41 Lure O Gold 1904

"
The Bulkhead Door
face brightened into a smile. "Why,
I ll bet a dollar
it s Stetson s bottles."
Stetson was the purser, but I had not heard of his
bottles before, so I looked inquiringly at the Doctor.
"
You see, Mr. Stetson *
thought to make a little
spec
up at Nome. Everything is high there except empty
glass.
He had a chance to get four thousand beer
bottles for half what they re worth in San Francisco, so
he bought the lot.
They cost him about eighty dollars.
It wouldn t
pay him to crate them at the prices they
were charging for such work, so he just
had them laid
down in the lower hold, loose, not figuring on how we d
roll if a storm came up."
"That was it,"
said I.
"Breaking
beer bottles,
rolling about in a place like that, would have made pre
cisely the sounds I heard."
"I
guess they ve all gone to smash," laughed the
"
Doctor. You see, my boy, the folly of wild specula
tion. The purser has lost his eighty dollars, for there
won t be a whole bottle left when we get through this
storm, and he will have to pay extra to have the splin
tered glass swept and taken out of the hold.
I hope
he began, and then broke off.
But of course it s
all
right."
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