"Then at last I can have the pleasure of showing it to my daughter. Would you mind letting me have it for a few minutes?"
"Unfortunately, sir—"
"Now don't tell me that you have gone and lost it again."
"Not exactly lost it," replied Phil. "At the same time, I don't know precisely where it is nor what has become of it, only it is somewhere back in Klukwan, where it originally came from, and I have every reason to believe that it is in possession of the principal Chilkat Shaman."
"I declare that is too bad!" exclaimed the Captain. "If I had known that sooner I believe I should have kept right on and shelled the village until they gave me the tooth, so strong is my desire to get hold of it."
"And so secured to yourself the ill luck of him who steals it," laughed Phil.
That afternoon the Phoca turned sharply to the right, and began to thread the swift-rushing and rock-strewn waters of Peril Strait, the narrow channel that washes the northern end of Baranoff Island, on which Sitka is situated. Now Serge stood on the bridge beside his friend, so nervous with excitement that he could hardly speak. Every roaring tide rip and swirling eddy of those waters, every rock with its streamers of brown kelp, every beach and wooded point were like familiar faces to the young Russo-American, for just beyond them lay his home, that dear home from which he had been more than three years absent.
Suddenly he clutched Phil's arm, and pointed to a lofty snow-crowned peak looming high above the forest and bathed in rosy sunlight. "There's Mount Edgecumbe!" he cried; and a few minutes afterward, "There's Verstoroi." Phil felt the nervous fingers tremble as they gripped his arm; and when, a little later the cutter swept from a narrow passage into an island-studded bay, he could hardly hear the hoarse whisper of: "There, Phil! There's Sitka! Dear, beautiful Sitka!"
And Phil was nearly as excited as Serge to think that, after twelve months of ceaseless wanderings, the goal for which he had set forth was at last reached.
The Phoca had hardly dropped anchor before another ship appeared, entering the bay from the same direction.