Warm and snug as it was in the Champlain's hold neither of the lads cared to stay below. They could tell it was blowing hard by the humming of the rigging and the way the deck sloped under them, and their thoughts were with the two boats still out in the fog. The cold struck through them when they crawled out on deck, and little showers of brine blew in from the rail shining in the light that blinked forward through the filmy whiteness. Somebody beneath it was ringing a bell, and its dismal jangle seemed to intensify the doleful wail of wind. Now and then they caught a pale glimmer as a white-topped sea went by, and then for a space there was only a blank wall of sliding fog, until finding the desolation of it all creep in upon them they went aft along the sloppy deck.
A silent man stood almost motionless at the wheel, for the Champlain was lying to under her trysail and jib, making no way through the water, but bobbing with her bow to the sea. Jordan paced up and down behind the house, stopping now and then to gaze into the fog, and the rest were clustered under the lee of it. A lantern flickered above them, and they had evidently been busy over something, for two of them were wiping their knives and there was a horrible sickly smell. Then a man went by carrying a bundle of furs which reeked with the same odour, and Stickine, who saw them, called to the lads.
"Get the bucket and swab up," he said.
It was not easy to fill the bucket, and when at last Niven stood swaying with most of the contents splashing about him he sniffed disgustedly as he glanced at the deck, which was slippery with grease and blood.
"Essence of roses is nothing to this. What is it?" he said.
"Holluschackie blubber," said a grinning man. "You'd have smelt stronger than a scent store if we'd waited until you came up to heave the corpuses over. Hadn't you better start in before you sit down in it?"
Niven swilled on water, Appleby plied the swab, but though they got the deck clean the smell would not wash out, and when they crawled under the shelter of the deckhouse among the rest, Appleby gasped as he flung away his swab. "Does it always smell like that?" he said.
Jordan looked down from the house. "It generally does, but dollars don't lie around in the Vancouver streets," he said. "Dry that swab right out now and hang it up."
"Yes, sir," said Appleby, but his face was a trifle pale in the light from the lantern when he came back. "It about turned me sick—and it's going to take some time to get used to this," he said.
"Well," said a man, glancing at Niven, "it's the more smell the bigger profits when you go sealing. It's different from the things you were taught to do in the old country?"