THE FUR-SEAL’S TOOTHCHAPTER IPHIL AND SERGE
THE FUR-SEAL’S TOOTH
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 untilhe 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 havingto 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 excitementthe 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 purchasedin 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 sofar 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-sealexquisitely 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.
“IT WAS THE IVORY TOOTH OF A FUR-SEAL”
“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.