to him
whether it was day or night around Squitty. He drove his carrier into
any nook or hole where a troller might lie waiting with a few salmon.

The _Blackbird_ came pitching and diving into a heavy southeast swell up
along the western side of Squitty at ten o'clock in the black of an
early October night. There was a storm brewing, a wicked one, reckoned
by the headlong drop of the aneroid. MacRae had a hundred or so salmon
aboard for all his Squitty round, and he had yet to pick up those on the
boats in the Cove. He cocked his eye at a cloud-wrack streaking above,
driving before a wind which had not yet dropped to the level of the
Gulf, and he said to himself that it would be wise to stay in the Cove
that night. A southeast gale, a beam sea, and the tiny opening of the
Jew's Mouth was a bad combination to face in a black night. As he stood
up along Squitty he could hear the swells break along the shore. Now and
then a cold puff of air, the forerunner of the big wind, struck him.
Driving full speed the _Blackbird_ dipped her bow deep in each sea and
rose dripping to the next. He passed Cradle Bay at last, almost under
the steep cliffs, holding in to round Poor Man's Rock and lay a compass
course to the mouth of Squitty Cove.

And as he put his wheel over and swept around the Rock and came clear of
Point Old a shadowy thing topped by three lights in a red and green and
white triangle seemed to leap at him out of the darkness. The lights
showed, and under the lights white water hissing. MacRae threw his
weight on the wheel. He shouted to Steve Ferrara, lying on his bunk in
the little cabin aft.

He knew the boat instantly,--the _Arrow_ shooting through the night at
twenty miles an hour, scurrying to shelter under the full thrust of her
tremendous power. For an appreciable instant her high bow loomed over
him, while his hands twisted the wheel. But the _Blackbird_ was heavy,
sluggish on her helm. She swung a little, from square across the rushing
_Arrow_, to a slight angle. Two seconds would have cleared him. By the
rules of the road at sea the _Blackbird_ had the right of way. If MacRae
had held by the book this speeding mass of mahogany and brass and steel
would have cut him in two amidships. As it was, her high bow, the stem
shod with a cast bronze cutwater edged like a knife, struck him on the
port quarter, sheared through guard, planking, cabin.

There was a crash of riven timbers, the crunching ring of metal,