_dis_
vay----"

"Close yore mouth, Silvertip." As a whale would swallow a minnow so
Kayak Bill's drawling tones engulfed the thin, high accents of the
one-time cook of the _Sophie Sutherland_. "I ain't no nature for
Swedes a-devilin' o' me. I been singin' that song for nigh on to ten
yars, and by the roarin' Jasus, I reckon I know how to sing it. Come
on boys--now all together!"

Joining the again raised bass of Kayak Bill, several voices took up the
rollicking strain, among them the high, easily recognizable tenor of
Silvertip, and the voice of another, a baritone of startling mellowness
and purity, having in it a timbre of youth and recklessness:

"Up into the Polar Seas,
Where the Innuit maidens be,
There's a fat, bright-eyed va-hee-ney
A-waitin' there for me.
She's sittin' in her igloo cold,
Chewing on a muckluck sole,
And the sun comes up at midnight
From an ice-pack round the Pole."

At the sound of the baritone, the White Chief hitched his shoulders
with a movement of satisfaction. Add-'em-up Sam's successor, the
bookkeeper, was bidding fair to follow in the sodden footsteps of his
predecessor. Given a little more time and this baritone-singing
_cheechako_[2] would be where the White Chief need have no anxiety as
to the accounts rendered the Company's new president, whom Kilbuck had
never seen. A little more time, a little more hootch, and he would
also have settled the case of Na-lee-nah.

The thought of the Thlinget girl's soft brown eyes brought a momentary
pang. The white plague permitted few native women to become old.
Twice now Naleenah had lost her voice, and only last night he had
noticed behind her soft, her singularly beautiful little ears, the
peculiar drawn look that to his practiced eye spelled tuberculosis.
She would last two years more, perhaps, but in the meantime he must
protect himself--he stirred uneasily. The bookkeeper must be made to
take her off his hands.

His musing was broken into by another burst of song:

"Oh-o-o-o! I am a jolly rover
And I lead a jolly life!
I have my hootch and salmon
And a little squaw to wife."

Simultaneously the door of Kayak Bill's cabin opened and the owner, a
tatterdemalion figure, stood for a moment on the doorstep. Stretching
his arms above his head, he yawned prodigiously, and then, espying
Kilbuck, sauntered across the courtyard toward him.

An old sombrero curved jauntily on red-grey hair that was ov