i 3 o TWO DIANAS IN ALASKA 



fish, which lay on the edge of a sleugh. Sometimes 

 the great bird got a fair start, and rose into the air 

 for a few feet, to drop the heavy salmon to earth 

 again. The Leader dashed up just as the salmon 

 had descended for the second time, and said in effect 

 " Shoo !" to the king of birds. A most familiar way 

 to treat majesty. The eagle resented it, and seemed 

 to me to strike out fiercely, wheeling low about the 

 Leader's shoulders. Then realizing defeat, disap- 

 pointed, it soared away foodless, to hunt again under 

 more propitious circumstances. 



What a cook Steve was ! Or rather what a cook 

 he was not ! If he had to boil the kettle he must 

 upset it, and extinguish the valuable tiny fire, whose 

 wood was so precious and so scarce; if he fried he 

 set the fat on fire, and if he stewed he forgot to add 

 water, and set a solid in the pan, alone, until it burnt 

 away. 



In the late evening a red fox came down to the 

 sleughs to drink. I thought a bear had arrived at 

 last from Steve's excitement, for he windmilled 

 impossible-to-understand messages of joy and ex- 

 citement, and rolled his eyes in startling manner. I 

 was cooking supper at the time, and the Leader was 

 prowling somewhere after the bears that were not. 

 My patch of ground had been part of Alaska when 

 we struck it first, now it was busily trying to make a 

 separate island of itself. Like Canute, I had been 

 stemming the tide for an hour or more, in futile 

 endeavours to keep back the embracing sea. My 

 rifle was " over the water," on the farther shore, and 



