.
“We’ll pick up the hunting-boats and their crews first,” said the commander to his first-lieutenant. “Then Mr. Skipper will find himself too short-handed to make sail in a hurry, and I rather guess that, like Davy Crockett’s coon, he will conclude to come down.”
The plan worked so well that in less than an hour from that time Captain Duff, Ike Croly, Oro Dunn, and the rest of the Seamew’s company found themselves prisoners on board the revenue-cutter Phoca, while their own craft was in charge of a prize-crew of bluejackets detailed for that duty.
In the excitement attending this capture, and the hurried transfer of crews, the fact that a boat containing the schooner’s mate and two others was missing was entirely overlooked until the vessels were again under way. Then, though guns were fired, and several hours were spent in search for the lost boat, no trace of it was found. In the meantime the wind freshened so rapidly into a gale that finally, fearful for the safety of the craft in his charge, with the rugged rocks of the Aleutian Islands under their lee, the commander gave the reluctant order to run for a pass, and the open waters of the Pacific.
Thus it happened that the boat in whose occupants we are most interested was left tossing alone on the storm-lashed waters of that desolate sea. Although its crew were thus placed in a most unpleasant and even dangerous position, it was one for which they had only themselves to blame. So close had the Phoca passed to them that they might easily have hailed her and been picked up, had they chosen to do so. Instead of this they kept perfectly quiet, or only conversed in low tones, and congratulated each other that, owing to Phil’s firmness, no shots by which their presence would have been betrayed had been fired from their boat that morning. Their reason for this action was that they were unanimous in desiring to escape capture—Jalap Coombs, because he had no liking for an imprisonment, or at least a long residence on shore in enforced idleness; Phil, because his heart was set on reaching Sitka as soon as possible, and he fancied the captured schooner would be taken to Seattle or San Francisco; and Serge on the general theory that it is a bad thing to be captured under any circumstances.
Besides, when by the sounds that came over the sea the mate felt assured that the Seamew had been taken, he proposed a plan which seemed so feasible that both lads readily agreed to it.