[CHAPTER VIII.]
ALIVE OR DEAD?
It seemed to Tom that he had hardly been asleep five minutes, when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Wake up, my boy! Baranov is on the wharf, waiting for you.”
With only half his wits about him, and a vague remembrance of his experience the previous year, Tom sprang up hastily, crying out, “Is there a fire?” Then he saw his father’s expression, amused, but a little anxious, and remembered the plan for the day.
“What are you up for, father?” he asked, as he scrambled into his thick traveling suit. “You ought to be sound asleep in your berth.”
Mr. Percival smiled, in reply. “I wanted to see you start,” he said simply. Ah, these patient, loving, anxious fathers and mothers who get up early to see their children start, and sit up late to welcome them home! How little we think of it when we are boys—how the recollection of it all, and of our own heedlessness comes to us, in after years!
Fred was already up, as he shared Tom’s stateroom on the steamer. In a few minutes more they were out in the sweet morning air, and, stepping softly and speaking in low tones, not to disturb the sleepers, they passed through the gangway and down to the wharf, accompanied by Mr. Percival.
The sun was just rising, and the whole sky was golden with its coming, over the dark eastern hills. It would be an hour or more before his first rays would rest on the house-tops of Juneau.
There was the old hunter, leaning against one of the mooring-posts, and looking off over the quiet Sound, to the dim blue mountains beyond. At his feet lay a large pack, two tin dippers and an ax. In the hollow of his left arm he held two guns.
As the travelers left the steamer, he turned toward them with an alert air that belied his previous slouching attitude and straggling, iron-gray hair. The first greetings over, he proceeded at once to divide the luggage.