"In Cap'n Kid's boot," replied the mate, who had just restored that article to the child's foot. "But blow me for a porpus ef I kin understand how ever it got there. Last time I seen it 'twas back to Forty Mile."
"Yes," said Serge, "Judge Riley had it."
"I remember seeing him put it into a vest pocket," added Phil, "and meant to ask him for it, but forgot to do so. Now to have it appear from the boot of that child, who has never been to Forty Mile, or certainly not since we left there, is simply miraculous. It beats any trick of spiritualism or conspiring I ever heard of. The mystery of the tooth's appearing at St. Michaels after my father lost it, only a short time before at Oonalaska, was strange enough; but that was nothing to this."
"There must be magic in it," said Serge, who from early associations was inclined to be superstitious. "I don't care, though, if there is," he added, stoutly. "I believe the tooth has come to us at this time of our despondency as an omen of good fortune, and now I feel certain that we shall pull through all right. You remember, Phil, the saying that goes with it: 'He who receives it as a gift receives good luck.'"
"Who has received it as a gift this time?" inquired the Yankee lad.
"We all have, though it seems to have been especially sent to Nel-te, and you know he is the one we were most anxious about."
"That's so," assented Phil, "and from this time on Nel-te shall wear it as a charm, though I suppose it won't stay with him any longer than suits its convenience. I never had a superstition in my life, and haven't believed in such things, but I must confess that my unbelief is shaken by this affair. There isn't any possible way, that I can see, for this tooth to have got here except by magic."
"It beats the Flying Dutchman and Merrymaids," said Jalap Coombs, solemnly, as he lighted his pipe for a quieting smoke. "D'ye know, lads, I'm coming to think as how it were all on account of this 'ere curio being aboard the steamer Norsk that she stopped and picked you up in Bering Sea that night."
"Nonsense!" cried Phil. "That is impossible!"
Thus purely through ignorance this lad, who was usually so sensible and level-headed, declared with one breath his belief in an impossibility, and with the next his disbelief of a fact. All of which serves to illustrate the folly of making assertions concerning subjects about which we are ignorant. There is nothing so mysterious that it cannot be explained, and nothing more foolish than to declare a thing impossible simply because we are too ignorant to understand it.