The fair-haired giant looked at him then long and steadily. “Women? I hear they’re scarce, too, up there. Scarcer than almost anything else needed. These girls on board were congratulating themselves.”

“I’m no pimp. I’ll make my pile and get out, but I’ll make it fair and square enough. Everything legal.”

Everything legal. Years later Thor Storm sometimes recalled this phrase with wry amusement. And, he told himself, it was. Even if Czar and the Big Boys had to make the law themselves and lobby it through Congress under their own steam.

Now, standing there at the ship’s rail, he said, “I see. It sounds a practical scheme.”

“Damn right it’s practical. I’m not just going it blind.”

“You say you’ll make your pile and get out. If it’s money you’re after—and nothing else—I wouldn’t get out too soon. Nobody knows yet what there is in this Alaska. It may be as big as all Europe. It’s like a seventh continent. I’d say that gold is the least important product they’ll take out of it. There are precious and valuable things in Alaska—furs and metals and coal and timber. And fish.”

“Fish.” Kennedy’s tone was contemptuous.

But Storm was paying little attention to the man beside him, he seemed to be ruminating aloud. “Of course Bering was a Dane, though the Russians financed his voyage. What a voyage, poor man. But Steller, the botanist, the ornithologist—he was the first white man actually to set foot in Alaska. Did you know that? Most people don’t.”

“No, can’t say I did,” Kennedy replied because it seemed expected of him. The fella was kind of cracked, after all.

“It’s true. He was nine months on Bering Island, for example, and of course he was on Kayak, too, and Kagal.”

“Course,” Kennedy conceded, politely.

“Do you know,” Storm continued, absorbed in his topic, “how Steller proved that Alaska was part of America, part of the North American continent!”

“Can’t say I do, exactly.” He wished himself out of it by now, casting an almost wistful eye toward the noisy saloon. “How was that?”

“The bluejay.”

“How’s that again?”

“The bluejay. Steller knew that the eastern bluejay and the western bluejay were to be found nowhere but in the Western Hemisphere. And he actually saw one and shot it and examined it. It’s in his diary and there is his magnificent book De Bestis Marinis published in 1751. What wonders that book revealed! Would you believe that until that time the world actually never had heard of the sea otter, the sea lion, and the fur seal!”

“That a fact!”

“That news alone brought the Russian fur hunters in droves to Alaska. Sealskin. Otter. Money. Money. But then, the sea cow! That was the real Steller triumph. What about the sea cow!”

“Yeh. Sure. The sea cow.” Kennedy shook his head placatingly. The feller was crazy as a coot. He began to edge toward the saloon and safety.

“But that’s all in the past,” Storm went on, his tone regretful. “They’re almost mythical animals now, except the fur seal. Man’s greed destroyed these magnificent and valuable creatures years ago.”