convenient for the trollers to come alongside and deliver when
they chose. There were squalls that blew up out of nowhere and drove
them all to cover. There were days when a dead swell rolled and the
trolling boats dipped and swung and pointed their bluff bows skyward as
they climbed the green mountains,--for the salmon strike when a sea is
on, and a troller runs from heavy weather only when he can no longer
handle his gear.

MacRae was much too busy to brood long at a time. The phenomenal run of
blueback still held, with here and there the hook-nosed coho coming in
stray schools. He had a hundred and forty fishermen to care for in the
matter of taking their catch, keeping them supplied with fuel, bringing
them foodstuffs such as they desired. The _Blanco_ came up from
Vancouver sometimes as heavily loaded as when she went down. But he
welcomed the work because it kept him from too intense thinking. He
shepherded his seafaring flock for his profit and theirs alike and
poured salmon by tens of thousands into the machines at Crow
Harbor,--red meat to be preserved in tin cans which in months to come
should feed the hungry in the far places of the earth.

MacRae sometimes had the strange fancy of being caught in a vast machine
for feeding the world, a machine which did not reckon such factors as
pain and sorrow in its remorseless functioning. Men could live without
love or ease or content. They could not survive without food.

He came up to Squitty one bright afternoon when the sea was flat and
still, unharassed by the westerly. The Cove was empty. All the fleet was
scattered over a great area. The _Bluebird_ was somewhere on her rounds.
MacRae dropped the _Blanco's_ hook in the middle of Cradle Bay, a spot
he seldom chose for anchorage. But he had a purpose in this. When the
bulky carrier swung head to the faint land breeze MacRae was sitting on
his berth in the pilot house, glancing over a letter he held in his
hand. It was from a land-dealing firm in Vancouver. One paragraph is
sufficiently illuminating:

In regard to the purchase of this Squitty Island property we beg
to advise you that Mr. Gower, after some correspondence, states
distinctly that while he is willing to dispose of this property
he will only deal directly with a _bona fide_ purchaser.

We therefore suggest that you take the matter up with Mr. Gower
personally.

MacRae put the sheet back in its envelope. He stared