"Don't talk about shipwrecks!" replied his uncle. "This coast is full of them. I can show you the skeletons of four ships within two hours' sail of Kadiak, and how many small boats go ashore, never to be heard of, no man can tell. There are big ships lost, too, up and down this coast. Last year the natives below Kadiak brought in casks and boxes and all kinds of things bearing the name of the steamer _Oregon_. She was wrecked far to the south of Valdez, but the Japan Current carried her wreckage a thousand miles to the north and west, and threw it on the coast of Kadiak and the smaller islands west of there. It made the natives rich, they found so much in the way of supplies." "Are there any bears out there?" asked Jesse, wonderingly. "Biggest in the world!" replied Uncle Dick. "You'd better keep away from them. We're sailing now just south of the great Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. There's bears over there, but mostly black ones. Plenty of moose and caribou in these mountains, and once in a while a grizzly, but the biggest grizzlies are the brown bears of Kadiak and the peninsula on beyond." 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." IV LOST IN THE FOG 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."