A PROSPECT OF SNOW-SHOES AND SLEDGES
“You scoundrel!” shouted Phil, springing to where Goldollar was seated
at a desk, and standing squarely in front of him. “How dare you show
your thief’s face among honest men?”
“Oh, it is you, is it?” retorted the other, coolly, staring at Phil
from head to foot. “What are you doing here, where you have no business
and are not wanted, and what do you mean by calling me a thief?”
“I mean what I say. Didn’t you steal this from me?” Here Phil produced
the fur-seal’s tooth.
“No, I did not. I bought it from a Yukon Indian a few days ago.”
“That’s false, and you know it. But never mind. Didn’t you steal nearly
one hundred dollars from me on the Canadian Pacific train?”
“No, I did not. I saw you stick a wad of bills in your pocket, and
thought at the time you were the most careless fellow with money I ever
knew; but I never touched it or thought of doing such a thing.”
“Perhaps you will also deny having me arrested on a false charge in
Victoria?” said Phil, his voice trembling with anger.
“Yes, I do deny having you arrested on a false charge, but not on a
true one. The charge was threatened assault and battery, and I think I
let you off pretty easy by not staying to press it. Now, if you don’t
keep a civil tongue in your head, and get out of here pretty quick,
you’ll find yourself in a worse fix mighty sudden. Say, Jacob, where
did I get that fur-seal’s tooth I have been wearing as a watch-charm?”
he asked of one of the group of clerks who had with angry looks been
loitering about Phil during this scene.
“Bought it of an Indian, for I saw you do it,” was the prompt reply.
“So did I;” “and I,” spoke up two more. “Hustle him out! What does he
mean by coming here and insulting one of us!” cried others.
For once, prudence got the better of Phil’s anger, and, though he
believed at that moment he could thrash all the clerks in the store, he
wisely concluded not to try. “I’ll settle with you at some other time,”
he said to Simon Goldollar; “and, in the meantime, if you don’t want to
be pitched overboard, you’d better not come skulking about our camp in
the night again.”
Then, throwing down the fragment of watch-chain with all its charms,
except the fur-seal’s tooth, attached, he cast a contemptuous glance at
the clerks, and strode by them and out of the store, before they could
make up their minds whether to hustle him or not.
When Phil related this incident to Serge, the latter chided him for
venturing into the “lion’s den,” as he called it, without taking him
along.
“But it was my quarrel and not yours,” answered the Yankee lad.
“Phil, you know better than to say that. In a friendship that has been
cemented as ours has, by the sharing of dangers and pleasures, joys and
sorrows, starvation and plenty, one cannot have a quarrel nor a trouble
that does not belong equally to the other. That is what I take to be
the very meaning of the word friendship.”
“Right you are, old man! and I won’t do so again. As it was, I came out
of it unharmed; and now that we have recovered the fur-seal’s tooth,
luck, according to your belief, must be on our side.”
Soon after this, depredations on the camp having almost entirely
ceased, Gerald Hamer relieved our lads from guard duty, and set them
to collecting drift-wood on the beach, to be cut up and used as fuel
under the boiler of the new steamboat, the _Chimo_, as she had been
christened at her launching.
As all the drift in the vicinity of St. Michaels had been gathered
up for use in that fort, Phil and Serge were compelled to go long
distances up the beach, gather what logs they could find into rafts,
and pole them to the camp. After three of such rafts had been
successfully landed, they went one day several miles from camp for the
one more that would be necessary to complete their stock of fuel.
They worked hard all day at the collecting of this, and, at length,
shortly before sunset, had made ready a larger raft than usual. They
were in great haste, for they feared darkness might overtake them
before they reached camp. Finally, Serge, who stood on the forward or
outer end of the raft, push-pole in hand, called out to Phil, who had
on long wading-boots, to shove off.
Into that shove Phil threw all his strength, so that the mass of logs
had gathered good headway by the time the deepening water compelled him
to scramble on board. He sat still for a minute, or until the raft was
nearly one hundred yards from shore, to recover his breath. Then he
suddenly sprang to his feet, crying “Stop her, Serge! stop her! I have
left my pole on shore.”
As Serge hurriedly tried to comply with this request, his pole,
catching under the moving mass, was snapped short off. A strong wind
was blowing off the land, and instantly both lads realized the danger
of their situation.
