THE FUR-SEAL’S TOOTH CREATES A SENSATION
One evening late in March the smoke of a lonely camp-fire curled above
a fringe of stunted spruces forming the timber-line high up on the
northern slope of the Alaskan coast range. Kotusk, the natives call
these mountains. Far below lay the spotless sheet of Takh Lake, from
which the Tahkeena winds for one hundred miles down its rugged valley
to swell the Yukon flood. From the foot of the mountains the unbroken
solitude of the vast northern wilderness swept away in ice-bound
silence to the polar sea. Far to the westward St. Elias and Wrangel,
the great northern sentinels of the Rocky Mountain system, reared their
massive heads nearly twenty thousand feet above the Pacific. From them
the mighty range of snow-clad peaks follows the coast line eastward,
gathering with icy fingers the mist clouds ever rising from the warm
ocean waters, converting them with frigid breath into the grandest
glaciers of the continent, and sending these slowly grinding their
resistless way back to the sea.
On one side of this stupendous barrier our sledge party from the Yukon
was now halted. On the other lay the frontier of civilization, safety,
and their journey’s end. Between the two points rose the mountains,
calmly contemptuous of human efforts to penetrate their secrets of
avalanche and glacier, icy precipice and snow-filled gorge, fierce
blizzard and ice-laden whirlwind, desolation and death. It is no
wonder that, face to face with such things, the little group, gathered
about the last camp-fire they might see for days or perhaps forever,
should be unusually quiet and thoughtful.
Still clad in their well-worn garments of fur, they were engaged in
characteristic occupations. Phil, looking anxious and careworn, was
standing close to the fire warming and cleaning his rifle. Serge was
making a stew of the last of their moose meat, which would afterwards
be frozen and taken with them into untimbered regions where camp-fires
would be unknown. Jalap Coombs was thoughtfully mending a broken
snow-shoe, and at the same time finding his task sadly interrupted
by Nel-te, who, nestled between his knees, was trying to attract the
sailor-man’s undivided attention.
The little chap, with his great sorrow forgotten, was now the life and
pet of the party. So firmly was his place established among them that
they wondered how they had ever borne the loneliness of a camp without
his cheery presence, and could hardly realize that he had only recently
come into their lives. Now, too, half the anxiety with which they
regarded the perilous way before them was on his account.
“I’m worrying most about the dogs,” said Phil, continuing a
conversation begun some time before, “and I am afraid some of them will
give out before we reach the summit.”
“Yes,” agreed Serge; “to-day’s pull up from the lake has told terribly
on them, and Amook’s feet have been badly cut by the crust ever since
he ate his boots.”
“Poor old dog!” said Phil. “It was awfully careless of me to forget and
leave them on him all night. I don’t wonder a bit at his eating them,
though, considering the short rations he’s been fed on lately.”
The dogs were indeed having a hard time. Worn by months of
sledge-pulling over weary leagues of snow and ice, their trials only
increased as the tedious journey progressed. The days were now so long
that each offered a full twelve hours of sunlight, while the snow
was so softened by the growing warmth that in the middle of the day
it seriously clogged both snow-shoes and sledges. Then a crust would
form, through which the poor dogs would break for an hour or more,
until it stiffened sufficiently to bear their weight. Added to these
tribulations was such a scarcity of food that half-rations had become
the rule for every one, men as well as dogs, excepting Nel-te, who had
not yet been allowed to suffer on that account. Of the many dogs that
had been connected with the expedition at different times only nine
were now left, and some of these would evidently not go much farther.
As the boys talked of the condition of these trusty servants, and
exchanged anxious forebodings concerning the crossing of the mountains,
their attention was attracted by an exclamation from Jalap Coombs.
Nel-te had been so insistent in demanding his attention that the
sailor-man was finally obliged to lay aside his work and lift the child
to his knees, saying,
“Waal, Cap’n Kid, what’s the orders now, sir?”
“Cap’n Kid” was the name he had given to the little fellow on the
occasion of the latter’s début as pilot; for, as he said, “Every branch
pilot answers to the hail of cap’n, and this one being a kid becomes
‘Cap’n Kid’ by rights.”
For answer to his question the child held out a small fur-booted foot,
and intimated that the boot should be pulled off.
“Bad foot, hurt Nel-te,” he said.
“So! something gone wrong with your running rigging, eh?” queried
Jalap Coombs, as he pulled off the offending boot. Before he could
investigate it the little chap reached forward, and, thrusting a
chubby hand down to its very toe, drew forth in triumph the object
that had been annoying him. As he made a motion to fling it out into
the snow, Jalap Coombs, out of curiosity to see what had worried the
child, caught his hand. The next moment he uttered the half-terrified
exclamation that attracted the attention of Phil and Serge.
