The Hudson’s Bay Company had written off losses several times. They were used to it. They had been founded in the dim but glorious past to discover a Northwest Passage to the Orient. Only recently had their last expedition on that hopeless quest returned with word that no such passage existed. Accordingly, the governors opened up a fresh bottle of red ink and whittled a new quill pen and added up their lists of dead men and lost ships associated with the mythical passage to find and write off the round sum of a hundred thousand pounds—which, at a glance, is half a million dollars and quite a fortune.
Thus they were already inured to the agony of scribbling with red ink, and the pounds, shillings and pence which Yellow Hair would eventually cost them in furs, rewards and indemnifications p
