Mar listened, or didn’t listen, with an air of respectful quiescence, and ate his meals unabashed. But he commiserated Cheviot, “How this must make you long for your Valdivia luxuries. Well, when do you go back?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Mar showed as little gratitude as pleasure.
“You mustn’t think of waiting for me,” he answered shortly.
Cheviot was profoundly perplexed as to what he ought to do. Mar was not a man that any one could comfortably catechize, but to go away and leave him here with public opinion so against him; for Cheviot to present himself to Hildegarde, knowing he had left her father on this inhospitable shore, to all intents and purposes a prisoner—it was not to be thought of.
Mar’s favorite scheme for a good day’s fishing was to row across to the river mouth where some Englishmen, several years before, had made a camp.
In the sheltered hollow a little way up the stream they had built a cabin, so well, that although long deserted it still offered refuge from the drenching rain, or from the unshut eye of the sun, and even from the greater torment of mosquitoes. For Mar had learnt the value of the Esquimau use of a “smudge.” On the way to the cabin he would gather two handfuls of arctic moss, of straw and some aromatic smelling herb, twist all together in two wisps and set one alight on the flat stone that formed the threshold and the other smoldering in a rusty pan upon the sill of the single window, with the result that the mosquitoes fled. In great comfort Mar and Cheviot would proceed to make tea, and eat their sandwiches—at least, Cheviot ate his. He noticed that although his friend never disposed of a third of what he brought, he did not the next time bring any less. Quite suddenly one day it dawned upon Cheviot why. For although the crackers and cheese and sandwiches that were left were always carefully put away in a tin cracker-box, the box on their return was invariably empty.
And Mar never seemed the least surprised.