erywhere. The river was full of them. The bay was alive with
them.

A boat put off from the seiner. The man rowed out of the Jew's Mouth and
stopped, resting on his oars. He remained there, in approximately the
same position. A sentry.

The _No. 5_ heaved anchor, the chain clanking and chattering in a
hawsepipe. Her exhaust spat smoky, gaseous fumes. A bell clanged. She
moved slowly ahead, toward the river's mouth, a hundred yards to one
side of it. Then the brown web of the seine began to spin out over the
stern. She crossed the mouth of the Solomon, holding as close in as her
draft permitted, and kept on straight till her seine was paid out to the
end. Then she stopped, lying still in dead water with her engine idling.

The tide was on the flood. Salmon run streams on a rising tide. And the
seine stood like a wall across the river's mouth.

Every man watching knew what the seiner was about, in defiance of the
law. The salmon, nosing into the stream, driven by that imperative urge
which is the law of their being, struck the net, turned aside, swam in a
slow circle and tried again and again, seeking free passage, until
thousands of them were massed behind the barrier of the net. Then the
_No. 5_ would close the net, tauten the ropes which made it a purse, and
haul out into deep water.

It was the equivalent of piracy on the high seas. To be taken in the act
meant fines, imprisonment, confiscation of boat and gear. But the _No.
5_ would not be caught. She had a guard posted. Cannery seiners were
never caught. When they were they got off with a warning and a
reprimand. Only gill-netters, the small fry of the salmon industry, ever
paid the utmost penalty for raids like that. So the fishermen said, with
a cynical twist of their lips.

"Look at 'em," one said to MacRae. "They make laws and break 'em
themselves. They been doin' that every day for a week. If one of us set
a piece of net in the river and took three hundred salmon the canners
would holler their heads off. There'd be a patrol boat on our heels all
the time if they thought we'd take a chance."

"Well, I'm about ready to take a chance," another man growled. "They
clear the bay in daylight and all we get is their leavings at night."

The _No. 5_ pursed her seine and hauled out until she was abreast of the
_Blackbird_. She drew close up to her massive hull a great heap of
salmon, struggling, twisting, squirming within the net. The loading
began. Her men laug