At that moment, the speaking tube from the bridge emitted a sharp whistle, and the skipper, with a broad smile on his weather-beaten face, went to answer it.
The clatter of the winches ceased. The creaking of straining hawsers lessened. The voices of men only continued their hoarse-throated shoutings. The gangways had been secured in place, and while the crew were feverishly opening the vessel's hatches the few passengers who had made the journey under John Dunne's watchful care hustled down the high-angled gangway to the quay, glad enough to set foot on the slush-laden land.
The days of the wild rush of gold-mad incompetents were long since past. The human freight of John Dunne's vessel, with the exception of John Kars, was commercial. They were mostly men whose whole work was this new great trade with the north.
Kars was one of the first to land, and he swiftly searched the faces of the crowd of longshoremen.
It was a desolate quay-side of a disreputable town. But though all picturesqueness was given over to utility, there was a sense of homeliness to the traveler after the stormy passage of the North Pacific. Blackrock crouched under the frowning ramparts of hills which barred the progress of the waters. It was dwarfed, and rendered even more desolate, by the sterile snow-laden crags with which it was crowded. But these first impressions were quickly lost in the life that strove on every hand. In the familiar clang of the locomotive bell, and the movement of railroad wagons which were engaged in haulage for Leaping Horse.
Kars' search ended in a smile of greeting, as a tall, lean American detached himself from the crowd and came towards him. He greeted the arrival with the easy casualness of the northlander.
"Glad to see you, Chief," he said, shaking hands. "Stuff aboard? Good," as the other nodded. "Guess the gang'll ship it right away jest as soon as they haul it out o' the guts of the old tub. You goin' on up with the mail? She's due to get busy in two hours, if she don't get colic or some other fool trouble."
Abe Dodds refused to respond to his friend and chief's smile of greeting. He rarely shed smiles on anything or any one. He was a mining engineer of unusual gifts, in a country where mining engineers and flies vied with each other for preponderance. He was a man who bristled with a steady energy which never seemed to tire, and he had been in the service of John Kars from the very early days.
Kars indicated the snub-nosed vessel he had just left.
"The stuff's all there," he said. "Nearly fifty tons of it. You need to hustle it up to Leaping Horse, and on to the camp right away. Guess we break camp in two weeks."