of Gower's summer cottage commanded a
wide sweep of the Gulf south and east. That was one reason he had built
there. He liked to overlook the sea, the waters out of which he had
taken a fortune, the highway of his collecting boats. He had to keep in
touch with the Folly Bay cannery while the rush of the pack was on. But
he was getting more fastidious as he grew older, and he no longer
relished the odors of the cannery. There were other places nearer the
cannery than Cradle Bay, if none more sightly, where he could have built
a summer house. People wondered why he chose the point that frowned over
Poor Man's Rock. Even his own family had questioned his judgment.
Particularly his wife. She complained of the isolation. She insisted on
a houseful of people when she was there, and as Vancouver was full of
eligible week-enders of both sexes her wish was always gratified. And no
one except Betty Gower ever knew that merely to sit looking out on the
Gulf from that vantage point afforded her father some inscrutable
satisfaction.

On a day in mid-July Horace Gower stepped out on this balcony. He
carried in his hand a pair of prism binoculars. He took a casual look
around. Then he put the glasses to his eyes and scanned the Gulf with a
slow, searching sweep. At first sight it seemed empty. Then far
eastward toward Vancouver his glass picked up two formless dots which
alternately showed and disappeared.

Gower put down the glasses, seated himself in a grass chair, lighted a
cigar and leaned back, looking impersonally down on Point Old and the
Rock. A big, slow swell rolled up off the Gulf, breaking with a
precisely spaced _boom_ along the cliffs. For forty-eight hours a
southeaster had swept the sea, that rare phenomenon of a summer gale
which did not blow itself out between suns. This had been a wild
tantrum, driving everything of small tonnage to the nearest shelter,
even delaying the big coasters.

One of these, trailing black smoke from two funnels, lifting white
superstructure of cabins high above her main deck, standing bold and
clear in the mellow sunshine, steamed out of the fairway between Squitty
and Vancouver Island. But she gained scant heed from Gower. His eyes
kept turning to where those distant specks showed briefly between
periods in the hollows of the sea. They drew nearer. Gower finished his
cigar in leisurely fashion. He focused the glass again. He grunted
something unintelligible. They were what he fully expe