“I’ve eaten most everything from chicken-à-la-King with youse at the Ritz-Carlton to a pair o’ old rubber boots when I was shipwrecked at sea. It seems to me I’ve heard that word pemmican somewhere afore in my bright log-book o’ youth, but I can’t say as how I ever sat down to a table-de-hoty dinner where it was served and that I knew I was partakin’ of it at the same time. Explain it to me and maybe I’ll remember it by the way it smells.”
“Pemmican,” began Jack, “is like Irish stew, Hungarian goulash, chop-suey or chili-con-carne in that there is a general recipe for making it. But cooks take even more liberties than poets; consequently no two brands of pemmican are made the same, and, hence, cannot taste, or smell, alike, but the two things that all of them have in common are filling and staying qualities for either man or dog.
“Pemmican is usually made of meat ground up and grease added to it when it is cooked, and some makers put pea-flour and other vegetable ingredients into it to make it cheap. A pound of it will not fill a cup and you can eat it every meal without getting tired of it. We used great lots of it—in fact almost lived on it—when I went on that Arctic expedition, and we fed it to the dogs too.
“Rear Admiral Peary had his pemmican made to order to get the full food value out of it; his recipe called for lean beef ground fine, two thirds part, and this was mixed with beef fat, one third part, to which was added a little sugar and some raisins. The pemmican for the dogs is made of cats, dogs, horses or any other kind of meat that is cheap. What this pemmican is like that we are going to get here I haven’t the faintest idea, but it doesn’t matter much for we’re not going to use it as a steady diet.”
“One thing is sure, other prospectors have et it and what they can eat we can eat if we have to,” was Bill’s idea of it.
On returning to the hotel Bill took Sing Nook, the Chinese cook to one side, pressed a fifty cent piece into his hand and told him it was his earnest desire to have some Alaska strawberries for his supper by way of a little delicacy.
“Velly welly,” returned the celestial dignitary who presided over the joss-house of pots and pans; “I glivee you pleanty Alaska stlawbellies flor slupper.” And so that was easily fixed.
When Bill sat down to partake of the rations that evening he waited patiently for the Alaska strawberries to come under his observation; but none materialized as far as his acute judgment of the luscious fruit was concerned. As soon as the meal was over and the diners had dispersed Bill got Sing into a corner and sang him a song without music, but the words of which ran something like this:
“I gave you four bits this afternoon to get me a helpin’ o’ Alaska strawberries. You took my good money but you failed to deliver the goods. Now what have you got to say for yourself, you Shanghai colored son of a Pekin pigtail.”
“Allee samee I dlid glivee you Alaska stlawbellies flor slupper. You no catchee ’em?” Sing asked very much surprised.