“Yes,” MacGregor was saying to Rusty, as he told more of his adventures in the very far north, “it was a bit peculiar goin’ up there like that, livin’ with the Eskimos. And me still a young fellow like Johnny Thompson now.” He shot her a look. She smiled at him in a peculiar way, but said never a word.
“It was the food that was strange,” he went on after a chuckle. “Of course, you can chew polar bear steak if you’ve got uncommon good teeth. Seal steak’s not half-bad and reindeer makes a grand Mulligan stew.”
“Yes, I know,” the girl agreed. “We have some reindeer meat sent down every season. Stay with us and you’ll have a taste of it.”
“We’ll stay, all right,” MacGregor declared. “That’s what we’re here for to stay, hunting Orientals and shadows—shadows.” He repeated the word slowly. “Blackie believes in moving shadows in the fog on the sea.”
“Shadows?” the girl stared at him.
“Sure! He says they glide along across the sea with never a sound. Like some phantom schooner it was,” he said.
“That’s strange.” The girl’s eyes shone. “There was a gill-net fisherman last season told something just like that. He was an Italian, sort of a dreamer. We didn’t believe him. But now—what do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” MacGregor scratched his gray thatch.
“But, Mr. MacGregor,” the girl said after a moment, “didn’t you have a thing to eat except Eskimo food?”
“What? Oh, yes, up there, up there when I was a kid same as Johnny,” MacGregor laughed. “Sure—sure we did. It came on a sailin’ schooner all in cans.