"Too bad you didn't get in last night," said the care-taker, sympathetically. "She won't be back now for a month or more."
"How long will she lie in Kodiak?" Big George asked.
"The captain told me he was going to spend Christmas there. Lefs see—to-day is the 22nd—she'll pull out for Juneau on the morning of the 26th; that's three days."
"We must catch her," cried Emerson, quickly. "If you'll land us in
Kodiak on time I'll pay you anything you ask."
"I'd like to, but I can't," the man replied. "You see, I'm here all alone, except for Johnson. He's the watchman for the other plant."
"Then for God's sake get us some natives. I don't care what it costs."
"There ain't any natives here. This ain't no village. There's nothing here but these two plants, and Johnson or me dassent leave."
Emerson turned his eyes upon the haggard man who sprawled weakly in a chair; and Fraser, noting the appeal, answered, gamely, with a forced smile on his lips, though they were drawn and bloodless:
"Sure! I'll be ready to leave in the morning, pal!"
The old Russian village of Kodiak lies on the opposite side of the island from the canneries, a bleak, wind-swept relic of the country's first occupation, and although peopled largely by natives and breeds, there is also a considerable white population, to whom Christmas is a season of thanksgiving and celebration. Hence it was that the crew of the Dora were well content to pass the Yuletide there, where the girls are pretty and a hearty welcome is accorded to every one. There were drinking and dancing and music behind the square-hewn log walls, and the big red stoves made havoc with the salt wind. The town was well filled and the merrymaking vigorous, and inasmuch as winter is a time of rest, during which none but the most foolhardy trust themselves to the perils of the sea, it caused much comment when late on Christmas afternoon an ice-burdened canoe, bearing three strange white men, landed on the beach beside the dock—or were they white men, after all? Their faces were so blackened and split from the frost they seemed to be raw bleeding masks, their hands were cracked and stiff beneath their mittens. They were hollow-eyed and gaunt, their cheeks sunken away as if from a wasting illness, and they could not walk, but crept across the snow-covered shingle on hands and knees, then reaching the street hobbled painfully, while their limbs gave way as if paralyzed. One of them lacked strength even to leave the canoe, and when two sailors ran down and lifted him out, he gabbled strangely in the jargon of the mining camp and the gambling table. Of the other two, one, a great awkward shambling giant of a creature, stumbled out along the dock toward the ship, his head hung low and swinging from side to side, his shoulders drooping, his arms loose-hinged, his knees bending.