As they looked they saw him holding to the firelight between thumb and
finger, and beyond reach of Nel-te, who was striving to regain it, an
object so strange and yet so familiar that for a moment they regarded
it in speechless amazement.
“The fur-seal’s tooth!” cried Phil. “How can it be?”
[Illustration: THE FUR-SEAL’S TOOTH CREATES A SENSATION]
“It can’t be our fur-seal’s tooth,” objected Serge, in a tone of
mingled incredulity and awe. “There must be several of them.”
“I should think so myself,” replied Phil, who had taken the object in
question from Jalap Coombs for a closer examination, “if it were not
for a private mark that I scratched on it when it was in our possession
at St. Michaels. See, here it is, and so the identity of the tooth is
established beyond a doubt. But how it ever got here I cannot conceive.
There is actually something supernatural about the whole thing. Where
did you say you found it, Mr. Coombs?”
“In Cap’n Kid’s boot,” replied the mate, who had just restored that
article to the child’s foot. “But blow me for a porpus ef I kin
understand how ever it got there. Last time I seen it ’twas back to
Forty Mile.”
“Yes,” said Serge, “Judge Riley had it.”
“I remember seeing him put it into a vest-pocket,” added Phil, “and
meant to ask him for it, but forgot to do so. Now to have it appear
from the boot of that child, who has never been to Forty Mile, or
certainly not since we left there, is simply miraculous. It beats any
trick of spiritualism or conjuring I ever heard of. The mystery of the
tooth’s appearing at St. Michaels after my father lost it, only a short
time before at Oonalaska, was strange enough; but that was nothing to
this.”
“There must be magic in it,” said Serge, who from early associations
was inclined to be superstitious. “I don’t care, though, if there is,”
he added, stoutly. “I believe the tooth has come to us at this time of
our despondency as an omen of good-fortune, and now I feel certain that
we shall pull through all right. You remember, Phil, the saying that
goes with it: ‘He who receives it as a gift receives good-luck.’”
“Who has received it as a gift this time?” inquired the Yankee lad.
“We all have, though it seems to have been especially sent to Nel-te,
and you know he is the one we were most anxious about.”
“That’s so,” assented Phil, “and from this time on Nel-te shall wear
it as a charm, though I suppose it won’t stay with him any longer than
suits its convenience. I never had a superstition in my life, and
haven’t believed in such things, but I must confess that my unbelief is
shaken by this affair. There isn’t any possible way, that I can see,
for this tooth to have got here except by magic of some kind.”
“It beats the _Flying Dutchman_ and merrymaids,” said Jalap Coombs,
solemnly, as he lighted his pipe for a quieting smoke. “D’ye know,
lads, I’m coming to think as how it were all on account of this ’ere
curio being aboard the steamer _Norsk_ that she stopped and picked you
up in Bering Sea that night.”
“Nonsense!” cried Phil. “That is impossible.”
Thus purely through ignorance this lad, who was usually so sensible and
level-headed, declared with one breath his belief in an impossibility,
and with the next his disbelief of a fact. All of which serves to
illustrate the folly of making assertions concerning subjects about
which we are ignorant. There is nothing so mysterious that it cannot be
explained, and nothing more foolish than to declare a thing impossible
simply because we are too ignorant to understand it.
In the present case Serge and Jalap Coombs, and even Phil, who should
have known better, were ready to believe that the fur-seal’s tooth
had come to them through some supernatural agency, because, in their
ignorance, they could not imagine how it could have come in any
other way. We laugh at their simplicity because of our wisdom. We
saw Mr. Platt Riley drop the tooth into one of their sleeping-bags
at Forty Mile. Knowing this, it is easy to understand how that same
sleeping-bag, which happened to be the extra one acquired by the
turning over to Jalap Coombs of Strengel’s stolen property, should be
selected as Nel-te’s travelling-bag, and lashed to a sledge for his
occupancy in the daytime. In his restlessness he had kicked the tooth
about until it finally worked its way into one of his little fur boots,
and that is all there was to the mystery.
Still, it afforded a fertile topic for conversation around that lonely
mountain-side camp-fire long after Phil had strung it on a buckskin
thong and hung it about the child’s neck, at the same time taking the
precaution to tuck it snugly inside his little fur parka. All agreed
that they were glad to have the fur-seal’s tooth in their possession
once more; and on account of its presence among them they were ready
to face the difficulties that would confront them on the morrow with a
cheerful confidence.