Part 31

There was perhaps more wisdom in Rob's plan than any one of the boys knew at first. He was old and wise enough to know that the best way to keep them all from homesickness was to be busy all the time. This discovery is not new among military men, or those who lead exploring parties, although it was one which Rob thought out for himself; so now he went on:

"We'll just take the dory," he said, "and slip down the coast beyond the mouth of the creek, and so on beyond the rocks where Jimmy and we all went when we got the sea-parrot hides. There are rocks over there, tall needles with straight sides, that have got thousands of birds of all sorts on them."

"What will we do with our eagles?" asked Jesse, hesitating.

"We can leave them plenty of food, and put a few boards together so that they can get under in case the crows or ravens should attack them. They will get along all right, I am sure."

"I'd like to go with Skookie in the bidarka," said John, but Rob shook his head.

"No, you don't," he said, "you go in the dory with the rest of us. That boy is all right, but he might not be strong enough to handle a bidarka in a high sea; and up here we never can tell when the wind is going to come up."

"Suppose it did upset," said John, sturdily. "I have been out of it, here in the lagoon."

"Yes, but that is different from getting upset out there in the middle of the bay. You know perfectly well that you could not get back in again; and swimming out there is something different from the lagoon, where the bank is right at hand all the time. I don't even like to go very far out in the dory; but see, it is fair and calm just now. So hurry up and let's get away. Get all the rope you can, too, fellows, because we may have to go down the face of the rock to get at the nests."

"I have seen pictures of that," said Jesse--"how the egg-gatherers go down in a rope handled by other men up above them on the rocks. Do you suppose that three of us could pull the other fellow up and down? Skookie here looks pretty strong."

"I don't know," said Rob, "but we'll take the rope along and see how it works out."

Not long after they were safely off in the big dory, which, under two pairs of oars and with the wind favorable, astern, made very good time down the long spit at the mouth of the creek. Beyond that point they were obliged to take to the open bay, quite out of touch of land, for a distance of a mile and a half. This brought them to the foot of a small, rocky island, out of which arose two or three sharp, column-like groups of rocks which, as Rob had said, were literally covered with nesting birds.

"We'll have to get around behind," said Rob; "nobody could climb up on this side, that's sure."

Scrambling over the loose rocks, left wet and slippery by the tide, they passed to the rear of these pillars, first having made fast the dory so that it could not be carried away. In the pools of sea-water they found many strange shells and several specimens of the squid, or cuttle-fish, upon which Skookie fell gleefully. He and his people are fond of this creature as an article of food; but its loathsome look turned the others against it, so that with reluctance he was forced to throw them away again.

At the back of the largest of these rock pinnacles they stood in hesitation for a moment, for the ascent seemed hard enough. At last, however, Rob found a sort of cleft or large crack, which seemed to lead up toward the top, and whose rough sides seemed to give foothold sufficient for a bold climber. "Here we go, fellows!" he said, and so started on up, hand over hand, the best he could. To their satisfaction, however, they found the going not so hard as it had looked from below. At the top, the sides of the cleft seemed to pinch together, so that in some places they were obliged to climb as a chimney-sweep does, their legs pressed across the open space; but as they were all out-of-door boys and well used to Alaska mountain work, they went ahead fearlessly and soon found themselves at the summit of the tower-like rock, whence they had a splendid view of the bay and the surrounding country. Startled by their presence, the sea-birds took wing in hundreds and thousands, soaring around them, flapping almost in their faces, and uttering wild, discordant cries. The boys fought these off as they began to explore the top of the rock.

"Mostly little gulls here," said John, "and I never heard they were good to eat. I don't like the look of these eggs, either. Looks as if we were too late for a real good egg season."

"Well," said Rob, "anyhow, we have had a good climb and a good look over the country. Now, what I propose to do is to see what there is lower down on the face of the cliff. I'm sure there's a lot of sea-parrots there, because I can see them flying in and out down below."

"Let me go down, Rob," said John. "I'm lighter than you are."

"No," said Jesse, "I think I ought to go down, because I am even lighter than you, John, and Rob is stronger than either of us."

"I'll tell you how we'll fix that," said Rob. "We'll tie the end of the rope around this big rock here; and I'll pass the other end through my belt and pay it out as I climb down. I won't need to put all my weight on the rope, but will just use it to steady me as I climb. If I have any trouble getting up, why, then you three fellows can see what you can do toward pulling. Don't you let it slip, now. And if I shake the rope three times, then you begin to pull. You can signal me the same way if I get where you can't see me, or where you can't hear me call for the noise the birds are making."

It was really a dangerous thing which Rob proposed to do, but boys do not always stop to figure about danger when there is something interesting ahead. Passing the rope through his belt as he had said, he kept hold of the free end with one hand, and so, picking his way from one projecting point to another, he began slowly to pass down the seaward face of the rock, which proved to be not so steep as it had seemed from below, although ridged here and there with sharp walls or cut banks, which crossed from almost one face of the pinnacle to the other.

Rob's daring was rewarded by the finding of countless numbers of nests of the sea-parrots, which were bored back straight into the face of the cleft. "Here they are, boys!" he called back, his voice being even by this time barely distinguishable amid the clamor of the gulls and other wild birds which continuously circled about.

Rob thrust his arm into one of these holes in the cleft, and was lucky enough to catch a female parrot by the neck and to pull her out without any injury to himself. For a time he examined the bird, laughing at its awkward movements when he flung it on the rocks at last, uninjured. Then he edged on along the rock face, his foot on a sort of narrow shelf and his body guided by the supporting rope. "I can get a lot of them here!" he called up to his friends.

A moment later he pushed his arm again into an aperture among these nests. At once he uttered a sudden, sharp cry and pulled out his arm. His finger had been bitten almost to the bone by the hornlike beak of one of the birds. The pain of this alone would have been bad enough, but now it caused a still more serious accident.

As Rob shook his bleeding finger at his side, and half raised his left arm to fend off the rush of two or three angry wild birds, he suddenly slipped with one foot at the edge of the narrow shelf on which he stood, and before he could catch his balance or do more than tightly grasp the free end of the rope which passed under his belt, over and down he went.

For one swift instant he saw the long, white, curling breakers on the beach below him, for he fell face downward, his body or feet scarcely touching the rocky wall. He never knew quite how it happened, but in some way the rope jammed at his belt, and before he had fallen more than fifteen or twenty feet he found himself fast, but swinging like a plummet at the end of the line, entirely out of touch, with either hands or feet, with the face of the rocky wall. Below him he could faintly hear the murmur of the sea on the rocks a hundred and fifty feet below. Above him he could see nothing but the edge of the shelf over which he had fallen. As soon as he could control himself, he called aloud again and again, but he got no answer. If his friends above heard him, their answer was drowned by the clamor of the wild birds. Here, then, was the most serious situation in which he had ever found himself in all his life.

Up above, on the summit of the rock, the boys had seen the sudden jerk on the rope and noticed that now it was motionless, whereas before it had trembled and shifted as Rob moved along the shelf. Skookie was the first to divine what had happened. He pointed to the cord, now tense and stiff, and leaned out over the rim, peering down at the shelf where Rob had stood.

"Him gone!" said he, turning back a sober face. "Pretty soon him die now, I guess."

Jesse and John looked at each other with white faces. They sprang to the rope, but hesitated, fearing lest touching it might prove dangerous.