They could see that he was a white man, wearing a thick, close-cut brown beard; but otherwise he might easily have been mistaken for a native, so completely was he enveloped in a kamleika. The hood of this was drawn over his head, while its ample skirts were fastened to the coaming of the hatch in which he sat, so as to prevent the entrance of water.
“Well, if this isn’t a bit of good-fortune, then I don’t know what good-fortune is!” he exclaimed, smiling up at the eager faces peering at him from the steamer’s side. “May I come aboard?”
“May you come aboard?” cried Phil. “Well, sir, I rather think you may, for even if you didn’t want to, I am afraid we should capture you and drag you on board by force. Why, we couldn’t be more delighted to see you if you were the President of the United States himself.”
“I doubt if you can be half as happy to see me as I am to meet with you thus fortunately and unexpectedly,” laughed the stranger.
“In that case,” replied Phil, “you must be the very happiest person in the world, for you have made me almost that.”
During this interchange of courtesies the stranger had been unlashing his kamleika, and now, stepping lightly from his fragile craft, he gained the deck, to which his kyak was also lifted.
“Ah! but this is cosey and comfortable,” he remarked, as he entered the well-lighted mess-room, which opened from the galley and was warmed by its glowing stove. Serge had just finished his preparations for supper, and the well-laden mess-table did indeed present a sight calculated to cheer the heart of a hungry man, especially one who had been for hours battling with the ice of an Alaskan river.
“You gentlemen seem to be travelling and living like princes,” continued the stranger; “but I must confess to considerable surprise at finding you on the river so late in the season. You are bound down and out, I presume?”
“No, sir,” answered Phil, “we are bound up the river, and hope to reach Anvik before it closes.”
“Anvik!” cried the stranger. “Why, that is the place to which I also am going.”
“Alone, at night, and in a bidarkie?” asked Phil, incredulously.
“Yes,” laughed the other, “though I was only trying to cross the river to-night for fear it might close before morning, and leave me stranded on the farther bank. It was a reckless thing to undertake, I acknowledge, and but for your timely presence I might have come to serious grief ere this. It had grown so dark before I sighted your lights that I could no longer avoid the floating ice, and was in great fear that my boat would be cut open. You may believe, then, that I was glad to see them. Now, to find myself seated among those of my own race, and at a civilized table after a rather trying experience of Eskimo hospitality, caps the climax and renders my content complete.”