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Updated: June 12, 2025
It was stormy weather in the Strait, and the Karluk was snugged down under treble reefs, fighting her way north. Ice in the Narrows was scarce, though Lund predicted broken floes once they got through. The cabin was cozy, with a stove going. Peggy Simms was busied with some sewing, the canary and the plants gave the place a domestic atmosphere, and Lund, smoking comfortably, was eminently at ease.
It was true that a Japanese considered no means menial if they led to the proper end. Was that end merely to gain possession of his share of the gold, or did Tamada have some deeper, more complicated reason for signing on to run the galley of the Karluk? Somehow Rainey thought there was such a reason.
"What's the 'ship's share'?" asked Rainey. "Represents capital investment. Matter of fact, it belongs to the gal," said Lund. "Simms gave her the Karluk. It's in her name with the insurance." "Then he and his daughter get forty-five shares, and you only twenty-five?" "You got it right," grinned Lund. "Simms is no philanthropist. It wa'n't so easy for me to git enny one to go in with me, son.
The bite of the frost made the timbers of the Karluk creak and its thrust continually worked among the stranded masses with groaning thunders and shrill grindings, while the surf ever boomed on the resonant sheets of ice. The place held a strange mystery.
And there was the girl. Rainey was not going to forget the girl. If the Karluk ever came back? But then she would be an heiress. Rainey pulled himself up for a fool at the way his thoughts were racing as the doctor came back with a bottle of Scotch whisky and a siphon. The captain had set out glasses and a pitcher of plain water from a rack.
Other voices mingled with his in a clamor of dismay. "Look out! Oh, look out! Dead ahead!" The enormous bulk of the whale had appeared, not to spout, but to lie belly up, rocking on the surface with fins outspread, paralyzed with terror, directly in the course of the Karluk, while toward it, intent only on their blood lust, leaped the killers, thrusting at its head as the schooner surged down.
Rainey pointed to Lund, now examining a crack that had opened up in the floe, a possible line of exit for the Karluk, later on. The men were beginning to show on the schooner. They, too, he noted somewhat idly, acted differently this morning.
"But, if they should suspicion us of gittin' gold off enny island they c'ud trump up to call theirs, if they found gold on us at all, it 'ud be all off with us an' the Karluk. We'd be dumped inside of some Jap prison an' the schooner confiscated.
The Karluk proved a good fighter, though her headway was materially lessened by contrary wind and sea, and the persistence and increasing opposition of the storm seemed to have a corresponding effect upon Captain Simms. He grew daily more irritable and morose, even to his daughter.
The dull thump of a heavy cane upon the timbered walk and the shuffle of uncertain feet warned him from blundering into a man tapping his way along the Embarcadero, a giant who halted abruptly and faced him, leaning on the heavy stick. "Matey," asked the giant, "could you put a blind man in the way of finding the sealin' schooner Karluk?"
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