“I dunno but yer right.  I hadn’t thought o’ goin’ down in th’ fall t’ freeze up.  We’d have t’ be gettin’ t’ our anchorage by th’ first o’ October.”

“The’s plenty o’ time t’ do that, sir.  ‘Twon’t take more’n ten days t’ fit out.”

“Then the’s th’ cost o’ shippin’ th’ crew t’ be taken into account, ’n havin’ ’em doin’ nothin’ th’ hull winter.  I don’t know’s the’d be much in it after everythin’s counted out.”

“That’s easy ‘nuff fixed.  Take a lot o’ traps an’ let th’ crew hunt in th’ winter.  Ye wouldn’t have t’ pay ’em then when ye wasn’t afloat.  Ye could give ’em their keep an’ let ’em hunt with th’ traps on shore an’ make a little outen ’em.  The’s always fools ’nuff as thinks they’ll get rich if they has a chanct t’ try their hand doin’ somethin’ they ain’t been doin’ before, an’ you kin get a crew o’ fellers like that easy ’nuff.”

“I dunno.  Maybe I kin an’ maybe I can’t.  Sounds like it’s worth tryin’ an’ I’ll think about it.”

Every spring for ten years Captain Hanks—­Skipper Sam he was generally called—­had sailed out of Halifax Harbour with his schooner Maid of the North to work his way into the Gulf of St. Lawrence when the waters were clear of ice, and trade a general cargo of merchandise for furs with the Indians and white trappers along the north shore and the Straits of Belle Isle—­the southern Labrador.

At first he found the trade extremely lucrative, and during the first four or five years in which he was engaged in it accumulated a snug sum of money, the income of which would have been quite sufficient to keep him comfortably the remainder of his life in the modest way in which he lived.

But Skipper Sam was much like other people, and the more he had the more he wanted, so he continued in the fur trade.  The fact that he had purchased some city real estate for the purpose of speculation became known, and other skippers sailing schooners of their own, with an eye to lucrative, trade, decided that “Skipper Sam must be havin’ a darn good thing on th’ Labrador,” and when the Maid of the North made her fifth voyage she had another schooner to keep her company, and another skipper was on hand to compete with Skipper Sam.

Each year had brought additions to the trading fleet, and competition had raised the price of fur until now the trappers, with a ready market, were growing quite independent, and Skipper Sam, instead of paying what he pleased for the pelts, which, when he had a monopoly of the trade, was a merely nominal price as compared with their value, was forced in order to get them at all to pay more nearly their true worth.

Even now he was making a fair profit, but his mind constantly reverted to the “good old days” when his returns were from five hundred to a thousand per cent. on his investment, and he felt injured and dissatisfied.  At the end of every voyage he declared solemnly that he was no longer making more than seamen’s wages and would quit the trade, and the mate, who was well aware of the captain’s comfortable financial position, always believed he meant it.