th slime
and clinging scales--until such time as they were washed down--ceased to
annoy him. No man can make omelettes without breaking eggs. Only the
fortunate few can make money without soiling their hands. There is no
room in the primary stages of taking salmon for those who shrink from
sweat and strain, from elemental stress. The white-collared and the
lily-fingered cannot function there. The pink meat my lady toys with on
Limoges china comes to her table by ways that would appal her. Only the
men who toil aboard the fishing boats, with line and gear and gutting
knife know in what travail this harvest of the sea is reaped.

MacRae played fair, according to his conception of fair play. He based
his payments on a decent profit, without which he could not carry on.
Running heavier cargoes at less cost he raised the price to the
fishermen as succeeding runs of blueback salmon were made up of larger,
heavier fish. Other buyers came, lingered awhile, cursed him and went
away. They could not run to Vancouver with small quantities of salmon
and meet his price. But MacRae in the _Blanco_ could take six, eight,
ten thousand salmon profitably on a margin which the other buyers said
was folly.

The trolling fleet swelled in numbers. The fish were there. The
old-timers had prophesied a big blueback year, and for once their
prophecy was by way of being fulfilled. The fish schooled in great
shoals off Nanaimo, around Gray Rock, the Ballenas, passed on to
Sangster and Squitty. And the fleet followed a hundred strong, each day
increasing,--Indians, Greeks, Japanese, white men, raking the salmon
grounds with glittering spoon hooks, gathering in the fish.

In early June MacRae was delivering eighteen thousand salmon a week to
the Terminal Fish Company. He was paying forty cents a fish, more than
any troller in the Gulf of Georgia had ever got for June bluebacks, more
than any buyer had ever paid before the opening of the canneries
heightened the demand. He was clearing nearly a thousand dollars a week
for himself, and he was putting unheard-of sums in the pockets of the
fishermen. MacRae believed these men understood how this was possible,
that they had a feeling of cooeperating with him for their common good.
They had sold their catches on a take-it-or-leave-it basis for years. He
had put a club in their hands as well as money in their pockets. They
would stand with him against less scrupulous, more remorseless
exploiters of their