Niven laughed a little, for the man's tone was ironical, and he had discovered that the less he talked about what he had been used to in England the better it was for him. "We don't have any seals to catch over there," he said. "Still, however do they clean up those things and make them into ladies' jackets? They have to get the smell off them."
"It's done back there in your country, in London," said another man. "Most beasts have two coats on them, anyway, and somebody once told me they pulled the outside half off with little pincers. Then I guess they shave them down and dye them. They're smart people there in London, and they don't let up when the holluschackie can't be had. No, sir. They'll make you a seal-skin jacket out of most anything. It's all in the dressing."
"But do the Americans send their seals to London?" asked Niven.
"Yes," said Stickine. "That's just what they do. Bring them back again dressed, paying a heavy duty, too, and one way or other those seals fetch the States a tolerable big revenue. That's why it galls them to see any other folk catching them."
Just then Jordan sprang up on the house with a flare in his hand, and the lurid wind-blown blaze that streamed above them showed the same look in the faces of the men. It suggested confidence in their skipper and their comrades out at sea, and yet grimly-suppressed expectancy. Then the darkness was intensified as the light went out.
"It's 'bout time you fired the gun again," he said.
A man floundered forward, and presently a long red flash blazed out over the rail, but the thud of the report was probably plainer a mile to leeward than it was on the deck of the Champlain. Then for five minutes nobody spoke and the bell tinkled dolefully, but no answer came out of the sliding fog.
"Thicker than ever!" said Jordan. "Try her again."
Three times at five minutes' intervals the red flash blazed out, and then while they listened a man sprang into the shrouds. "Here's one of them!" he said.
There followed a few moments of tense expectancy until a roar of voices went up as a faint cry came out of the fog. Then there was another silence, even worse to bear, until the man in the shrouds swung up an arm.