Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/114

 chance no quadruped king can allow to die of neglect.

"The four-footed treasure-trove was the property of one Olfen, an aged missionary, said the sealer. The old man had been deserted by his Innuit charges and had filled in his time snaring and domesticating the varmints. The Saucy Liz was the first boat in two years to obtrude on his privacy, and as he was short of fodder the intrusion was very welcome. He had accepted the sealer's proposal that he come to the States and live in comfort at the expense of the circus, while his pets earned his ease by travelling in the menagerie.

"Up to the north we climbed, the coast growing ever more bleak and desolate—past Nome and its gold-sanded shores, stopping at Chuck Cape just long enough to pick up some native hunters, and ultimately rounding the shoulder of Alaska, where the full force of the cold-storage zephyrs caused our stanch little craft to growl its way among the ice-floes like some aquatic bull-dog. And such a buffeting! You see, the month was August and an offshore wind was frisking the cut-glass out to the open, thus giving us our only chance of creeping in to the coast.

"The moment the Saucy Liz poked her head inside the cape four native whale-boats put out to meet us, and the captain sighed his disappointment.