"Oh, Phil! How could you?" gasped Aunt Ruth. "You frightened me almost to death, and have crushed me all out of shape. You are a regular polar-bear in all those furs and things. What do you mean, sir? Oh you dear, dear boy!" At this point Miss Ruth's feelings so completely overcame her that she sank down on a convenient log and burst into hysterical weeping.
"There, you young scamp!" cried Mr. Ryder, whose own eyes were full of joyful tears at that moment. "See what you have done! Aren't you ashamed of yourself, sir?"
"Yes, pop, awfully. But I've got something that will cheer her up and amuse her. And here's Serge and— No he isn't, either. What has become of Serge? Oh, I suppose he has gone home. Don't see why he needs to be in such a hurry, though. No matter; here's Jalap Coombs. You remember Jalap, father? And here, Aunt Ruth, is the curio I promised to bring you. Look out; it's alive!"
With this the crazy lad snatched Nel-te from the arms of Jalap Coombs, who had just brought him up the steps, and laid him in Miss Ruth's lap, saying, "He's a little orphan kid I found in the wilderness, and adopted for you to love."
Miss Ruth gave such a start as the small bundle of fur was so unexpectedly thrust at her that poor Nel-te rolled to the ground. From there he lifted such a pitifully frightened little face, with such tear-filled eyes and quivering lip, that Miss Ruth snatched him up and hugged him. Then she kissed and petted him to such an extent that by the time he was again smiling he had won a place in her loving heart second only to that occupied by Phil himself.
With this journey's end also came the partings that always form so sad a feature of all journeys' ends. Even the three dogs that had travelled together for so long were separated, Musky being given to Serge, Luvtuk to May Matthews, to become the pet of the Phoca's crew, and big Amook going with Phil, Aunt Ruth, Nel-te, the sledge, the snow-shoes, and the beautiful white thick-furred skin of a mountain goat to distant New London.
Mr. Ryder and Jalap Coombs accompanied them as far as San Francisco. Dear old Serge was reluctantly left behind, busily making preparations to carry out his cherished scheme of returning to Anvik as a teacher.
In San Francisco Mr. Ryder secured for Jalap Coombs the command of a trading schooner plying between that port and Honolulu. When it was announced to him that he was at last actually a captain, the honest fellow's voice trembled with emotion as he answered:
"Mr. Ryder, sir, and Phil, I never did wholly look to be a full-rigged cap'n, though I've striv and waited for the berth nigh on to forty year. Now I know that it's just as my old friend Kite Roberson useter say; for he allers said, old Kite did, 'That them as waits the patientest is bound to see things happen.'"