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[Illustration: “‘THE FUR-SEAL’S TOOTH!’ HE CRIED”]
THE FUR-SEAL’S TOOTH
A Story of Alaskan Adventure
BY
KIRK MUNROE
AUTHOR OF
“DORYMATES” “CAMPMATES” “CANOEMATES”
“RAFTMATES” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
Books for Boys by
KIRK MUNROE
(_Harper’s Young People Series_)
=Wakulla=: a story of adventure in Florida.
=The Flamingo Feather=: a story of the West.
=Derrick Sterling=: a story of the mines.
=Chrystal, Jack & Co.=, and =Delta Bixby=.
_Illustrated. Cloth, 16mo. 60 cents each._
THE “MATES” SERIES
=Raftmates=: a story of the Mississippi.
=Dorymates=: a tale of the Fishing Banks.
=Campmates=: a story of the Plains.
=Canoemates=: a story of the Florida Everglades.
_Illustrated. Post 8vo. $1.25 each._
_Set of 4 volumes in box, $5.00._
THE “PACIFIC COAST” SERIES
=The Fur-Seal’s Tooth=: a story of Alaskan adventure.
=Snow-shoes and Sledges=: a sequel to “The Fur-Seal’s Tooth.”
=Rick Dale=: a story of the Northwest coast.
=The Painted Desert=: a story of Northern Arizona.
_Illustrated. Post 8vo. $1.25 each._
_Set of 4 volumes in box, $5.00._
KIRK MUNROE’S LATEST STORIES
=For the Mikado=: a story of the Russo-Japanese War.
=The Blue Dragon=: a story of recent adventures in China.
=“Forward, March!”=: a tale of the Spanish-American War.
=The Copper Princess=: a story of the Great Lakes.
_Illustrated. Post 8vo. $1.25 each._
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
ALASKA
_A land of rock, dipped in the brine
Like a brown finger pointing toward the west_
* * * * *
_The little craft flies fast to the fair bay
Whose waters kiss the feet of Sitka town_
H. E. H.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PHIL AND SERGE 1
II. WINNING THE PRIZE 8
III. AN UNDESIRABLE ACQUAINTANCE 15
IV. ACROSS THE CONTINENT 22
V. FIVE BULL’S-EYES IN SIX SHOTS 28
VI. PHIL’S SAD PREDICAMENT 36
VII. THE VALUE OF A TRUE FRIEND 43
VIII. ONE RESULT OF GOOD SHOOTING 49
IX. INTRODUCING “OLD KITE ROBERSON” 56
X. PHIL DISCOVERS WHAT HE IS 62
XI. SEALS AND SEAL-SKINS 68
XII. CAPTAIN DUFF’S SHREWDNESS 75
XIII. THE FIRST SEAL-HUNT 81
XIV. OVERBOARD IN THE NORTH PACIFIC 88
XV. PHIL BECOMES “HIGH LINE” 94
XVI. A VENTURE INTO FORBIDDEN WATERS 101
XVII. CRUEL KILLING OF MOTHER-SEALS 107
XVIII. CHASED BY A REVENUE-CUTTER 113
XIX. CASTAWAYS ON OONIMAK 119
XX. BRIMSTONE AND FEATHERS 125
XXI. LUXURY ON A DESOLATE ALEUTIAN ISLAND 132
XXII. HOW JALAP COOMBS GOT HIS NAME 139
XXIII. KOOGA THE ALEUT, AND HIS BIDARKIE 145
XXIV. A DOUBLE WATCH FOR SCHOONERS 151
XXV. HUNTING THE SEA-OTTER 158
XXVI. SERGE KILLS A BEAR, AND JALAP COOMBS DISAPPEARS 165
XXVII. PHIL SEES HIMSELF AS OTHERS SEE HIM 171
XXVIII. PHIL AND SERGE AS PRISONERS OF WAR 178
XXIX. A CRUISE ON A BERING SEA CUTTER 185
XXX. THE THIRD LIEUTENANT’S HUMILIATING POSITION 192
XXXI. WHERE IS THE CENTRE OF THE UNITED STATES? 199
XXXII. WHY THE CUTTER DEPARTED WITHOUT HER PASSENGERS 206
XXXIII. IN HOT PURSUIT 213
XXXIV. MR. JOHN RYDER’S STORY 220
XXXV. JALAP COOMBS’S PHILOSOPHY 227
XXXVI. LOST AND DRIFTING IN BERING SEA 234
XXXVII. SAVED BY A MIRACLE 241
