The man grumbled and protested that there was nothing wrong with him, but Donegal worked on unheeding and shoved him by main force into his bunk.
"Now, you lie right there till I get something from Jordan that will fix you," said Stickine. "If he tries to get up, boys, one of you will sit on him!"
He came back presently with something in a can, and the man, who gulped down the contents, grinned.
"I guess it would take a kink with considerable grit in it to face another dose of that," he said, and turned his face, which was beaded with the damp of pain, from the light.
The others, however, seemed to know what he was suffering from and went on with their talk, while presently Appleby asked a question.
"What would have happened if we'd been blown ashore?" he said.
Stickine laughed a little. "Well," he said, "I don't quite know, but it's kind of likely the Indians would have taken their clubs to us. Anyway, it would have been a long while before we did any more sealing."
It took Appleby several more questions before he elicited much information, and what he got was not very plain to him. It, however, appeared that the seals which bred on the lonely beaches of the misty seas had been growing scarcer, and that one or two of the commanders of the gunboats sent to watch them had now and then exceeded their rights. Three miles to sea is the limit placed to a nation's authority, but it seemed from stories told in the Champlain's hold, boats had been chased when farther than that from land. The men were not very explicit, but Appleby surmised that reprisals were made now and then when a schooner's crew landed on forbidden beaches.
"Still," he said, "if you lose a day or two's sealing when a gunboat's about it means a good many dollars."
A little twinkle crept into Montreal's eyes. "It don't always," said he. "Here you are with the boats all out raking in the holluschackie, and a gunboat comes along. 'Clear out of this or I'll make you,' says her skipper. 'All right,' says you. It's so many seals he's doing me out of now, when he has no right to, and I'm going in to get them where it's easiest when he steams away."