“Ah! but this is cosey and comfortable,” he remarked, as he entered the well-lighted mess-room, which opened from the galley and was warmed by its glowing stove. Serge had just finished his preparations for supper, and the well-laden mess-table did indeed present a sight calculated to cheer the heart of a hungry man, especially one who had been for hours battling with the ice of an Alaskan river.
“You gentlemen seem to be travelling and living like princes,” continued the stranger; “but I must confess to considerable surprise at finding you on the river so late in the season. You are bound down and out, I presume?”
“No, sir,” answered Phil, “we are bound up the river, and hope to reach Anvik before it closes.”
“Anvik!” cried the stranger. “Why, that is the place to which I also am going.”
“Alone, at night, and in a bidarkie?” asked Phil, incredulously.
“Yes,” laughed the other, “though I was only trying to cross the river to-night for fear it might close before morning, and leave me stranded on the farther bank. It was a reckless thing to undertake, I acknowledge, and but for your timely presence I might have come to serious grief ere this. It had grown so dark before I sighted your lights that I could no longer avoid the floating ice, and was in great fear that my boat would be cut open. You may believe, then, that I was glad to see them. Now, to find myself seated among those of my own race, and at a civilized table after a rather trying experience of Eskimo hospitality, caps the climax and renders my content complete.”
“Are you on a hunting or fishing trip, sir?” asked Phil, anxious to establish the status of this new acquaintance.
“Neither, just now,” was the laconic answer.
“Trading, perhaps?”