e left the balcony at last. He appeared next moving, with the stumpy,
ungraceful stride peculiar to the short and thick-bodied, down the walk
to a float. From this he hailed the _Arrow_, and a boy came in, rowing a
dinghy.

When Gower reached the cruiser's deck he cocked his ear at voices in the
after cabin. He put his head through the companion hatch. Betty Gower
and Nelly Abbott were curled up on a berth, chuckling to each other over
some exchange of confidences.

"Thought you were ashore," Gower grunted.

"Oh, the rest of the crowd went off on a hike into the woods, so we came
out here to look around. Nelly hasn't seen the _Arrow_ inside since it
was done over," Betty replied.

"I'm going to Folly Bay," Gower said. "Will you go ashore?"

"Far from such," Betty returned. "I'd as soon go to the cannery as
anywhere. Can't we, daddy?"

"Oh, yes. Bit of a swell though. You may be sick."

Betty laughed. That was a standing joke between them. She had never been
seasick. Nelly Abbott declared that if there was anything she loved it
was to ride the dead swell that ran after a storm. They came up out of
the cabin to watch the mooring line cast off, and to wave handkerchiefs
at the empty cottage porches as the _Arrow_ backed and straightened and
swept out of the bay.

The _Arrow_ was engined to justify her name. But the swell was heavier
than it looked from shore. No craft, even a sixty-footer built for
speed, finds her speed lines a thing of comfort in heavy going. Until
the _Arrow_ passed into the lee of an island group halfway along
Squitty she made less time than a fishing boat, and she rolled and
twisted uncomfortably. If Horace Gower had a mind to reach Folly Bay
before the _Blackbird_ he could not have done so. However, he gave no
hint of such intention. He kept to the deck. The girls stayed below
until the big cruiser struck easier going and a faster gait. Then they
joined Gower.

The three of them stood by the rail just abaft the pilot house when the
_Arrow_ turned into the half-mile breadth of Folly Bay. The cannery
loomed white on shore, with a couple of purse seiners and a tender or
two tied at the slips. And four hundred yards off the cannery wharf the
_Blackbird_ had dropped anchor and lay now, a dozen trolling boats
clustered about her to deliver fish.

"Slow up and stop abreast of that buyer," Gower ordered.

The _Arrow's_ skipper brought his vessel to a standstill within a
boat-length of the _Blac