XXXVIII. JAPONSKI’S TEMPTATION AND THE FUR-TRADER’S OFFER 248
XXXIX. SERGE RECOVERS A BIT OF LOST PROPERTY 255
XL. A PROSPECT OF SNOW-SHOES AND SLEDGES 262
ILLUSTRATIONS
“‘THE FUR-SEAL’S TOOTH!’ HE CRIED” _Frontispiece_
ALASKA AND BEHRING SEA _Facing p._ 1
“IT WAS THE IVORY TOOTH OF A FUR-SEAL” ” 8
“‘I SAID IF YOU SPOKE TO ME AGAIN I WOULD KNOCK
YOU DOWN’” ” 26
“YES! IT WAS A――GENUINE HAIDA DUGOUT” _Page_ 30
“‘IT IS PHILIP RYDER OR HIS GHOST!’” _Facing p._ 40
PHIL SIGNED THE ARTICLE WITHOUT READING IT ” 54
ALASKAN HALIBUT HOOK _Page_ 67
“HE FOUND A BAILER, WITH WHICH HE SET VIGOROUSLY
TO WORK” _Facing p._ 78
“THE EYES OF ALL THREE SEARCHED THE WATERS
INCESSANTLY” ” 86
“JUST THEN A SECOND GUN WAS FIRED BY THE
PURSUER” ” 110
“THE LIGHT CRAFT SHOT AWAY UP THE STRAIT” ” 148
“AFTER LONG AND PAINFUL STALKING PHIL SHOT TWO
SEA-LIONS” ” 162
“‘DAUGHTER, ALLOW ME TO PRESENT MY FRIEND, MR.
PHILIP RYDER’” ” 178
“EVERY TIME HE ATTEMPTED TO RISE THEY PROMPTLY
KNOCKED HIM DOWN” ” 196
JALAP AND PHIL’S FATHER HEAR BAD NEWS FROM THE
BOYS ” 228
“‘WHITE MEN, AS I SAID; AND AMERICANS, I’LL BE
BOUND!’” ” 246
[Illustration: ALASKA AND BEHRING SEA]
THE FUR-SEAL’S TOOTH
CHAPTER I
PHIL AND SERGE
Although the sun was shining brightly over the pleasant little
British Columbian city of Victoria, and the air was filled with the
flower scents and bird notes of late spring-time, at least one of the
strollers along its busy streets was so decidedly unhappy that he paid
no attention to sunshine, birds, or flowers. Life just then seemed a
very serious and perplexing affair to Phil Ryder, and, to quote an
expression that he himself had often used in regard to others, he
looked as though he had lost his last friend. If any one in all that
strange foreign city had been intimate enough with him to suggest this
to Phil, he would have replied, “And so I have, for I have lost my last
dollar, and in a strange country I don’t know of any better friend than
the good old Yankee dollar.”
How it all happened was this way: Phil was a New England lad, and
hailed from the quaint old Connecticut town of New London. He was
freckle-faced and curly-headed, not very tall, but so broad-shouldered
that no one ever thought of asking him if he was travelling for his
health. What with rowing, paddling, and sailing, skating and coasting,
playing football until he became centre rush and captain of his
school team, going on long, delightful outing trips to the Maine woods
with his father, who had been the most painstaking of teachers in the
useful arts of shooting, fishing, and camping out, this boy had early
developed into an all-round athlete of more than ordinary attainments.
With additional strength had come an increase of self-reliance, until
at the age of seventeen he was about as independent and manly a young
fellow as one would be apt to discover in a long day’s journey.
But this very independence often led him into trouble. Like most
self-reliant boys, he was inclined to place an undue value upon his own
knowledge and acquirements, and to make light of those of his elders.
