“Vitch gone off vid de vind.”
Then, lowering his voice as though out there in the sea hollows listeners might be lurking, he bent forward: “If dey vas to know Mr. Mar go down in de storm, and cut de raw hide for let dat vitch go!—” Again, with grim foreboding, he shook the hanks of tow.
“Ve all like your friend, but ve sorry see any yentleman tink he know better as de Bible.”
CHAPTER X
Cheviot found Hildegarde’s father practically a prisoner.
His board and lodging had been too welcome a source of revenue to the mission for Christianson to feel called upon to smooth the way for his departure, and Mar had been some time in grasping the fact that his plan of hiring a boat and a couple of natives to go up the coast for a “look at the country,” was hopelessly knocked on the head since his interference in the matter of the Yakutat witch. Not a native in the community who felt safe with him since that episode. The lame man was in league with the powers of darkness.
Mar’s pleasure at seeing Cheviot was genuine, but not as unmeasured as you might expect. And when, almost before the first shower of questions and answers had begun to abate, Cheviot flung in information as to when the next ship was leaving St. Michaels, Mar assumed the subject to be of interest only to Cheviot. Pressed further about his own plans, the elder man said evasively they were not very settled, and changed the subject! Cheviot was nonplussed. Was Mar only waiting till they were clear of the Mission House? No, for they were out fishing the whole of the next day, and most of the days following, and still Mar talked of any and everything save of going home. Was he waiting for funds? Surely not now that Cheviot was at hand. He seemed inexplicably satisfied to sit all day over a trout pool up the river (despite the pestilential mosquito), or in a boat in the bay fishing for tom-cod; and all the evening playing chess in the bare mission parlor, in the midst of a company sufficiently singular. Shady fellows from the Galena camp above White mountain; prospectors expelled from Cook’s Inlet, lousy, filthy-smelling natives come upon one pretext or another, weird missionaries dropped down from places no man but themselves seemed ever to have heard of; a reindeer-herder in the Government service, though a “Scandahoojian,” like the majority at the Golovin Mission, and highly welcome albeit hardly on the score of his piety. For “Hjalmar,” as Christianson called him, was the one who jibed most at the morning and evening prayers, and particularly at the long grace before meat, with its delicate proposals to the Almighty that He should induce those present to save their souls by giving to the Golovin Mission. With the same breath that thanked Him for “dis dy bounty,” the Omnipotent was reminded that if this agreeable state of things was to continue, people must pay not only for the meal, but for the Cause.