"Ar-r-rouse ye-r-r-rouse ye, me merry, merry men," boomed the voice of Gerald Moore, with a slightly Celtic roll of the "r's," as he drummed impatiently on the shutter of the cabin window, while his companion, Jack Blake, performed a similar tattoo on the adjoining window. "Faith, and it was daylight hours ago, and ye don't know what ye're missing."
The shutter slid back, and the pleasant, if rather drowsy face of Randolph Peyton peered forth, and behind his shoulder that of Donald Graeme.
"Daylight, did ye say?" remarked the latter. "It's my opinion it's been daylight all night, for it surely wasn't dark when we retired, and we've only been in bed a few minutes."
The scene was the outside cabin deck of the well-appointed steamer "Queen" of the Alaska Steamship Company, which was plowing her way through the quiet waters of the "Inside Passage," on her way to the land of the Yukon and the Klondike.