"Well," he said at length, "what do you mean to do?"
"If the breeze holds we could pick up one of the Aleutians in a few days, but I'm keeping south of them. There'll probably be ugly ice along the beaches, and I've no fancy for being cast ashore by a strong tide when the fog lies on the land. With westerly winds I'd sooner hold on for Alaska. We could lie snug in an inlet there, and, it's quite likely, get a cedar that would make a spar. I can't head right away for Vancouver with no mainsail."
This was clear to Wyllard, who made a feeble gesture. "If the wind comes easterly?"
Dampier pursed his face up. "Then unless I could fetch one of the Kuriles we'd sure be jammed. She won't beat to windward, and there'd be all Kamtchatka to lee of us. The ice is packing up along the north of it now, and the Russians have two or three settlements to the south. We don't want to run in and tell them what we're after."
A faint smile crept into Wyllard's eyes. "No," he said, "not after that little affair on the beach. Since it's very probable that the vessel they send up to the seal islands would deliver stores along the coast, the folks in authority would have a record of it. They'd call the thing piracy--and, in a sense, they'd be justified."
He said nothing more for a little, and then looked up again wearily.
"I wonder," he said, "how that boat's crew ever got across to Kamtchatka. It was north of the islands where the man brought Dunton the message."
Dampier understood that he desired to change the subject, for this was a question they had often discussed already.
"Well," he said, "I still hold by my first notion. They were blown ashore on the beach we'd just left, and made prisoners. Then a supply schooner or perhaps a steamer came along, and they sent them off in her to be handed over to the authorities. The vessel put in somewhere. We'll say she was lying in an inlet with a boat astern, and somehow they cut that boat loose in the dark, and got away in her."
He broke off for a moment, and then looked at his companion significantly.
"You can find quite a few points where that idea seems to fail," he added. "They were in Kamtchatka, but I'm beginning to feel that we shall never know any more than that."