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IN a drunken rage, the master of the three-topmast trading schooner Eider had dragged Chortka, his cabin-boy, out on to the vessel's poop-deck; and, for an imaginary delinqueney, was beating him cruelly with a rope's end.
Old Andrew Knudsen, owner of the Eider, had heard grim rumors of this thing before, but until now he had met with no first-hand evidence of the captain's reported brutality. In an instant, forgetting his avoirdupois and his dangerously weak heart, the famous Alaskan fur-king sprang from the wharf on to the schooner, and grasping the tall, raw-boned young shipmaster by the scruff of his neck, hurled him wrathfully against the taffrail.
"By heaven, sir, to think that you are my son shames me!" choked the old man, strangely white.
"I'm not th' one t' mother your Siwash mongrel!" mouthed the drunken shipmaster, staggering to his feet, his thin face aflame with fury. "Either he goes off this ship—or I do!"
"Then you go off!" burst out Sigurd Knudsen's gray-haired father, panting heavily. "Black Sigurd you are to every Aleut and codfisher in the Shumagin Islands; and you are as black as your name, sir! I've warned you and pleaded with you; I've hoped and waited, and stood for your dirtiness—but this is the end. This adopted boy is a thousand times more comfort to me than you have ever been, Sigurd. I swear to you, sir, that all I own shall be Chortka's. Not a mangy fox-skin do you get!"
"Ha! You're goin' to throw me out for a dirty Siwash snipe, eh!" snarled Sigurd, his dark features hideously distorted by hate and the fusel-oil liquor that ruled him. His eyes gleaming murderously, he lunged at his father and would have clutched at his throat; but the old man, quickly stepping back against the rail, caught up an iron belaying-pin and struck his son a hard blow in the forehead.
Black Sigurd sagged to the deck, stunned. The portly trader, breathing hard and clutching at his breast, would also have fallen had not Chortka leaped quickly to his side and held him.
"My heart!" gasped the old man, dropping the belaying-pin and leaning heavily upon the boy's slim young shoulders. "Help me ashore, son."
The strong and lithe Aleut lad helped his foster-father on to the
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