"Uppy,
if they did, they'd have an outfit after us in twenty-four hours."
Oopi, his Eskimo right-hand man, had learned to understand English, and
he nodded, his moon-face split by a wide and enigmatic grin. In his way,
"Uppy" was as clever as Shan Tung had been in his.
And Blake added, "We've sold every fur and every pound of bone and oil,
and we've forty Upisk wives to our credit at fifty dollars apiece."
Uppy's grin became larger, and his throat was filled with an exultant
rattle. In the matter of the Upisk wives he knew that he stood ace-high.
"Never," said Blake, "has our wife-by-the-month business been so good. If
it wasn't for Captain Rydal and his love-affair, we'd take a vacation and
go hunting."
He turned, facing the Eskimo, and the yellow flame of the lamp lit up his
face. It was the face of a remarkable man. A black beard concealed much
of its cruelty and its cunning, a beard as carefully Van-dycked as though
Blake sat in a professional chair two thousand miles south, but the beard
could not hide the almost inhuman hardness of the eyes. There was a
glittering light in them as he looked at the Eskimo. "Did you see her
today, Uppy? Of course you did. My Gawd, if a woman could ever tempt me,
she could! And Rydal is going to have her. Unless I miss my guess,
there's going to be money in it for us--a lot of it. The funny part of it
is, Rydal's got to get rid of her husband.
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