lar
cannery was concerned.

This notion amused MacRae, served to while away the hours of monotonous
plowing over an unruffled sea, until he drove down abreast the Fraser
River's mouth and passed in among the nets and lights of the sockeye
fleet drifting, a thousand strong, on the broad bosom of the Gulf. Then
he had to stand up to his steering wheel and keep a sharp lookout, lest
he foul his propellor in a net or cut down some careless fisherman who
did not show a riding light.

CHAPTER XI

Peril of the Sea

The last of August set the Red Flower of the Jungle books blooming along
the British Columbia coast. The seeds of it were scattered on hot, dry,
still days by pipe and cigarette, by sparks from donkey engines, by
untended camp fires, wherever the careless white man went in the great
coastwise forests. The woods were like a tinder box. One unguarded
moment, and the ancient firs were wrapped in sheets of flame. Smoke lay
on the Gulf like a pall of pungent fog, through which vessels ran by
chart and compass, blind between ports, at imminent risk of collision.

Through this, well on into September, MacRae and Vincent Ferrara
gathered cargoes of salmon and ran them down the Gulf to Bellingham,
making their trips with the regularity of the tides, despite the murk
that hid landmarks by day and obscured the guiding lighthouse flashes
when dark closed in. They took their chances in the path of coastwise
traffic, straining their eyes for vessels to leap suddenly out of the
thickness that shut them in, their ears for fog signals that blared
warning. There were close shaves, but they escaped disaster. They got
the salmon and they delivered them, and Folly Bay still ran a bad second
wherever the _Bird_ boats served the trolling fleet. Even when Gower at
last met MacRae's price, his collectors got few fish. The fishermen took
no chances. They were convinced that if MacRae abandoned buying for
lack of salmon Folly Bay would cut the price in two. It had been done
before. So they held their fish for the _Bird_ boats. MacRae got them
all. Even when American buyers trailed MacRae to the source of his
supply their competition hurt Gower instead of MacRae. The trollers
supplied MacRae with all the salmon he could carry. It was still fresh
in their minds that he had come into the field that season as their
special Providence.

But the blueback run tapered off at Squitty. September ushered in the
annual coho run on its way