Still, he was made uneasy by these tales, and from that moment misfortunes seemed to crowd upon him more thickly than ever. At length he so enraged Captain Kuhn by his carelessness that that individual turned purple in the face, became speechless, and was threatened with an apoplectic fit. Japonski had seen him thus before, and knew just what to do. There was a certain medicine that must be given quickly. He prepared it, and forced a spoonful down the captain’s throat. To his horror the captain turned white and rigid, and, to all appearances, died, then and there.
The terrified cabin-boy rushed out for aid, and the very first person he came across was the chief engineer, who was regulating a delicate bit of machinery. The engineer was so startled by Japonski’s sudden appearance that he dropped a tool into the machinery, something snapped, and, a moment later, the engines were stopped for repairs. Then Japonski ran and hid himself in his cubby-hole, where Nikrik, finding him some time later, said that if the captain died and the ship was lost it would all be owing to the fur-seal’s tooth, which he must give up at once in order to avoid further disaster.
Upon this, Japonski conceived such a horror of the bit of ivory, that he rushed frantically on deck and flung it with all his might into the sea. Almost at the same instant the engines were again started, and, when he went below, the first news he heard was that the captain was getting better. So he was glad of what he had done, though it had cost him a fortune in silver yen.
Early the next morning, when Nikrik went on deck before any one else except the watch, he spied the bidarkie in which our lads had come, and examined it closely to see where it had been made, and by whom. As he turned it over, something rattled inside of its parchment skin. The Aleut reached in to feel for the cause of this sound, and, when he withdrew his hand, clutching the fur-seal’s tooth that he had supposed was lost forever, his oily face was overspread with a broad grin of gratified surprise. He knew, of course, that Japonski had flung it overboard, and now he also knew that, by some miracle which he attributed to the magic power of the tooth itself, it had fallen into the drifting bidarkie. Nikrik had recognized the lads when they were brought on board the night before; but, with the usual reticence of his race, he had not yet mentioned this fact. Now he was glad of it, because it was possible that one of them might claim the treasure he had just stolen; for to an Aleut it is as much of a theft to take a thing from a bidarkie as from its owner. So Nikrik’s guilty conscience caused him to avoid Phil and Serge as much as possible during the short time that they remained on the same ship.