“What do you mean?” he demanded. “Do you mean that you refuse to fulfil your contract?”
Brack shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, for myself, I don’t say,” he said. “Perhaps I would be willing to go to Petroff Sound, even after picking up this gold-hunter. But that doesn’t matter. I can’t sail the Wanderer without the crew, and the crew refuses to go any place but to the hidden country at Kalmut Fiord, where this man’s gold came from.”
“That’s what we said,” supplemented Garvin. “Give us boats and grub, if you want to, and turn us loose; or go with us in the yacht. But we ain’t goin’ bonehuntin’ when there’s gold laying round loose so close by.”
An inarticulate growl came from the rest of the men. Too stupid to put their plans in words they uttered a single, primitive sound which told better than Garvin’s words what was working in their primitive minds. They had seen gold; they had been told there was enough of it to make them all rich; their sluggish desires had been aroused, and consequently they growled.
They were white men, as to skin, but they were savages at heart. And into this company Chanler had brought Miss Baldwin.
“Cappy,” said Chanler, falling back into his blasé manner, “what are you trying to do? Do you mean to tell me that you’re letting this crew walk over you? D’you mean to tell me that you no longer can run ’em? Come, come! I won’t have such poppycock.”
Riordan now stepped forward.
“It is not only the crew that wants to quit, Mr. Chanler,” said he. “I’m through, too. Here is our proposition: Kalmut Fiord, where this miner came from, is about three days’ sailing due north. We want to go there and take a look. If you’ll let the yacht go there, and we find there’s no gold there, we’ll go on with you to Petroff Sound, and there’s only a week lost, which you can dock from our pay. If you won’t let the yacht go there—well, we’re going there anyhow.”
Chanler laughed his dry, cynical laugh.