“Anywhere from ten to twenty dollars apiece, according to the demand.”
“I had no idea they were so valuable, and I wish we could begin getting some right away. I should like to make enough money before reaching Sitka to replace what I lost by carelessness,” remarked Phil. “I forgot, though,” he added, with an abrupt change of tone and a comical expression of dismay. “I have agreed to work without wages, and I suppose that means that I am not to receive any commission, no matter how many skins I get. I wonder if I am shipped as a hunter or only as a sailor?”
“I am sure I don’t know,” answered Serge. “Didn’t you read the paper before you signed it?”
“No; I was in too much of a hurry, and too glad to be taken on any terms. Did you read it?”
“No, for I thought, of course, that you had.”
“Well,” sighed Phil, “I have often heard my father say that one should never sign his name to a paper of any kind without knowing exactly what it contained. Oh, dear! If a fellow could only remember and do just what his father told him, how easy it would be to keep out of scrapes. I wonder why it is that we never think of these things until it is too late?”
“How lucky those fellows are who have fathers to tell them what to do. I haven’t had one since I was a little chap and too young to appreciate him,” said Serge, rather enviously.
At this point in the conversation Captain Duff called Phil aft, and said that he wished him to join in a shooting-match with the other two hunters, Ike Croly and Oro Dunn. A number of rifles and shot-guns lay on top of the cabin-house, while towing astern of the schooner, and bobbing in her wake at the end of a hundred yards of line, was a round billet of wood painted black, and about the size of a very small keg.