checks next to a brandy bottle. I'll just cash this at your purser and see ya next time."
On the way over the side of the ship back down the clattery aluminum ladder, Hallie comes running up from nowhere. "Yeah, let's go, Cap, let's get back to the party." "What happened to your sweet heart?"
"I'll tell you in the skiff, c'mon lets hurry, believe me, we should get going." Mad Jack grins, intrigued, and scrambles on down to the skiff. "So what's the big secret, lover boy?" Mad Jack asks firing up the motor and easing the little craft into motion. "Molly got fired for drinking and carrying on in her room last night. She's all bawlin' and carryin' on that it will cost her $1000 to fly to Dutch Harbor and then home to Anchorage, and she's only made $500 in three months on this slave ship. And every day she stays, Tom's gonna charge her $50 a day. What a bundle of grief. I tell ya." "What a lousy thing to happen," laughs Mad Jack. "Tom fired her for drinkin' with you last night?"
"I guess. But get this, that's not the worst. The worst is she wants to come with us!"
"What? Come with us? Well, she can sleep in my bunk." "The two of you won't fit."
"Hey, I'm adaptable. 'Course she is a real loudmouth." "Yeah," Hallie laughs, "real loud." In the bay, the gray canopy of overcast quite suddenly breaks through with a blaze of sun and the spongy green hillsides of the island appear suddenly alive. Blazing white snow smokes at the top of the ridge and deep blue sky appears above it. The two fishermen are hailed by the rest of the crew as they cruise up. "Look, Cappy, we get paid and sunshine too," calls out Toasty. "This is going to be a great party, I can feel it now," grins Flint. The sky has quickly cleared off completely as if the clouds have flown south for the summer along with the wind, so that not a breath moves across the water: a rare day for the Aleutians. Inside, the others are playing poker. "What's everybody inside for? Mad Jack yells, "don't you like sunshine? Only eight days of sunshine a year in this place and you sit inside like a bunch of grandmothers at a tea!"
"We didn't know what it was!" yells out Lockjaw. "We thought it was an eclipse of the moon." "We thought the volcano blew a hole in the sky and it was gonna start raining stars," croaks Billy Goat. "We thought it was the end of the world so we started a poker game," mumbles Lockjaw over his wad of tobacco.
