PHIL HEARS FROM HIS FATHER
Months before Phil and Serge had bidden farewell to Jalap Coombs in
an ancient barrabkie on Oonimak Island. They believed they were only
leaving him for a short time, but on their return he had disappeared,
nor from that day to this had they learned anything concerning him.
Now, to have him reappear in this mysterious manner in an Indian
village hundreds of miles up the Yukon River, apparently friendless
and alone, was so incredible that, after his first exclamation, Phil
stepped closer and took another look at the weather-beaten face to
establish its identity beyond a doubt.
“Oh, it’s me, son! It’s me, fast enough!” cried the ex-mate of the
_Seamew_, in a voice that trembled with joyful emotion, as he sprang to
his feet and grasped Phil’s hand in his. At the same time a suspicious
dimness came into his eyes that he brushed away hastily.
“It’s the same old Jalap,” he continued, “and only one minute ago
he were about as forlorn _and_ miserable a sailor-man as ever were
stranded a thousand miles from salt water. Now, seeing that in sich a
short space of time he’s been h’isted from the hold of grief to the
main-r’yal mast-head of happiness by the sight of your blessed phiz,
ye mustn’t be surprised to find his rigging at loose ends and decks
ginerally cluttered up. But the squall’s blown over, lad. You’ve
brought fair weather, and I’ll have the old packet ship-shape _and_
Bristol fashion again in a shake. What I sartainly orter done was to
remember my old friend Kite Roberson’s advice consarning squalls, I’ve
spoke to ye of old Kite afore, hain’t I?”
“The name sounds familiar,” replied Phil. “But how in the name of――”
“Waal, ef I didn’t I’d orter, for Kite were one of the finest of men.
Why, me and him――”
“Oh yes, now I remember,” assented Phil. “What did he say about
squalls?”
“That in all his experience he never see a squall so heavy but what
fair weather’d come after it sooner _or_ later. But Phil, my son, where
hev you dropped from? Where’s your shipmate? And where’s that bloomin’
shark of a cap’n what carried ye off right from under your own father’s
very eyes?”
“My father!” shouted Phil. “What do you know about my father? Have you
ever seen him? Where is he? Has he gone on up the river?”
“Yes,” cried Serge, entering at that moment and greeting his old
friend with extended hand; “that is what we want to know first of all.
Where is Mr. Ryder? They told me he was in here with Phil, so I waited
outside until certain that the only other voice was yours, and then I
ventured in.”
“Of course ye did, and I’m prouder to see you than ef ye were the King
of all the Rooshias _and_ Chiny to boot. But consarning your father,
Phil. Have I ever seed him, say you? Waal, occasionally, considering as
me and him cruised together for nigh two months in Bering Sea sarching
for you boys. When we finally come up with ye in Norton Sound and see
that you were steaming right ahead, paying no attention to signals,
it mighty nigh broke your father’s heart. It stopped a bit short of
that, though, and only broke his leg instead, at which the swab as were
steering run the schooner aground on a mud bank. Then by the time I’d
got Mr. Ryder below and come on deck again you were hull down.”
“Do you mean that my father actually broke one of his legs?” queried
Phil, who could not believe he had heard aright.
“Sartain I do,” was the answer. “You see, we were aboard an old tub
named _Philomeel_, which we had chartered her in Oonalaska for a cruise
to Oonimak to pick you up. Thar we fell in with a revenoo-cutter, and
she sent us up to the islands.”
“Not the _Phoca_?”
“The very same, with Miss May and Cap’n Matthews in command. At the
islands we heerd of ye through an Injin chap who had piloted your ship.”
“Nikrik!” exclaimed Serge.
“Nikrik were his name,” assented Jalap Coombs. “So we give chase, laid
a course for St. Michaels, and got there in time for Mr. Ryder to make
you out through his glass. Then he thought he had ye for sure, though
I give him one of old Kite Roberson’s warnings. But he didn’t take no
notice, and were climbing the main rigging to make a signal for ye to
heave to, when a ratlin’ give way and dropped him on deck. The man at
the wheel jumped to save him, and so did I, but it warn’t no use. He’d
broke his leg, and the old _Philomeel_ took a sheer into the mud.”
“Poor father!” sighed Phil. “Now I know why I’ve been worrying about
him. I can’t understand, though, how he could undertake such a terrible
journey with a broken leg.”
“Why not? They made him as comfortable as ef he were in his own home.
Besides, there warn’t nothing else to be did.”
“Comfortable! with a broken leg, on a dog-sledge trip of a thousand
miles through an arctic wilderness in midwinter!” cried Phil. “Seems
to me any one who could find comfort under those conditions might live
in luxury on an iceberg in the Polar Sea.”
“Which it has been did,” replied the mate, gravely. “But it begins to
look as ef me and you was sailing on different tacks. Where is it that
you suppose your father to be at this blessed minute?”
