I caught myself wondering if
the folks in Liverpool could only see me now; and I thought of yellow-
haired Gussie, whose brother I licked after my first voyage, just because
he was not for having a sailorman courting his sister. And with Gussie
in my eyes I looked at Tilly. A rum old world, thinks I, with man
a-stepping in trails the mother little dreamed of when he lay at suck.
"So be. When the noise was loudest, walrus hides booming and priests a-
singing, I says, 'Are you ready?' Gawd! Not a start, not a shot of the
eyes my way, not the twitch of a muscle. 'I knew,' she answers, slow and
steady as a calm spring tide. 'Where?' 'The high bank at the edge of
the ice,' I whispers back. 'Jump out when I give the word.'
"Did I say there was no end of huskies? Well, there was no end. Here,
there, everywhere, they were scattered about,--tame wolves and nothing
less. When the strain runs thin they breed them in the bush with the
wild, and they're bitter fighters. Right at the toe of my moccasin lay a
big brute, and by the heel another. I doubled the first one's tail,
quick, till it snapped in my grip.
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