“How could I have been so careless!” exclaimed poor Serge, his face
pale with dismay. “It wasn’t your carelessness, old man; it was mine,”
replied Phil. “If I hadn’t left that wretched pole on shore, we could
have managed her easy enough. Now I am going to do my best to repair my
fault.”
As he spoke, the impetuous lad began pulling off his boots.
“No, Phil, you mustn’t try that,” said Serge, at the same time laying
a detaining hand on the other’s shoulder. “The water is too cold for
you to swim to the shore and back again. Besides, I doubt if you could
catch the raft, at the rate the wind is now moving her.”
“But I can wade more than half-way,” objected Phil.
“Not on this sticky mud bottom. I don’t believe you could wade ten
steps.”
“What can we do, then? We can’t sit tamely here and drift out to sea.
Oh, Serge, the horror of it! the terror! the awfulness! We can’t endure
it again. Let us both take to the water, and make a try for the shore
together. Yes, old man, that is what we must do! There is no other way.”
With this, Phil, who had already got rid of his boots, began to throw
off his coat.
“Hold on, Phil! I see something that looks like a boat! Yes, it is a
native boat coming from up the beach, and towards us.”
Serge was right. In a few minutes more a large bidarrah, filled with
native employés of the trading-post, drew near, and its occupants
stopped rowing a short distance from the raft, to see what the lads
were doing.
“Come and take us off!” shouted Phil. “Don’t you see that we are
helpless?”
“How much you give?” asked a leathern-faced old Eskimo, who sat in the
stern, and seemed to command the craft. “You give ten dollar?”
“Yes,” whispered Phil; “we will give you anything you want, when we get
back to camp.”
“No; give him now.”
“But we haven’t any money with us.”
“Then me go. Good-bye.” The bidarrah actually began to move ahead,
while the face of the old image in the stern was rendered still more
hideous by a malicious grin.
“Hold on!” screamed Phil, in desperation. “I will give you this, and it
is worth many times ten dollars.”
The bidarrah came a little closer, that the old man might see what was
offered.
“All light,” he said, holding out his hand for the coveted prize.
In another moment the lads had crossed the narrow divide between a
deadly danger and certain safety, and the fur-seal’s tooth had found a
new owner.
Soon after this narrow escape from imminent peril, our lads bade
farewell to the _Norsk_, which steamed away to the southward, bearing
all of Gerald Hamer’s party save those who were to follow his lead into
the far interior. She also bore Nikrik, who carried with him a large
package of letters wrapped in oil-skin, which he was instructed to
deliver unopened aboard the first south-bound vessel that should touch
at the Pribyloff Islands. Thus, although Mr. Ryder did not receive his
son’s letter, he learned of his whereabouts, and, filled with a new
hope, ordered the schooner _Philomel_ to be headed towards distant St.
Michaels.
At length, one morning in late September, after many vexatious delays,
the steamboat, with whose fortunes our lads had cast their own, was
laden and ready to start for the Yukon. With fluttering flags and
defiant whistle she steamed away from inhospitable St. Michaels,
towing a dozen native boats behind her.
“Hurrah!” shouted Phil Ryder, as he and Serge stood on her upper deck.
“We are off, at last. Hurrah for snow-shoes and sledges! I say, old
man, I’m glad we got away before that craft came in. She may be bound
to Oonalaska, or somewhere down among the islands, and, if so, I
suppose we should have felt it our duty to go with her. But you can’t
stop us now, old ship! You’re too late!”
The craft to which he thus referred was a small schooner beating up the
sound. From her deck Mr. John Ryder was scanning the oncoming steamboat
through a powerful telescope. Suddenly it fell from his hands, as he
cried out, in wild excitement:
“Thank God, Jalap Coombs, our long search is ended! There is my
boy――there, on that steamer! We can hail him, and have him alongside in
five minutes more.”
“Right you are, sir,” replied the mate, peering through the glass the
other had dropped. “It looks like the young scamp, and I believe it
is him, but don’t ye be dead sartain ye’ve got him till ye lays hands
on him. As my friend old Kite Roberson uster say, ‘Eels is never so
slippery as when they’s caught.’”
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Except for the frontispiece, illustrations have been moved to
follow the text that they illustrate.
――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.