Stickine did not answer, and Donegal reached out suddenly and grabbed his arm. Taken unawares he could not extricate it, and next moment his sleeve was drawn back and the lads saw a long white scar that ran down to the wrist. Then Stickine's face flushed a trifle, and Donegal grinned. "Ye have heard where he got it—and he swum off to her that night," he said.
The flush faded from Stickine's face, which grew grim again. "I'm owing the folks who did it more than that and the hunger," he said. "We were set down, all of us, as lost at sea, and while I was lying in that prison things had gone wrong. When I got back to Canada I knew they could never be straightened out again."
Appleby noticed how Stickine's big hands trembled, and surmised that some great sorrow he would not speak about had darkened the home-coming of the man who had risen as it were from the dead. He, however, sat still with the rest until Montreal slowly clenched a big brown fist.
"And," he said with a curious quietness, "it's a brother they're owing me."
Then there was a silence that was intensified by the roar of the sea.
CHAPTER XI
AMONG THE HOLLISCHACKIE
The bitter gale they had run before for two days had fallen suddenly, and it was a hazy afternoon when the lads saw St. George of the Pribyloffs lying a faint blur on the rim of the Behring Sea. In between swung long slopes of grey water, that flickered here and there into green, where a pale ray of sunlight shone down. They did not, however, see it long, because the sun went in, and a smear of vapour crawled up from the horizon, for where the warmer waters of the Pacific meet the icy currents from the Pole, the clammy fog follows close upon the gale.
They had still short sail upon the schooner, and she rolled distressfully with a great rattle of blocks and banging of booms, but Jordan stood poised on the house with glasses levelled, and white men and Indians clustered aft and beneath him.
"No smoke anywhere, but we'll have the wind back before night," he said. "How far do you make us off the land?"