“Comfortable! with a broken leg, on a dog-sledge trip of a thousand miles through an arctic wilderness in midwinter!” cried Phil. “Seems to me any one who could find comfort under those conditions might live in luxury on an iceberg in the Polar Sea.”
“Which it has been did,” replied the mate, gravely. “But it begins to look as ef me and you was sailing on different tacks. Where is it that you suppose your father to be at this blessed minute?”
“Somewhere on the Yukon, not more than a day’s journey from here, though when I entered this room just now I fully expected to see him,” replied Phil, who had so long cherished the hope of a speedy meeting with his father that he could not even relinquish the idea of his proximity.
“Yes,” added Serge, “that is what we were told, and we have come nearly four hundred miles up the river in search of him.”
It was now Jalap Coombs’s turn to stare in amazement. At length he said: “So you’re spending the winter up here hunting him, be ye, while he spent the best part of the summer down there hunting you? Seems to me it’s a leetle the most mixed-up hunting I ever were consarned in. But it only goes to prove what my old friend Kite Roberson useter offen say. He useter say, Kite did, that the best way to find a man is to set still in some likely place till he comes by; but I never could hardly believe it till this minute. Now I can see that ef Phil had set in Victoria his father would have found him. Ef he’d set on the Seamew he’d found his father in Sitka. Ef he’d set on the cutter they’d met at Oonimak. Ef he’d set at the islands he’d seen his father come that way afore long, and the same at the Redoubt. Likewise ef Mr. Ryder had set at St. Michaels in place of going to San Francisco on the Bear, Phil would find him there when he goes back from here. Yes, old Kite were a wiser man than most, though you’d never believe it to see him.”
“You say that my father has gone to San Francisco. Why did he do that?” queried the still bewildered boy.
“To dock for repairs. You see, the Bear were the last ship of the season to go out, and so she were his only chance. She had a wracked crew aboard as were willing to carry the Philomeel back to Oonalaska, and that left me free to continue the search for you boys.”
“Well,” said Phil, “of course it’s an awful disappointment to find that I’m not to meet my father—at least, not for some months to come—after all the trouble I’ve taken to find him. At the same time I am glad to know that he is safely out of this country for the winter, even if it did take a broken leg to persuade him of the foolishness of hunting for me. I should think he might have found out long before that, though, how well able Serge and I were to take care of ourselves. Poor dear pop! How he must have suffered! I only hope he will stay quietly in San Francisco until I can get to him. Did he say how long he would wait there?”
“Only till sich time as he got his leg spliced and is able to travel. Then he’s got to come back to Sitka and settle up his business.”