“Yes, and old Kite Robinson, our family party would be complete, and we’d be almost as well off as if we were in Sitka. I declare I could kick myself when I remember that if I’d only taken your advice we might have been on our way to Sitka in your schooner by this time!”
“I don’t know about that,” responded Serge. “We couldn’t have gone off and left Mr. Coombs alone on the island.”
“That’s so! I never thought of that. Poor old Jalap! I wonder how he is getting on all alone, and what he thinks has become of us. We must go over to-morrow and relieve his anxiety, and take him a cup of tea. Perhaps his schooner hasn’t come along yet, and we shall be all right, after all.”
Bright and early the following morning the little camp was dismantled and abandoned. Kooga took his tent, and bidding farewell to the lads into whose lives he had entered so strangely, shoved off his bidarkie, and started on his lonely return trip to far Saanak. After watching him out of sight, the others loaded themselves with their newly-acquired camp outfit, and started on their long, toilsome march to the north side of the island.
When, after many hours of tramping, they came in sight of the now familiar ruins and their own barrabkie they were struck with the latter’s appearance of loneliness. There was no smoke nor sign of human presence. Filled with undefined anxiety, they hurried forward, only to find the hut abandoned, and a little heap of cold ashes in the place where its cheerful fire had blazed. The companion whom they had left there five days before had disappeared, nor could they find a clew to the time or manner of his departure.
“The schooner must have come, and he must have taken the seal-skins to Oonalaska in her,” suggested Phil.
“I should think so, too,” replied Serge, who had just returned from an inspection of the cache, “if it wasn’t for the fact that the seal-skins are still here, and apparently untouched.”
It is needless to say that our lads were wofully disconcerted by the unexplained absence of Jalap Coombs from the place where they had left him. Their homecoming, as they had termed their return to the barrabkie during that day’s toilsome march, was not only robbed of all the pleasure they had anticipated, but was confronted by a mystery that filled them with anxious thoughts and gloomy forebodings. It did not seem possible that their comrade could have departed from the island without leaving some message for them. Neither could they understand why he should have gone without taking the seal-skins which he had prized so highly. Had he wandered to some remote part of the island, and become lost? or fallen down one of its tremendous precipices? or―― But what was the use in such conjectures? An experienced sailor-man like the mate of the _Seamew_ was not likely to have done any of these things. He was even so averse to walking, save on the deck of a vessel, that they could not imagine him as having gone any farther from the hut than was absolutely necessary to procure food, fuel, and water.