admiration that bordered upon idolatry. She loved the lean, hard
features, and the cold, rapier-blade eyes. She loved the name men
called him; Tiger Elliston, an earned name--that. The name of a man
who, by his might and the strength and mastery of him, had won his
place in the world of the men who dare.

Since babyhood she had listened with awe to tales of him; and the
red-letter days of her childhood's calendar were the days upon which
her father would take her down to the docks, past great windowless
warehouses of concrete and sheet-iron, where big glossy horses stood
harnessed to high-piled trucks--past great tiers of bales and boxes
between which trotted hurrying, sweating men--past the clang and clash
of iron truck wheels, the rattle of chains, the shriek of pulleys, and
the loud-bawled orders in strange tongues. Until, at last, they would
come to the great dingy hulk of the ship and walk up the gangway and
onto the deck, where funny yellow and brown men, with their hair
braided into curious pigtails, worked with ropes and tackles and called
to other funny men with bright-coloured ribbons braided into their
beards.

Almost as she learned to walk she learned to pick out the yellow stacks
of "papa's boats," learned their names, and the names of their
captains, the bronzed, bearded men who would take her in their laps,
holding her very awkwardly and very, very carefully, as if she were
something that would break, and tell her stories in deep, rumbly
voices. And nearly always they were stories of the Tiger--"yer
gran'pap, leetle missey," they would say. And then, by palms, and
pearls, and the fires of blazing mountains, they would swear "He wor a
man!"