n talk. Something sort of happened. No one
seemed rightly to know. They guessed Bat was a tough guy who'd boosted
him out--some way. Then I heard his wife had quit and he was all broke
up. Then they said he'd made losses of millions on stock market gambles.
But the yarns don't fit. You see, the mill's gone right ahead. The
capital's there, sure. They've just built and built. There's more than
twice the 'hands' there was eight years back. And get a look at the
'bottoms' loading at the wharves. No. Say, when I came aboard the _Myra_
and they scrapped the _Lizzie_, I never guessed to get a full cargo.
Well, I can load right down to the water line for this place alone all
the time. No. Sachigo's a mighty big fixture in the trade of this coast.
It's a swell proposition for us sea folk. It keeps our propellers moving
all the time. They're bright folk, sure."

The old seaman laughed and moved off again to his telegraphs. The
business of running in to the quayside was beginning in earnest.

* * * * *

The hawsers creaked and strained at the bollards. The vessel yawed. Then
she settled at her berth. The engine-room telegraph chimed its final
order, and the vessel's busy heart came to rest. Instantly activity
reigned upon the deck, and the discharge of cargo was in full swing.

Bull Sternford was one of the first to pass down the gangway. Clad in
the pleasant tweeds of civilisation, part hidden under a close-buttoned
pea-jacket, he bulked enormously. His more than six feet of height was
lost against his massive breadth of shoulder. Then, too, his keen face
under a beaver cap, and his shapely head with its mane of hair, were
things to deny his body that attention it might otherwise have
attracted.

For all that, at least one pair of critical eyes lost no detail of his
personality. Bat Harker was unobtrusively standing amongst the piled
bales of groundwood that stacked the wharf from end to end. There was
nothing about him to single him out from those who stood on the quay.
The rough clothing of his original calling was very dear to him, and he
clung to it tenaciously. He seemed to have aged not one whit in the
added eight years. His iron-grey hair was just as thick and colourful as
before. There was no added line in his hard face. His girth was no less
and no more. And his eyes, penetrating, steady, had the same spirit
shining in them.

He had laboured something desperately in the past eight ye