But a voice was heard: “It’s most people’s first trip to Alaska.”
“I tell you,” said Gedge, judicially, “he knows as little about these northern seas as that boy there with the banjer.”
“This self-appointed judge,” Cheviot’s voice rose steadily above the growing murmur, “hasn’t heard apparently that nobody knows these waters.”
“Would you mind repeatin’ that, sir?”
“Not at all. In the first place, the Bering is a practically uncharted sea. That may be a disgrace to our Coast Survey, but it’s hardly the captain’s fault.”
Gedge looked stumped for a moment. If this were true it wouldn’t do for him not to know it.
Cheviot was making good the diversion in the captain’s favor, when Gedge interrupted: “Does the captain’s friend pretend to say that the whalers and sealers and fellers who’ve been up here before gold was thought of—that none o’ them don’t know enough to keep off a damned sand-bank?” Looking his wiliest: “Now, if we had one o’ them sort here—” Then, with a highly effective coup: “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!”
“Here on this ship?”
“Right here on board the Los Angeles!”