The Chee-Chalker by L. Ron Hubbard

Author:L. Ron Hubbard [Hubbard, L. Ron]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery & Thrillers, Mystery & Crime, Adventure
ISBN: 9781592126538
Publisher: Galaxy Press LLC.
Published: 2009-03-13T10:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

THE SS Alaskan’s fifteen-minute whistle blew while Norton was paying his accounts at the desk to a sleepy clerk. Norton went down toward the dock. The steamer was a white decked wall at the end of the street. People were standing around in the rain and others were leaning over the rails bidding interminable goodbyes. Norton went into the steamship office and bought his ticket for Juneau.

At the end of the room two men swathed in yellow oilskins, their faces in the shadow, were elaborately disinterested in what Norton was doing. When Norton got his ticket he looked wryly at them.

“Goodbye, boys,” said Norton in a loud voice.

The two looked at him, startled. Momentarily he glimpsed their faces. Here were two halibut fishermen he had not seen before but there were hundreds of their like in Ketchikan. They swiftly looked away.

Norton went out and showed his tickets to the purser at the bottom of the gangway. A steward shuffled up to inquire after Norton’s grips. Norton indicated them in the pile of waiting luggage but would not let the steward carry them. The steward scowled blackly upon the practice of a passenger carrying his own bags and wondered without coming to a decision how he could discourage the idea from spreading.

Norton climbed up the gangway to the smeary deck and entered a dark, dirty passageway upon which opened the first-class staterooms. He put his grips down in a cramped cubicle, typical of the Alaskan run of cabins. Two cabin mates were already there, trying to fight the top off a bottle so that their godspeed-bidding friends could have “one lash drink.” Norton threw down his grips on an upper bunk and went out. Visitors were being shoved ashore for it was now within two or three minutes of sailing.

Norton went down a ladder and found a passageway which ran the length of the vessel below both well decks. An engineer stared at him.

“Passengers ain’t supposed to come down here.”

“I’m looking for my dog,” said Norton.

“Huh,” said the engineer, wandering off.

Norton went forward under the fo’c’s’le head. A ladder led up to the deck in the eyes of the ship. Norton thrust his head into the air and looked around. As he had noted before boarding, there was a deep sag in the mooring line here and the cargo lights and dock lights left this place in darkness. As yet no deck hands were standing by to cast off. Norton wrapped his white coat into a bundle under his belt rather than have it give him away.

Norton took a ship’s towel, purloined in the cabin, from his pocket and threw it over the hawser. He dropped his weight on both ends of it and, swinging to make it jump, slid downwards from the ship.

As it was close to high tide the water was close to his heels at the center of the line. The towel refused to bite on the upgrade and any instant sailors would come to throw off this line.

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