le in awe of
their gilded offspring. MacRae meant to beat the game as it was being
played. He felt that he was beating it. But nothing would be handed him
on a silver salver. Fortune would not be bestowed upon him in any easy,
soft-handed fashion. He would have to render an equivalent for what he
got. He wondered if the security of success so gained would have any
greater value for him than it would have for those who took their
blessings so lightly.

This kink of analytical reasoning was new to MacRae, and it kept him
from entering whole-heartedly into the joyous frivolity which functioned
in the Abbott home that evening. He had never found himself in that
critical mood before. He did not want to prattle nonsense. He did not
want to think, and he could not help thinking. He had a curious sense of
detachment from what was going on, even while he was a part of it. So he
did not linger late.

The _Blackbird_ had discharged at Crow Harbor late in the afternoon. She
lay now at a Vancouver slip. By eleven o'clock he was aboard in his
bunk, still thinking when he should have been asleep, staring wide-eyed
at dim deck beams, his mind flitting restlessly from one thing to
another. Steve Ferrara lay in the opposite bunk, wheezing his breath in
and out of lungs seared by poison gas in Flanders. Smells of seaweed and
tide-flat wafted in through open hatch and portholes. A full moon thrust
silver fingers through deck openings. Gradually the softened medley of
harbor noises lulled MacRae into a dreamless sleep. He only wakened at
the clank of the engine and the shudder of the _Blackbird's_ timbers as
Steve backed her out of her berth in the first faint gleam of dawn.

The _Blackbird_ made her trip and a second and a third, which brought
the date late in August. On his delivery, when the salmon in her hold
had been picarooned to the cannery floor, MacRae went up to the office.
Stubby had sent for him. He looked uncomfortable when Jack came in.

"What's on your mind now?" MacRae asked genially.

"Something damned unpleasant," Stubby growled.

"Shoot," MacRae said. He sat down and lit a cigarette.

"I didn't think they could do it," Abbott said slowly. "But it seems
they can. I guess you'll have to lay off the Gower territory after all,
Jack."

"You mean _you_ will," MacRae replied. "I've been rather expecting that.
Can Gower hurt you?"

"Not personally. But the banks--export control--there are so many angles
to the cannery