s right shot at the man's face. The two blows sounded like two
open-handed smacks. But the fisherman sagged, went lurching backward.
His heels caught on the _Blackbird's_ bulwark and he pitched backward
head-first into the hold of his own boat.

MacRae picked up the salmon and flung them one by one after the man,
with no great haste, but with little care where they fell, for one or
two spattered against the fellow's face as he clawed up out of his own
hold. There was a smear of red on his lips.

"Oh! My goodness gracious, sakes alive!"

Nelly Abbott grasped Betty by the arm and murmured these expletives as
much in a spirit of deviltry as of shock. Her eyes danced.

"Did you see that?" she whispered. "I never saw two men fight before.
I'd hate to have Jack MacRae hit _me_."

But Betty was holding her breath, for MacRae had picked up a twelve-foot
pike pole, a thing with an ugly point and a hook of iron on its tip. He
only used it, however, to shove away the boat containing the man he had
so savagely smashed. And while he did that Gower curtly issued an order,
and the _Arrow_ slid on to the cannery wharf.

Nelly went below for something. Betty stood by the rail, staring back
thoughtfully, unaware that her father was keenly watching the look on
her face, with an odd expression in his own eyes.

"You saw quite a lot of young MacRae last spring, didn't you?" he asked
abruptly. "Do you like him?"

A faint touch of color leaped into her cheeks. She met her father's
glance with an inquiring one of her own.

"Well--yes. Rather," she said at last. "He's a nice boy."

"Better not," Gower rumbled. His frown grew deeper. His teeth clamped a
cigar in one corner of his mouth at an aggressive angle. "Granted that
he is what you call a nice boy. I'll admit he's good-looking and that he
dances well. And he seems to pack a punch up his sleeve. I'd suggest
that you don't cultivate any romantic fancy for him. Because he's making
himself a nuisance in my business--and I'm going to smash him."

Gower turned away. If he had lingered he might have observed
unmistakable signs of temper. Betty flew storm signals from cheek and
eye. She looked after her father with something akin to defiance,
likewise with an air of astonishment.

"As if I--" she left the whispered sentence unfinished.

She perched herself on the mahogany-capped rail, and while she waited
for Nelly Abbott she gave herself up to thinking of herself and her
father and