."

"Squashed!" sighed Little Billy.

CHAPTER IX

THE MOUNTAIN IN THE SMOKY SEA

"It won't take me long to tell my part of the story," commenced Captain
Dabney. "It happened last Summer, up in Bering Sea. I dodged out of
the fog-bank, where I had been playing hide-and-seek with the Russian
gunboat, and saw the sun for the first time in a week, and at the same
time clapped eyes upon Fire Mountain. Ay, I had my eyes then--good
eyes, too."

The captain drew his hand across his sightless eyes. He had spoken in
the inflectionless voice of the blind, but Martin sensed a note of
bitterness, of revolt, in his voice. Ruth patted his shoulder
comfortingly, and the old man continued.

"Fire Mountain, lad, is a volcano. It is a volcanic island sticking up
out of the water several hundred miles off the Kamchatka coast. But I
guess I had better tell you how we came to be in Bering last Summer.

"You know, lad, I am a trader. Fur is a mighty profitable trade, if
you can get enough fur, and at reasonable prices, and for the last ten
years I have traded every Summer along the Kamchatka and Anadyr coasts.
I have left the seal rookeries alone--they are too well guarded
nowadays--and traded with the natives for their furs.

"The Russian Chartered Company has a monopoly of the fur trade in
Eastern Siberia, and, like any monopoly, they gouge. They insist upon
about five thousand per cent. profit in their dealings with the
natives. Naturally, the natives are more than anxious to trade with a
free-lance. The Russian Government keeps a little tin-pot gun-boat
cruising up and down to prevent poaching, and if you are caught it
means the mines for all hands. But, Lord! Any live Yankee can dodge
those lubbers. They have chased me every year for ten years, and I
have won free every time.

"The last chase they gave me was last August. We sighted the Russian
just as we were coming out of a little bay below Cape Ozerni, where I
had had business with a tribe of Koriaks. There was a nice little
offshore, ten-knot breeze blowing, and we cracked on and made for the
fog-bank.

"The fog, you know, lad, is the poachers' salvation in the Bering. In
the Summer, the fog lies over the water in banks, either low and thick,
or high and thin, caused by the Japan current meeting the Arctic
streams. They call those waters the Smoky Seas, sometimes. You don't
see the sun for weeks on end.

"This was a low-lying and thick bank we