[Illustration: “THE LIGHT CRAFT SHOT AWAY UP THE STRAIT”]
The canoe reached a point opposite the hut some time before the others, and when they got there it was already unloaded. Most of its cargo had been transferred to the hut, and its occupants were just returning for the few things that were left. Among these was Kooga’s rifle, which Phil picked up and examined with interest. He marvelled to find it so good a one, for it was a Winchester of the latest pattern. As he lifted it to his shoulder and sighted it his eye was caught by a slight movement on a small rock nearly half a mile out in the strait. A hair-seal which had been sleeping there had just lifted its head. At that distance it did not look larger than a man’s fist.
Phil drew Kooga’s attention to it and offered him the rifle, signifying by motions that he should shoot; but the native shook his head decisively, and gave the former to understand that the mark was too small for such a distance. Upon this the Yankee lad, carefully adjusting the sights of the rifle, and assuring himself that there was a cartridge in its chamber, took a deliberate aim and fired.
The seal dropped its head as though it had again gone to sleep, and the native smiled.
“Tell him to go and get it,” said Phil to Serge, who came up at that moment. When the latter repeated this request Kooga’s pitying smile changed to an expression of incredulity. Nevertheless, he again placed his canoe in the water and paddled away. When he returned with the dead seal, shot directly through the brain, his expression was one of amazement.
“He must be the white man who makes guns,” he said to Serge, “and command them to do his will. Take him away from here soon, for if he once gets among the kahlan [sea-otter] he will leave none for us.”
A sea-otter hunt was, however, the one thing upon which Phil Ryder’s heart was most set just then. Not only that, but he had determined to go on one in Kooga’s company.
Kooga the Aleut spent the rest of that day and the following night with his new-found friends. The dinner, to which all of them had looked forward with such interest, proved a great success. From his bidarkie the young native produced a small brass kettle, in which they made a venison stew that they ate with mussel-shell spoons. He also brought forth a basket so exquisitely woven of native grasses as to be perfectly water-tight. In this was his choicest treasure, a brick of tea, such as the Western Aleuts procure from Russian traders, and which they guard with most jealous care. From this, after the stew had disappeared and the kettle was thoroughly cleansed, he treated himself and his friends to a brewing of the fragrant leaf.