Bright and early the following morning the little camp was dismantled and abandoned. Kooga took his tent, and bidding farewell to the lads into whose lives he had entered so strangely, shoved off his bidarkie, and started on his lonely return trip to far Saanak. After watching him out of sight, the others loaded themselves with their newly-acquired camp outfit, and started on their long, toilsome march to the north side of the island.
When, after many hours of tramping, they came in sight of the now familiar ruins and their own barrabkie they were struck with the latter’s appearance of loneliness. There was no smoke nor sign of human presence. Filled with undefined anxiety, they hurried forward, only to find the hut abandoned, and a little heap of cold ashes in the place where its cheerful fire had blazed. The companion whom they had left there five days before had disappeared, nor could they find a clew to the time or manner of his departure.
“The schooner must have come, and he must have taken the seal-skins to Oonalaska in her,” suggested Phil.
“I should think so, too,” replied Serge, who had just returned from an inspection of the cache, “if it wasn’t for the fact that the seal-skins are still here, and apparently untouched.”
[CHAPTER XXVII]
PHIL SEES HIMSELF AS OTHERS SEE HIM
It is needless to say that our lads were wofully disconcerted by the unexplained absence of Jalap Coombs from the place where they had left him. Their homecoming, as they had termed their return to the barrabkie during that day’s toilsome march, was not only robbed of all the pleasure they had anticipated, but was confronted by a mystery that filled them with anxious thoughts and gloomy forebodings. It did not seem possible that their comrade could have departed from the island without leaving some message for them. Neither could they understand why he should have gone without taking the seal-skins which he had prized so highly. Had he wandered to some remote part of the island, and become lost? or fallen down one of its tremendous precipices? or— But what was the use in such conjectures? An experienced sailor-man like the mate of the Seamew was not likely to have done any of these things. He was even so averse to walking, save on the deck of a vessel, that they could not imagine him as having gone any farther from the hut than was absolutely necessary to procure food, fuel, and water.
Remembering his friend’s recent experience with a bear, Phil suggested that Jalap Coombs might have been attacked and carried off by one of those animals; but Serge at once pointed out the absurdity of such a theory. The bears of that country, he said, would not attack a man unless first wounded or provoked, and the mate, as they both knew, was not one who would needlessly or recklessly affront a bear. Besides, such a struggle, as was suggested, could not have taken place without leaving unmistakable traces, and of these there were none. To be sure the interior of the old barrabkie was in great disorder. The lads particularly noted that the split caribou bones from which they had extracted the marrow on the last evening they had spent there, and which they had flung into one corner, were now scattered in every direction, some of them lying at quite a distance beyond the hut. For a while they could not account for this; but at length Serge discovered a fox track clearly imprinted in some damp ashes, and so one bit of mystery was removed.
They had so confidently expected to find a fire at the hut that they had neglected to provide themselves with the means for procuring one. Now they were too tired and disheartened to go off on a long search for sulphur and tinder. So they ate what remained of the slender stock of provisions brought from their last camp, and then, huddling close together for warmth beneath the tent-roof of the hut, they discussed their unfortunate situation and gloomy prospects for the future, until at length they fell into the dreamless sleep of utter weariness. Phil’s last words before dozing into unconsciousness were, “I can’t see that we’ve anything to hope for, not even a breakfast to-morrow morning, unless we—care—to—eat raw—fish; which I won’t.”