Big Cracker, of this profane, rowdy crew, sidled to the sled. This was in small advances—a sly encroachment at a time. His object was plain to the pack. It was theft. They watched him in a trance of expectant interest. What would happen to Cracker? Wait and see! Follow Cracker? Oh, wait and see, first, what happened to Cracker. And Cracker sniffed at the tumbled robes. The pack lifted its noses and sniffed, too, and opened its eyes wide, and exchanged opinions, and kept watch, in swift, scared glances, on Billy Topsail; and came squirming nearer, as though with some intention altogether remote from the one precisely in mind.
From this intrusion—appearing to be merely an impudent investigation—Cracker was driven off with a quick, light clip of the butt of the walrus whip on the snout. "Keep the brutes down! Keep un down—ecod!—an' no trouble would come of it." And down went Cracker. He leaped away and bristled, and snarled, and crawled, whimpering then, to his distance; whereupon the pack took warning. Confound the man!—he was too quick with the whip. Cracker had intended no mischief, had he?
After that the big Cracker curled up and sulked himself to sleep.
"I 'low we're close t' Ginger Head," said Billy Topsail.
"Ah, no, b'y."
"I seed the nose o' the Scotchman's Breakfast a while back."
"We're t' the south o' that by three mile."
"We isn't."
"We is."
"Ah, well, anyhow we'll stop the night where we is. The snow blinds a man."