“Not that the doodah will start for some time yet,” he added. “But I’m a great hand to have things all ready and understood. You can be looking up your club between now and to-morrow.”
I glanced into the wheel-house as I walked on. Marcena Keedy lounged in solitary state on the transom seat at the rear, puffing away at a cigar.
“You’re always welcome in here,” he called. But I had no appetite for the companionship of Mr. Keedy.
It occurred to me, with just a bit of relish in the thought, that Miss Kama Holstrom probably was of similar mind in regard to Mr. Keedy. She had taken a seat in the wheel-house when she had come on board that day. Now she was in her state-room, which was the cabin on the upper deck near the bridge, planned as the captain’s apartment. Either she had pre-empted it or Captain Holstrom had assigned her to it. I had seen that the Joneses—Number-one and Number-two—were in berths near my quarters below, and it was plain that partners Holstrom and Keedy had quartered themselves in the mates’ room on the upper deck.
Miss Holstrom’s door was on the hook, and I caught a glimpse of her more by accident than by design. She nodded without speaking, and I raised my cap and went below to the main deck.
I got there in season to see the lighting of a fuse which exploded Captain Holstrom’s “checker-board” plans ahead of scheduled time.
The first man I met on the deck was Ingot Ike. He was gnawing at a hunk of gingerbread with his snags of teeth, and was grinning amiably.
“This is going to be a comfortable trip for me,” he confided. “I find I know the cook. It’s a lucky thing if you stand in well with the cook. Him and me was shipmates together on a Vancouver packet. He’s the Snohomish Glutton.” He opened his eyes and looked at me as though he expected that I would show astonishment. “I said—he’s the Snohomish Glutton,” he repeated, more loudly.
But my face remained blank.
“You don’t mean to tell me that you never heard of the Snohomish Glutton!”