Happy to share his responsibility with the stranger who had been so providentially sent to their relief, Phil willingly agreed to his proposal, and ordered the Chimo to be again got under way. The night was clear, cold, and still; but there was no moon, and its darkness was only dissipated in a measure by brilliant starlight. This, however, was sufficient to disclose the outline of the western bank, which the new pilot kept always in sight. He seemed actually to be able to feel his way up the mighty river, avoiding false channels and sandbars as if by instinct, and never hesitating as to which side of an island he ought to pass. Phil occupied the pilot-house with him, and after a long silence he exclaimed, admiringly, “You surely must have been a steamboat man, sir, before you became a missionary.”
“No,” laughed the other, “I never was on a river steamer until I came out here, though as a boy I did have some experience in running up and down Lake Champlain, near which I lived.”
“In New York State?” asked Phil.
“No; in Vermont, not very far from Burlington. So, you see, I am a genuine Yankee.”
“I might have known it,” said Phil, “from your handiness at all sorts of things. I wonder why it is that, as a rule, the Yankee is such a Jack-at-all-trades?”
“I suppose it is because he is generally taught by necessity in the shape of poverty,” replied the missionary; “and even if he were not so taught at home, he certainly would be out here, where a man must be able to do nearly everything for himself or leave it undone.”
“Jalap Coombs was a Yankee,” meditated Phil, “that is, when he didn’t feel that he was a subject, and he could do more kinds of things than any one I ever knew. How I wish he were with us at this very minute! I don’t believe we could get into any scrape or trouble that he wouldn’t manage to get us out of somehow.”
“Is he dead?” asked the missionary.
“No, indeed. That is, I hope not, though he might as well be so far as we are concerned, for I don’t suppose we shall ever see him again. We left him on Oonimak Island, Serge and I did, and now I suppose he is in Sitka or Victoria or San Francisco, or perhaps bound for the other side of the world.”
Being thus started on the subject of Jalap Coombs, Phil proceeded to give his new friend an account of their recent adventures in Bering Sea, and of the prominent part taken in them by the Yankee mate of the sealer Seamew, in all of which the new-comer was deeply interested. While Phil was in the midst of an account of how Serge obtained fire from brimstone and feathers, the second mate himself appeared to report that their stock of fuel was nearly exhausted.