The children ran
down the beach in advance of her, and as the man in the bidarka drew
closer, nearly capsizing with one of his ill-directed strokes, the women
followed. Koogah dropped his walrus tusk and went also, leaning heavily
upon his staff, and after him loitered the men in twos and threes.
The bidarka turned broadside and the ripple of surf threatened to swamp
it, only a naked boy ran into the water and pulled the bow high up on
the sand. The man stood up and sent a questing glance along the line of
villagers. A rainbow sweater, dirty and the worse for wear, clung
loosely to his broad shoulders, and a red cotton handkerchief was
knotted in sailor fashion about his throat. A fisherman's tam-o'-shanter
on his close-clipped head, and dungaree trousers and heavy brogans
completed his outfit.
But he was none the less a striking personage to these simple
fisherfolk of the great Yukon Delta, who, all their lives, had stared
out on Bering Sea and in that time seen but two white men,--the census
enumerator and a lost Jesuit priest. They were a poor people, with
neither gold in the ground nor valuable furs in hand, so the whites had
passed them afar. Also, the Yukon, through the thousands of years, had
shoaled that portion of the sea with the detritus of Alaska till vessels
grounded out of sight of land.
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