“Mebbe you be, son,” remarked Jalap Coombs, “and then again mebbe there’s others as is equally joyful. As my old friend Kite Roberson useter say, ‘A receiver’s as good as a thief,’ and I sartainly received a heap of pleasure through hearing you holler jest now.”
[CHAPTER XXXV]
HOW JALAP COOMBS MADE PORT
The things on which we are apt to set the highest value in this world are those that we have lost, and even our friends are as a rule most highly appreciated after they have been taken from us. Thus, in the present instance, Phil and Serge had so sincerely mourned the loss of their quaint but loyal comrade that his restoration to them alive and well, “hearty and hungry,” as he himself expressed it, filled them with unbounded joy. They hung about him, and lovingly brushed the snow from his fur clothing, and plied him with questions, and made so much of him that he finally exclaimed:
“Avast, lads, and let up! Ye make me feel like I were reading my own obituary in print, which my old friend Kite Roberson were the only mortal man ever I knowed as had that onhappy pleasure. It happened when he were lost at sea, with his ship and all hands, in latitood 24.06 nothe, and longitood 140.15 west, ’cording to the noosepapers; while, ’cording to Kite’s log, he were cutting in of a fin-back and having the best of luck at that very place and hour. Anyway, whether he were drownded or no, he kim back in time to enjoy the mortification of reading the notice of his own taking off, which he said it made him feel ashamed to be alive, seeing as he were a so much better man after he were dead. Them’s about the size of my feelings at the present hour of observation. So ef you boys don’t let up I reckon I’ll have to crawl back in the snow and stay there.”
Even Nel-te showed delight at the return of his playmate by cuddling up to him, and stroking his weather-beaten cheeks, and confiding to him how very hungry he was.
“Me, too, Cap’n Kid!” exclaimed Jalap Coombs; “and I must say you’re a mighty tempting mossel to a man as nigh starved as I be. Jest about broiling age, plump and tender. Cap’n Kid, look out, for I’m mighty inclined to stow ye away.”
“Try this instead,” laughed Phil, holding out a chunk of frozen pemmican that he had just chopped off. “We’re in the biggest kind of luck to-day,” he continued. “I didn’t know there was a mouthful of anything to eat on this sledge, and here I’ve just found about five pounds of pemmican. It does seem to me the very best pemmican that ever was put up, too, and I only wonder that we didn’t eat it long ago. I’m going to get my aunt Ruth to make me a lot of it just as soon as ever I get home.”
By this time the fire was blazing merrily, and the chynik was beginning to sing. Musky, Luvtuk, and big Amook had each received a portion of the precious pemmican, swallowed it at a gulp, and were wagging their bushy tails in anxious expectation of more, while the spirits of the whole party were at the top-notch of contentment.