All except his own father, whom Phil regarded as the very wisest and
best of men, and whose example in all things he was most anxious to
copy.
And yet from this very father the boy inherited his worst fault, which
was that of carelessness. Although his aunt Ruth, who had brought
him up from the babyhood in which he lost his mother, made a point
of providing him with a place for everything, and had almost hourly,
during his whole life, impressed upon him the importance of keeping
things in their places, he never yet had learned the lesson she strove
so earnestly to impart. He would say, “Yes, Aunt Rue, I’ll remember,”
give her a hearty kiss, and rush away with an instant forgetfulness of
all she had just said. He lost and mislaid not only his own things,
but those of other people, until at length no one who knew him would
lend him anything of value. He forgot messages, and could not be
trusted to go on errands. He was forever in hot water on account of
broken engagements, and though naturally a bright student, was always
in trouble over his lessons on account of having to spend most of his
study hours in searching for mislaid books. Generally they were found
flung into a corner of the stone wall bounding the football field,
tucked carefully under the steps of the boat-house, or hidden away in
some other unlikely place that no one but he would have thought of, and
any one but he would have remembered.
His son’s heedlessness was Mr. Ryder’s greatest trial.
“Philip! Philip! why won’t you overcome it for my sake, if not for your
own?” he would cry; and the boy would answer:
“I do try, Pop; indeed I do, but it’s no use. I was born that way, and
I expect I shall be that way so long as I live. After all, I am the one
who suffers most from it.”
“Hold hard, Phil! There’s where you are wrong. No one can truly say
that, for no one can ever know how far-reaching may be the consequences
of his own actions. With every single act of carelessness you cause
more or less anxiety and inconvenience to those about you. Sooner or
later, just so sure as you fail to conquer this wretched habit, it will
lead you, and probably others with you, into some unhappy predicament,
from which I pray you may escape without the accompaniment of a
life-long sorrow.”
After a talk like this Phil would reform for a day or two. He
would present himself to his astonished schoolmates as a model of
punctuality, and would show an attention to trifles that was painful
in its minuteness. These efforts at reform were always accompanied
by such an unnatural restraint of manner, so severe an expression of
countenance, and so stern a refusal to engage in any of the frivolities
of life, such as football or even the minor sports of the season, that
there was always a general rejoicing when in some sudden excitement
the young penitent forgot his vows, and relapsed into his old jolly,
heedless self.
Even to Aunt Ruth these brief seasons of austere reform were periods of
trial and anxiety lest by some unguarded act or word she should fail
to set her nephew a proper example. So she, too, secretly breathed
a sigh of relief when the day of penance was ended, and she could
resume her accustomed way of quietly picking up and putting things to
rights, after one of Phil’s sudden inroads through the house in search
of something that must be found at once, because all the fellows were
waiting. He knew he left it right here! and what could have become of
it?
Phil’s father, Mr. John Ryder, was a mining expert, whose business of
examining into the condition of mines, and reporting upon their value
for the information of capitalists or stockholders, kept him travelling
pretty constantly to all sorts of out-of-the-way nooks and corners of
the world. Phil considered it the most delightful business in which
one could engage, and longed for the time to come when he might follow
in his father’s footsteps. He even thought it a little hard that the
latter would never allow him to go as his companion upon any of his
distant journeyings, but insisted on his attending strictly to school
and his studies.
Mr. Ryder always so arranged his affairs as to spend a part at least
of every vacation with his boy, and then they took those long trips
into the woods that, up to this time, had formed the most delightful
episodes of Phil’s life. At other times, when he was at home, Mr. Ryder
devoted himself so entirely to his son, and entered so heartily into
his pursuits and plans, that a very strong bond of sympathy existed
between them, and the boy was never so happy as when in his father’s
company.
Now it happened that the very year in which Phil was to graduate from
the New London High School found his father engaged on an important and
prolonged survey of mining property in the distant and little-known
land of Alaska. It was a great disappointment to both father and son
that the former could not be present at the latter’s graduation. At
the same time there were compensations in a promise of glittering
possibilities held out by Mr. Ryder.
