ng man, a very young
man, in evening clothes, holding a long cigarette daintily in his
fingers, stood by Gower.

MacRae followed Betty Gower across the room to her father. She turned.
Her quick eyes had picked out the insignia of rank on MacRae's uniform.

"Papa," she said. "Captain--" she hesitated.

"MacRae," he supplied.

"Captain MacRae wishes to see you."

MacRae wished no conventionalities. He did not want to be introduced, to
be shaken by the hand, to have Gower play host. He forestalled all this,
if indeed it threatened.

"I have just arrived home on leave," he said briefly. "I find my father
desperately ill in our house at the Cove. You have a very fast and able
cruiser. Would you care to put her at my disposal so that I may take my
father to Vancouver? I think that is his only chance."

Gower had risen. He was not an imposing man. At his first glimpse of
MacRae's face, the pink-patched eye, the uniform, he flushed
slightly,--recalling that afternoon.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You'd be welcome to the _Arrow_ if she were here.
But I sent her to Nanaimo an hour after she landed us. Are you Donald
MacRae's boy?"

"Yes," MacRae said. "Thank you. That's all."

He had said his say and got his answer. He turned to go. Betty Gower put
a detaining hand on his arm.

"Listen," she put in eagerly. "Is there anything any of us could do to
help? Nursing or--or anything?"

MacRae shook his head.

"There is a girl with him," he answered. "Nothing but skilled medical
aid would help him at this stage. He has the flu, and the fever is
burning his life out."

"The flu, did you say?" The young man with the long cigarette lost his
bored air. "Hang it, it isn't very sporting, is it, to expose us--these
ladies--to the infection? I'll say it isn't."

Jack MacRae fixed the young man--and he was not, after all, much younger
than MacRae--with a steady stare in which a smoldering fire glowed. He
bestowed a scrutiny while one might count five, under which the other's
gaze began to shift uneasily. A constrained silence fell in the room.

"I would suggest that you learn how to put on a gas mask," MacRae said
coldly, at last.

Then he walked out. Betty Gower followed him to the door, but he had
asked his question and there was nothing to wait for. He did not even
look back until he reached the cliff. He did not care if they thought
him rude, ill-bred. Then, as he reached the cliff, the joyous jazz broke
out again and shado