In the meantime Musky, Luvtuk, and big Amook were tearing madly up and down the wharf, yelping and barking their joyful recognition of the fact that the long journey, with its months of hard work, was ended, and for them at least play-time had come.
With this journey’s end also came the partings that always form so sad a feature of all journeys’ ends. Even the three dogs that had travelled together for so long were separated, Musky being given to Serge, Luvtuk to May Matthews, to become the pet of the Phoca’s crew, and big Amook going with Phil, Aunt Ruth, Nel-te, the sledge, the snow-shoes, and the beautiful white, thick-furred skin of a mountain goat to distant New London.
Mr. Ryder and Jalap Coombs accompanied them as far as San Francisco. Dear old Serge was reluctantly left behind, busily making preparations to carry out his cherished scheme of returning to Anvik as a teacher.
In San Francisco Mr. Ryder secured for Jalap Coombs the command of a trading schooner plying between that port and Honolulu. When it was announced to him that he was at last actually a captain, the honest fellow’s voice trembled with emotion as he answered:
“Mr. Ryder, sir, and Phil, I never did wholly look to be a full-rigged cap’n, though I’ve striv and waited for the berth nigh on to forty year. Now I know that it’s jest as my old friend Kite Roberson useter say; for he allus said, Kite did, that ‘Them as waits the patientest is bound to see things happen.’”
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes:
Except for the frontispiece, illustrations have been moved to follow the text that they illustrate, so the page number of the illustration may not match the page number in the Illustrations.