FOR THE SEAL RIVER BELT
host's humor as to rant learnedly on just how a telling jolt was delivered. When the screen got hazy he would illustrate on my person, and the spectators quickly decided he invented fist-cuffs.
"‘I confess I deplore its brutality,' he concluded, apologetically, evading my admiring gaze. 'And yet candor compels me to insist that had the Wharf Rat led with his right he would have sent the Smasher to the ropes.'
"‘Ah,' sighed Finzer, lamely sparring at his shadow, 'if one of those lads could only stub up against the Chuck McBurr outfit and chasten it.'
"This called for an explanation, and our host described McBurr as a very unwholesome neighbor. It seems his long, lank frame contained the crossed blood of the Athabascan Injun and the worst traits of a white sea-captain. Finzer said Chuck's grandpa was a New Bedford whaler, when that port was wearing out the water with its many boats, and had lost his ship in Ungava in the early days. Half crazy, he had refused to return and face the owners, and had joined a tribe of vagrants on the Little Seal River instead, and ultimately took a wife. One thing the old fellow was strong on, and that was the art of self-defence. Sea-captains in his day, of course, had to be ever ready to go to the mat with a mutinous sailor. Thus, because of his prowess and the Little Seal people's ignorance of the pum-
59
