Rob was silent for a time, but at last remarked: "From what I hear of this Kadiak country, I believe we're going to like it. When'll we get there?"
Uncle Dick smiled. "Oh, sometime within a week," he answered. "Distances are long up here, and wind and tide have something to do with even a steamer's speed."
Sure enough, it took five days more of steady steaming before the _Nora_ approached the shores of far-off Kadiak Island. In the nighttime the boys heard the steamer's whistle going, and knew that Captain Zim was sounding the echoes to get his bearings in the thick weather then prevailing. Sea-captains on those shores, when the fog is thick, keep the whistle going, and when they hear the echoes from the rocks too plainly they make outward to the open sea.
The _Nora_ crawled down the coast of Afognak Island in the fog and the dark, but finally cast her anchor as near as could be told off the entrance to the narrow channel of Kadiak Harbor. Here she sounded her whistle for more than an hour at short intervals, waiting for a pilot to come out. At last, soon after those on board had finished breakfast, they heard the sound of oars out in the fog and a rough voice calling through a megaphone: "Steamer ahoy! What boat is that?"
"_Nora_, from Valdez," answered Captain Zim. "Are you the pilot?"
"Ay, ay!" came the voice through the fog.
"Come on board--this way!" called Captain Zim; and once more the hoarse whistle of the steamer boomed out into the fog.
Needless to say, the three boys now were on deck, and they leaned over the rail as there appeared at the foot of the rope-ladder a big dory with two native oarsmen, and a stout, grizzled man, whom the ship's company announced to be Pete Piamon, the pilot for that coast.
"How are you, Pete?" said Captain Zim. "Can we take her in? I'm late and in an awful hurry."
Pete grinned. "All the time you ban in awful hurry, Captain Zim. Dis fog awful tick. Yas, we shall take her in if you say so--and maybe so pile her up on de rock. You don' min' dat, eh?"
"Where's the revenue-cutter _Bennington_ lying, Pete?" asked Uncle Dick.
"Inside, beyond de town." Pete jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
"I'll tell you what I'll do, captain," said Uncle Dick. "I'm in a big hurry to report to my commanding officer on the _Bennington_, for he's no doubt been lying here two or three days waiting for us. You keep Pete here, and let me and the boys take his dory and pull in--they'll take us through the tide-rips all right, if it gets bad. I won't ask you to put down one of the ship's boats."