"Well, if it ain't my ol' friend Ace-In-The-Hole!" cried the hooch runner. "'S all right Cap! Best sport on the Yukon!" Ignoring the fact that Brent had refused the proffered hand, Claw leered into his face: "Ace-In-The-Hole let me make you 'quainted with Cap Jinkins, Cap'n of the Belva Lou—damn good sport, too—an' Asa Scroggs, mate. Both damn good sports, Belva Lou fetches out more oil an' bone 'n any of 'em—an' Cap ain't 'fraid to spend his money. Glad you come long. Welcome to stay long as you like—ain't he Cap?"
The Captain lowered a glass from his lips, and cleansed his overhanging mustache upon the back of a hairy hand: "Sure," he growled, surlily, "Didn't know he was friend o' yourn. S'down." The room contained only four chairs, and as he spoke, the
man, with a sweep of his hand, struck the klooch from her chair, and kicked it toward Brent, who sank into it heavily, and stared dully at the klooch who crawled to a corner and returned the stare with a drunken, loose-lipped grin upon her fat face. Brent shifted his glance, and upon a bunk beyond the table he saw another klooch, lying in a drunken stupor, her only garment, a grimy wrapper of faded calico, was crumpled about her, exposing one brown leg to the hip.
Schooled as he had been to sights of debauchery by his service with Cuter Malone, Brent was appalled—sickened by the sottish degeneracy of his surroundings.
With unsteady hand the mate slopped some liquor into a glass and shoved it toward him: "Swaller that," he advised, with a grin, "Yer gittin' white 'round the gills. Comin' right in out of the air, it might seem a leetle close in here, at first."
The fumes arising from the freshly spilled liquor smelled clean—the only hint of cleanliness in the whole poisoned atmosphere of the cabin. He breathed them deeply into his lungs, and for an instant the dizziness and sickness at his stomach seemed less acute. Maybe one drink—one little sip would revive him—counteract the poison of the noisome air, and stimulate him against the dull apathy that was creeping upon him. Slowly, his hand stole toward the glass, his fingers closed about it, and he raised it to his lips. Another deep
inhalation of its fragrance and he drained it at a gulp.
"Didn't know we had no neighbors," ventured the Captain, filling his own glass. "What ye doin' up here?"
"Prospecting," answered Brent, "The Copper Mountains. I saw your vessel from the ridge, and thought I would come over and see what a whaler looks like." The strong liquor was taking hold. A warm glow gripped his belly and diffused itself slowly through his veins. The nausea left him, and the olid atmosphere seemed suddenly purged of its reek.
"Well," grinned the captain, "The Belva Lou hain't what ye'd call no floatin' palace, but she's ahead o' most whalers. An' after Johnnie gits through hornin' round 'mongst the Husky villages an' fixes us up with a wife apiece, we manage to winter through right comfortable. Me an' Asa stays on board, an' the rest of the crew, builds 'em igloos. But, here's me runnin' off at the head—an' you might spill it all to the Mounted."