The officer glanced down at the slaughtered holluschackie with a little gesture of disgust. Then he laughed as he said in French, "It is not my affair. I see you again one day, Captain, and it is perhaps different then."
Brulée made this plain, and Jordan smiled. "If you do it's quite likely I can show as good a fist as you. Anyway, we're going off now, and I'll bid you good-morning. You'll find your men's rifles down there on the beach when you want them."
In another half-hour they were pulling off to the schooner, and when they sat at breakfast in the hold Stickine grinned at the lads.
"Feeling any better now?" he said. "You don't like clubbing holluschackie?"
"No," said Appleby with a little shiver of disgust. "I've been wondering whether it's not going to make trouble for Jordan, too, because somebody will, in all probability, send on the demand to Canada if those folks ask their Government to pay the damage."
Stickine smiled dryly. "It's not quite likely that they will," he said. "The fellows who're responsible do some kind of curious things, and neither they nor the sealers have much use for talking. 'Pears to me that more than one Government is getting tired of us, and the Russian department bosses want a man who knows how to keep out of trouble. If he gets worrying them they're quite likely to find another use for him. Of course, there'll be some writing, but Ned Jordan only took what he was entitled to when he might have swept the island, and it isn't going to suit anybody to drag Tom Allardyce in."
Appleby could not decide then or afterwards whether Stickine was right, but it seemed to him that there was a good deal of reason in his opinion. In any case he had little leisure to consider the affair just then, for Jordan called them up on deck to hoist the topsails, and they spent most of that day watching for a wind. It was as usual dim and hazy, and the lads fancied that Jordan was a trifle anxious, for he swept the sea with his glasses as they rolled slowly east. Appleby was also within hearing when he drew Stickine away from the rest.
"We're in a kind of fix," he said. "There's nothing the Russians wouldn't do to square up the deal with us, and that fellow we left behind will be pulling all he's worth for Motter's to turn the gun-boat loose. If I'd figured we were going to have this weather I'd have set his boat adrift. Send an Indian to the cross-trees to keep a look-out for her."
The wind came, almost too much of it, in the afternoon, and at dusk the Champlain was lying as close as she could to it with her lighter canvas stowed, and a nest of reefs to leeward. The lads could see the white foam flying and the whirling clouds of spray, and were wondering whether the schooner could weather them on that tack when the Indian aloft stretched out his hand, and somebody shouted—
"Boat close in with the surf."