Rob shook his head. "I don't think so," said he. "Even this skin, although it is not yet rusty from the sunlight, is not perfectly prime, as you can see by looking at the inside of the skin. A really prime skin is white and clear, and you can see that this one is just a little blue along the back. That isn't a good sign to me." Rob's guess as to the fur soon proved to be correct. For four more nights they watched their _klipsie_ trap without success. On the fifth morning they found another dead fox in the trap, with the barbs through his back. This, however, was only a "cross" fox, and his fur proved so worn and rusty that Skookie scornfully refused to take off the hide. That ended their fox-trapping, for Rob refused to allow any more foxes to be killed. Skookie, apparently willing to go on with his work, or to stop as they preferred, smilingly took up his _klipsie_, after he had sprung the trap, detached the arm, and restored the separated parts to their original hiding-places. "Plenty times my peoples come here," he said, smiling. "That means," said Jesse, "that some time or other, if we have luck, we may be discovered here by his people, even if our own people never find us." "Yes," Rob added, "but I only hope that may be before winter comes and leaves us unable to get out." XXI AN ALEUT GOOSE-HUNT Although utterly remote from the ordinary haunts of man, our young hunters found their new environment one free from monotony, after all. The sea was never twice the same, and even the weather was capricious enough to afford variety. As spring wore on the region seemed to teem with wild life, whether on the earth, in the water, or the air. The gulls, crows, ravens, and eagles were continually passing, with clouds of shags or cormorants, which nested on the rocks a mile or so down the bay, together with numbers of oyster-birds, whale-birds, and other strange fowl of the outlying coast. Each night and morning also there passed up the lagoon a stream of honking and chattering wild-fowl, the largest of which and most valuable, though least attainable, were the great Canada geese, which frequented this part of the island in large numbers. "If only we could get hold of some of those fellows," said John, longingly, one morning, as they saw an especially fine flock pass slowly up toward the head of the lagoon. "I'll warrant they'd be good to eat. See, some of them can hardly fly yet, they're so young." "Yes," said Jesse, "if we had only thought of it last week, they probably would not have been able to fly at all--flappers, they call those young birds. Then we might possibly have killed some of them in the grass at the head of the lagoon."