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." Pete looked at Captain Zim, who answered: "Oh, all right, if you're in such a hurry; though you might wait and let us all go in together. How are you going to get all of your hand luggage and all four of you into that dory, though?" "You couldn't spare us a ship's boat?" "Sure I can," answered obliging Captain Zim. "I'll tell you--put the boys in the dory, and I'll send you and the luggage over in the long-boat." "Get down there, boys," commented Uncle Dick, briefly, pointing to the rope-ladder. "Are you afraid to go down the ladder?" Rob's answer was to make a spring for the top of the ladder, and down he went hand over hand, followed by the others, each of whom could climb like a squirrel. The two natives, grinning, reached up and steadied them as they reached the jumping dory. The boys insisted on having their blankets and rifles in the boat with them--a part of Alaska education which had been taught them by old prospectors. Pete shouted something over the rail in the Aleut tongue. At once the two natives bent to their oars, and the dory slipped away into the fog. Uncle Dick, busy with hunting out his luggage for the long-boat, did not at first miss it from the foot of the ladder. "Hello! Where did that dory go?" he asked, finally. In the confusion no one answered him. So at last he concluded his own work in loading the long-boat and went overside, ordering the boat's crew to give way together, strongly, in order to overtake the dory. But when the long-boat, after feeling its way down the narrow channel, emerged from the fog and pulled up at Kadiak dock there was no dory there. "Hello, there, Jimmy!" cried Uncle Dick to the manager of the warehouse at the dock. "Where's that boat?" "What boat do you mean, sir?" answered the other. "Why, Pete's dory. We just sent it in by two natives, with three boys I've got along--friends and relatives of mine." "You're joking, sir. You can't have brought boys away up here. Besides, they haven't showed up here at the dock, nor any dory, either." "They must have got into the other channel mouth in the fog and gone down Wood Island way," said Uncle Dick, at last, beginning to be troubled.