"Call in the boat crews, sir!" he commanded. "We move station within the hour!"
"Then you mean that you are going to help search for them?" asked Mr. Hazlett.
"With all my heart, sir!" said the rough commander. "I have boys of my own back in New England. We'll comb this island rock by rock, and if we suspect foul play we'll blow every native village off the face of it!"
The hoarse roar of the _Bennington's_ deep-throated signal-whistles echoed along the rock-bound shore. Within an hour her boats were all stowed, and with each man at his quarters the trim cutter passed slowly down the west coast of the island.
"I'm not supposed to be a relief expedition," muttered Captain Stephens, "and I s'pose we'll all lose our jobs with Uncle Sam; but until we do, I figure that Uncle Sam can better afford to lose three months' time of this ship's crew than it can three bright boys who may grow up to be good sailors sometime.
"We'll skirt the island in the opposite direction from that in which the youngsters probably went," said he, turning to Mr. Hazlett. "We'll have to stop at every cannery and settlement, and the boat crews will need to search every little bay and coast."
"You talk as though you hoped to find them," said Mr. Hazlett, catching a gleam of courage from the other's resolute speech.
"Find 'em?" said Captain Stephens. "Of course we'll find 'em; we've _got_ to find 'em!"
It should be remembered that the coast of the great Kadiak Island is here and there indented with deep bays, which at one point nearly cut it in two. Had the boys known it, they were, in their camp near the head of Kaludiak Bay, not more than thirty miles distant across the mountain passes to the head of Uyak Bay, which makes in on the west side of the island, and which was the first great inlet to be searched by the boat crews of the _Bennington_. The total coast-line of so large a bay is hundreds of miles in extent, and broken with many little coves, each of which must be visited and inspected, for any projecting rock point might hide a boat or camp from view.
On this great bay there were two or three salmon-fisheries in operation, and as these always employ numbers of natives who come from all parts of the island, Captain Stephens had close inquiries made at each; but more than two weeks passed and no word could be gained of any white persons at any other portion of the island.