“If you will only graduate within five of the head of your class, Phil,
you shall come out and spend the summer with me in Alaska,” he had
said, and the boy knew that he meant it.
What a prospect was thus held forth! and what boy in his senses would
refuse to work hard for such a reward as that? A whole summer in
the distant wonderland of the far north, amid Eskimos and Indians,
volcanoes and glaciers, wolves and bears, seals and salmon! Every
fellow in the school, and nearly every boy in town, for that matter,
knew of the splendid prize for which Phil was striving, and they
watched him either with feelings of mean envy that secretly hoped he
might lose it, or with an honestly outspoken hope that he might win it,
according to their dispositions.
These New London lads knew, or thought they knew, a great deal about
Alaska; for had not Serge Belcofsky, a young Russo-American from Sitka,
attended one of their schools for a whole year? He had come on an
Arctic whaler that had touched at Sitka on her homeward voyage. With
an uncommon perseverance, and a longing for a better education than
he could obtain at home, the lad had worked his way to New London on
this whaler, had with infinite patience and self-denial worked his way
through a whole year of schooling, and was now working his way back
towards his distant home on a fishing-schooner that had been purchased
in New London by parties in Victoria, British Columbia, for use on the
Pacific coast.
During his whole year of schooling Serge Belcofsky had been terribly
homesick, and his intense longing for his far-away northern home had
made it seem to him a veritable paradise. Thus from the outpourings
of his full heart the other boys had learned that, while in certain
portions of Alaska there were such things as cold weather, ice, snow,
fogs, and in summer-time incredible swarms of the most blood-thirsty
mosquitoes, and other unpleasant features, these were almost unknown in
Sitka, which was by far the loveliest spot on the face of the earth.
There, according to Serge, for some reason not made quite clear, though
probably on account of the heat from surrounding but perfectly harmless
volcanoes, perpetual summer reigned, flowers bloomed incessantly, and
the woods, always green, were filled with the most beautiful birds.
Sitka itself was a great and wonderful city, containing a castle, a
cathedral, a fort, a parade-ground for the troops always stationed
there, a battery of heavy guns, a governor’s residence, stately
men-of-war in its harbor, Indians in its suburbs, and a thousand
other attractive features. Besides all this, there were gold mines of
fabulous richness on every side; in fact, the lofty mountains rising
just back of the city were full of gold.
This last was the statement that the boys most doubted until it was
confirmed by Phil Ryder, who happened to overhear both it and their
incredulous exclamations. He knew, of course; for was not his father
acquainted with all the gold mines in the world? and had he not even
now gone out to set the seal of his approval on those of Alaska?
Phil did not know Serge Belcofsky very well; for though the latter was
of about his own age, he was so far behind in his studies as to be in
a lower class, and so infinitely removed from a fellow of the former’s
high attainments. At the same time, as the young Russo-American did not
understand any of the games played by the Yankee boys in whose company
he found himself, and was far too busy earning his daily bread to
learn them, the leading athlete and ball-player of the school regarded
him with a sort of pitying indifference. He did not altogether ignore
him, and even on occasions listened with the smiling indulgence of a
superior to the young Sitkan’s marvellous tales of his native place.
For this, Serge, who regarded Phil with an admiration that almost
amounted to reverence, was deeply grateful, and when the young hero of
the ball-field went so far as to back up his most doubtful assertions,
and so establish them as truth beyond further question, his gratitude
knew no bounds. In a vague effort to express it, he ventured to present
Phil with his most valued possession――it was the ivory tooth of a
fur-seal exquisitely carved, that had been given to his father many
years before, as a token of highest esteem, by a chief of Chilkat
Indians――one of the most powerful and warlike of Alaskan tribes.
[Illustration: “IT WAS THE IVORY TOOTH OF A FUR-SEAL”]
Phil deigned to accept this gift, and even went so far as to wear it
attached to his watch-chain, to the unfeigned gratification of his
sincere admirer and would-be friend. Although Phil’s watch was but an
inexpensive one in a nickel case, and its chain was of steel, this new
ornament attracted so much attention from all who happened to note
it, that the lad at length began to value it rather highly himself,
and to study with interest the curious devices with which it was so
beautifully carved.