We are to have another season up north, in Okhotsk and Bering seas. The Old Man and Mr. Garboy have had a fine argument about it. Garboy says we have enough to make the owners happy, and give us all a fine lay, and that we can't trust the foremast hands with all the grease aboard.
Captain Peabody says he is going home with a full ship, grease or no grease, that the hands may be ——, that they haven't the guts to get at the grease anyway, and that it isn't the mate's place to give him advice. So Garboy shut up, and we are bound north after the baleen. Well, I think Garboy is right, though he hasn't any business offering advice to the Old Man. I am glad the Old Man shut him up. Anyway, a full ship means more dollars, and I will need plenty of dollars to start life ashore with. I will have enough to buy the old Wentworth place. I think Alice will take me, and if she don't, there are plenty of other girls in the world.
"You see, friend Winters is indulging in the time-honored pastime of spending his payday before he has it; and of vowing the usual sailor vow to leave the sea and buy a farm. Well, perhaps the poor devil was in earnest; but he didn't have a chance to achieve his ambition.
"Now we will skip to the last regular entries in the book. They are dated several months later, August of 1890, and the Good Luck has been on the northern grounds for some time. No position is given, for reasons you will appreciate. First is dated August 15th:
Still in the fog. We have been three weeks without a sight, fogbound, and blundering God knows where. The breeze holds from the southwest at about three knots, but the bank is moving with the wind. It is so thick we can not see a ship's length in any direction. The current is strong and westerly.
I know the Old Man is worried, because the Kamchatka coast is close a-lee. Garboy says he was in a bank in these seas one time for ten weeks. I think he is a liar. I am thinking a lot about Alice.
"Next entry two days later, August 17th," said the hunchback.
Still fogbound. Heavy groundswell from sou'east. Garboy says it means a sou'east blow, and I think he is right. Well, anything to blow away this cursed fog! The Old Man is drunk today. The old skinflint never hands out a swig to any of us, though. We must be near land, for we hear birds flying above the fog. All hands standing by, and we are keeping the best lookout possible. The Old Man should sober up, and attend to business.
"There, that is the last regular entry, the last one he wrote upon the ship. Here is the next one—observe the different ink! This is written in red, the same color as those figures upon the skin. I think Winters wrote with one of those red writing-sticks you buy on the China coast; he probably had one in his pocket. This entry tells of tragedy—mark how it begins:
May God have mercy! I will write down our plight, though I know there is small chance of these words reaching civilization. I sit in the window of the dry cave, on the Fire Mountain, and write by the light of the midnight sun!