There was silence for a minute, for the men knew it was a brother their comrade had come to find, and Niven, who lay upon the floorings with one foot tied up, remembering what he had heard in Motter's house, was about to speak when Appleby kicked him on the leg.
"Still," said somebody, "there's nothing you can do."
Montreal glanced round the shadowy hold as though to make sure that Stickine was not there. "Well," he said slowly, "I guess the Champlain will be short of a boat and a man short one morning—and there'll be trouble for some folks yonder if it's dead that man's brother is. It's the not knowing—the knowing nothing, that's killing me."
"One man couldn't do much alone," said Charley dryly.
Montreal laughed mirthlessly, and there was a curious glint in his eyes. "I guess he could," he said. "That is, if he had a rifle, and didn't worry 'bout anything so long as he used up the magazine before they got him down."
Donegal's face lit up under the crusted bandage, and his voice had a little gleeful ring. "And two av them would do just twice as much—and it's two, or more, there'll be, but we'll give Ned Jordan a fair show first," said he.
A little growl of grim approval rose from the men, but none of them said anything further, and they did not seem quite at ease when Jordan and Stickine came down the ladder. The skipper sat down, and looked at them gravely, but if he noticed anything unusual he did not mention it.
"We've got to have a little talk, boys," he said. "You know the kind of trick Motter would have worked off on me. He'd have taken my dollars and then before I got the furs turned the Russians loose on us. He and one of their officers fixed up the thing, and before I got out of their grip I'd have left skins and schooner behind me. Now, I don't like being kicked that way by anybody."
The skipper may have been mistaken, but the men believed him.
"We'll go back and pull his place down," said somebody.