156 
IN FORBIDDEN SEAS 
boats eight times, and spent sixty-two hours in 
them, pulling over a distance of about 186 miles 
for our six otters, mostly in unsuitable weather. 
May was also an unsatisfactory month, only 
fourteen otters being secured, for which we pulled 
over a distance of about 525 miles. We were out 
twenty-one times, our longest time being eighteen 
hours, our shortest two hours. On May 25 we 
anchored at the north-east end of Urup, and whilst 
there we heard loud explosions from the direction 
of the Black Brothers Islands, some fifteen miles to 
the north-east of us. On June 1 we left Urup, and 
on the 2nd, when passing the Brothers, ashes from 
the volcano in eruption covered us. On the 2nd and 
3rd we were at Simushir Island, but saw no otters. 
On the 4th we anchored at Rashau, and there found 
the schooner North Star . Captain Johnson came 
on board, and told us he had just returned from 
Matau and Shiashikotan, on each of which he had 
last autumn left hunters and a boat’s crew, to hunt 
through the winter. The two hunters of the 
Shiashikotan party were said to have been drowned, 
and the three Japanese sailors of the Matau party 
were missing. There was something suspicious 
about the Shiashikotan affair. The Japanese crew 
asserted that the boat capsized whilst they were 
attempting to land after having been out hunting, 
the two hunters, who were brothers, being drowned, 
whilst the three Japanese got safely ashore. The 
boat was all right, and nothing had been lost. 
The Matau party had had a hard time ; there 
were two white men—Gannon, an Irish American, 
and Nebbe, a German. Their quarters were in some 
deserted Ainu yurts on a small islet (Puffin Island)^ 
