“What, your appetite?” asked Jack.
“N-n-no, the ivory mystery.”
“What’s that; your head?” put in Rand.
“N-n-no,” yelped Pepper, whose face now rivaled his locks in color and whose fists were doubled up. “I mean that ivory—that narwhal’s horn. We’re going to Alaska and we can find that cave.”
“Faith, that’s so. We might get all that ivory,” put in Gerald, with interest.
“I think I heard somewhere, but I’ll not be sure about it,” suggested the cautious Don, “that there’s more than five hundred and ninety thousand square miles in Alaska, and I ha’e me doots that we find it the verra first day.”
Despite these gibes, their interest was aroused and the cave, whose mouth was shaped like the ace of clubs, figured not a little in the imaginations of the boys, when, followed by the good wishes of relatives, neighbors and friends, they entrained the next morning like true soldiers in their patrol uniforms, and from the rear platform of the train, sounded the Scout salute to their native town upon their bugles.
Four days later they joined Colonel Snow, who had preceded them, in Seattle, and, after two days of sightseeing in the Washington metropolis, boarded the “Queen,” and at ten o’clock at night, steamed out upon Puget’s Sound, for their long trip of nearly a thousand miles on the water.
Among the cases of machinery and other freight, traveling in the vessel’s hold under Colonel Snow’s name, was a long box shaped like an old-fashioned piano case, which had nothing to do with Colonel Snow’s enterprises. Despite the fact that it weighed more than half a ton, the boys had clubbed together to pay the rather exorbitant freight charges upon it. Superfluous as it appeared at one time to the Colonel, it was destined to play an important part in the Scouts’ adventures in the land of gold and glaciers.
An hour of gazing on the scenic wonders that sped past on the right and left the morning after their departure from Seattle, aroused the boys’ appetites, and they were beginning to long for the breakfast bugle call, when Colonel Snow came from his stateroom and bade them a hearty good morning. He had just redrawn their attention to the magnificent land and waterscape, with the remark that Major General Greeley, of Arctic fame, had made ten voyages to Alaska, and on each trip found some new wonder in the “Inside Passage” when there arose a chorus of yells, curses and vituperation from the deck below, and leaning over the railing, the boys saw a man with a pistol in his hand backing away from two who were striking at him with handspikes that they had grabbed from the side of the vessel.