“Somewhere on the Yukon, not more than a day’s journey from here,
though when I entered this room just now I fully expected to see him,”
replied Phil, who had so long cherished the hope of a speedy meeting
with his father that he could not even relinquish the idea of his
proximity.
“Yes,” added Serge, “that is what we were told, and we have come nearly
four hundred miles up the river in search of him.”
It was now Jalap Coombs’s turn to stare in amazement. At length he
said: “So you’re spending the winter up here hunting him, be ye, while
he spent the best part of the summer down there hunting you? Seems to
me it’s a leetle the most mixed-up hunting I ever were consarned in.
But it only goes to prove what my old friend Kite Roberson useter offen
say. He useter say, Kite did, that the best way to find a man is to set
still in some likely place till he comes by; but I never could hardly
believe it till this minute. Now I can see that ef Phil had set in
Victoria his father would have found him. Ef he’d set on the _Seamew_
he’d found his father in Sitka. Ef he’d set on the cutter they’d met at
Oonimak. Ef he’d set at the islands he’d seen his father come that way
afore long, and the same at the Redoubt. Likewise ef Mr. Ryder had set
at St. Michaels in place of going to San Francisco on the _Bear_, Phil
would find him there when he goes back from here. Yes, old Kite were a
wiser man than most, though you’d never believe it to see him.”
“You say that my father has gone to San Francisco. Why did he do that?”
queried the still bewildered boy.
“To dock for repairs. You see, the _Bear_ were the last ship of the
season to go out, and so she were his only chance. She had a wracked
crew aboard as were willing to carry the _Philomeel_ back to Oonalaska,
and that left me free to continue the search for you boys.”
“Well,” said Phil, “of course it’s an awful disappointment to find that
I’m not to meet my father――at least, not for some months to come――after
all the trouble I’ve taken to find him. At the same time I am glad to
know that he is safely out of this country for the winter, even if it
did take a broken leg to persuade him of the foolishness of hunting for
me. I should think he might have found out long before that, though,
how well able Serge and I were to take care of ourselves. Poor dear
pop! How he must have suffered! I only hope he will stay quietly in San
Francisco until I can get to him. Did he say how long he would wait
there?”
“Only till sich time as he got his leg spliced and is able to travel.
Then he’s got to come back to Sitka and settle up his business.”
“In that case things are working out all right, after all,” said Phil,
“for Sitka is the very place we are bound for at this very minute.”
“But he warn’t going to stop there,” continued Jalap Coombs, “only till
the first spring ship left for St. Michaels, when he reckoned to take
passage on her and come up after you.”
“But how did he expect to find us at St. Michaels in the spring when he
knew we left there in September?”
“Because the very cruise I’m shipped for is to find you, pilot you back
there, and moor alongside of ye till he heaves in sight again. You see,
he’s taken a notion that he’d like to come up the river and have a
look at the diggings, which he don’t feel that he can till he has you
once more in tow. So, seeing as I were out of a berth for the winter,
and we heerd as you were froze in somewheres up here on the river, I
took the contract to hunt ye and fetch ye back. I’ll allow, though,
that things was looking pretty dubious for me awhile ago, and ef you
hadn’t hove in sight as ye did I’d been all at sea without compass or
yet a chart. Now, though, it’s all plain sailing again, and――”
“Is it?” interrupted Phil. “Seems to me this whole affair is about as
completely snarled as any I ever had anything to do with, unless it was
a fighting dog-team. To begin with―― But, I say, suppose we have supper
first and discuss the situation afterwards. I for one am too hungry to
think.”
“If you are any more hungry than I am you are hungry enough to be
dangerous,” laughed Serge; while Jalap Coombs remarked that supper was
the very thing he was considering when Phil entered the room. “And a
mighty poor lookout it were,” he added, “for I hadn’t any grub, nor
didn’t know the best place to steal any, nor yet warn’t quite hungry
enough to steal a supper anyway. So I were jest concluding to go
without, same as I did for dinner. But ef you boys has got anything to
eat――”
“Have we?” cried Phil; “you just wait and see. Serge, did you know this
was Christmas Day?”
“No,” laughed Serge, “for it isn’t.”
“Well, it is so near to it, and this meeting is such a joyous occasion,
that I move we trot out our mince-pies, and plum-puddings, and roast
turkeys, and pemmican, and things, and have a regular Christmas
blowout. That is, always supposing that Mr. Coombs will loan us the use
of his house. This is your house, is it not, Mr. Coombs?”
“Sartain it is,” replied the mate, with a grin, and entering fully
into Phil’s absurdities. “Leastways, there ain’t no one come to turn
me out of it yet. So you’re as welcome to it as I be. For, as old Kite
Roberson useter say――”
“Let’s have him for dessert,” laughed Phil, as he started outside to
discover what had become of the sledges.