"Certainly I am, and should have been half-way there by this time if I hadn't been delayed by a report of some sort of a row between the Chilkats and a party of whites. Now, having settled that difficulty by capturing the entire force of aggressors, I propose to carry them to Sitka as legitimate prisoners, and then turn them over to the authorities. So, gentlemen, you will please consider yourselves as prisoners of war, and under orders not to leave this ship until she arrives at Sitka."
"With pleasure, sir," laughed Phil. "Only don't you think you'd better place us under guard?"
"I expect it will be best," replied the Captain, gravely, "seeing that you are charged with seal-poaching, piracy, defying government officers, and escaping from arrest, as well as the present one of making war on native Americans."
CHAPTER XL.
IN SITKA TOWN.
The long-beaked and wonderfully carved Chilkat canoe was taken on the Phoca's deck, the anchor was weighed, and, with the trim cutter headed southward, the last stage of the adventurous journey, pursued amid such strange vicissitudes, was begun. As the ship sped swiftly past the overhanging ice-fields of Davidson Glacier, out of Chilkat Inlet into the broad mountain-walled waters of Lynn Canal, and down that thoroughfare into Chatham Strait, Captain Matthews listened with absorbed interest to Phil's account of the remarkable adventures that he and Serge had encountered from the time he had last seen them at the Pribyloff islands down to the present moment.
"Well," said he, when the recital was finished, "I've done a good bit of knocking about in queer places during thirty years of going to sea, and had some experiences, but my life has been tame and monotonous compared with the one you have led for the past year. Why, lad, if an account of what you have gone through in attempting to take a quiet little trip from New London to Sitka was written out and printed in a book, people wouldn't believe it was true. They'd shake their heads and say it was all made up, which only goes to prove, what I never believed before, that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, after all."
"Yes," replied Phil; "and the strangest part of it all is the way that fur-seal's tooth has followed us and exerted its influence in our behalf from the beginning to the very end. Why, sir, if it hadn't been for that tooth you wouldn't have come to Chilkat, and we shouldn't be in the happy position we are at this very moment."
"You don't mean to say," cried Captain Matthews, "that it turned up again after your father lost it?"
"Oh yes, sir, and it's been with us, off and on, all the time."