“Well, if that isn’t one way of getting a fire!” exclaimed Phil. “I say, Serge, what a wise sort of chap you are, anyway! I am only just beginning to find it out. Why didn’t you tell us how much you knew back there in New London?”
“Because the kind of things I know best are only worth knowing in this country, where I learned them,” replied Serge. “They would not be appreciated in New London.”
“I suppose not,” said Phil, thoughtfully; “and the kind of things I have been taught, such as Latin and English literature, don’t seem to count for much out here. Neither does the thing that I know best of all seem to be appreciated by the present company. It is that I am as hungry as sixteen wolves, and want my supper.”
With this startling statement Phil pounced upon an unoffending crab and thrust him without the slightest compunction into a bed of glowing coals.
[CHAPTER XXI]
LUXURY ON A DESOLATE ALEUTIAN ISLAND
Both Jalap Coombs and Serge quickly followed Phil’s example so far as the crabs were concerned, and while these were baking, the lads amused themselves by roasting and eating the mussels with which the young hunter had filled his pockets. “My, but aren’t these good!” cried Phil, smacking his lips over one of the little yellow mussels that he had just withdrawn steaming hot from its shell and eaten. “I wish we had a bushel of them.”
“Ef ye had, ye’d be sorry ye ever seen a mussel afore ye’d finished with ’em,” remarked the mate, with a knowing shake of his head. Disdaining to waste his time over anything so trifling and unsatisfactory as mussels, he was devoting himself to the spitting of a salmon on a long stick, which, by the aid of several bits of rock, he so arranged that the fish was held just above a bed of coals.
“Why?” asked Phil and Serge together.