The men murmured approval, and Stickine shook out his pipe with a little deprecatory gesture. "I'll make you very tired, boys, but if you will have it this is how it was," he said. "It was 'bout through with the afternoon watch when the fog shut down on the four of them in the whaler in Russian water. They heard the schooner's bell, but it's kind of difficult to fix a sound in a fog, and when it let up sudden they allowed they'd lost her."
"Sure!" said Donegal. "Mainsail Haul could tell ye that in a fog ye hear the sounds in front of ye behind ye. It is digressing ye are, Stickine, but the boys is wondhering what four sealermen were squandhering their time luxurious for in a whaler."
Appleby understood the comment, for he had seen a couple of whale boats on the beach at Port Parry, and they were costly examples of the boat-builder's skill. Stickine, however, laughed silently.
"Old man Corliss got her for nothing—and she was built for the Government with flooring gratings fore and aft, but we needn't worry 'bout how he did it now. Well, there they were, with a big lump of a sea running, shut in by the fog, and they had to keep her head-to with the oars when the wind came down."
"Fog—and a breeze!" said Niven, and Donegal shook his fist at him.
"'Tis bethraying the ignorance av ye, ye are again," he said. "Up there 'tis fog for ever except when 'tis a gale, an' before it's through with that the fog crawls in again. Ye will not heed the lad, Stickine."
"Well," said the sealer, "they held her head to wind, until just before sun up a gunboat came along, and she come that sudden they'd no time to heave the seals they'd with them over before she was going hard astern close alongside of them. The first look at her kind of sickened them. She was a Russian."
"There was fog—and they stopped there?" said Montreal.
"They did. There was quick-firer turned right down on the boat," said Stickine dryly. "Well, it was all fixed up inside five minutes. The whaler was hove up, and a guard with side-arms marched them before a Russian officer, and he was quite anxious to know where they'd last seen the schooner. Now, it was kind of curious there wasn't one of the boys could remember."
"Had they been sealing inside the limits?" asked Appleby.