For a second MacRae made no answer. His nostrils dilated; his blue-gray
eyes darkened till they seemed black. Then he said with a curious
hoarseness, and in a voice pitched so low it was scarcely audible:

"Take your boat hooks out of me and be on your way."

The older man withdrew his hook. Young Gower held on a second longer,
matching the undisguised hatred in Donald MacRae's eyes with a fury in
his own. His round, boyish face purpled. And when he withdrew the boat
hook he swung the inch-thick iron-shod pole with a swift twist of his
body and struck MacRae fairly across the face.

MacRae went down in a heap as the _Gull_ swung away. The faint breeze
out of the west filled the cutter's sails. She stood away on a long tack
south by west, with a frightened girl cowering down in her cabin,
sobbing in grief and fear, and three men in the _Gull's_ cockpit casting
dubious glances at one another and back to the fishing sloop sailing
with no hand on her tiller.

In an hour the _Gull_ was four miles to windward of the sloop. The
breeze had taken a sudden shift full half the compass. A southeast wind
came backing up against the westerly. There was in its breath a hint of
something stronger.

Masterless, the sloop sailed, laid to, started off again erratically,
and after many shifts ran off before this stiffer wind. Unhelmed, she
laid her blunt bows straight for the opening between Sangster and
Squitty islands. On the cockpit floor Donald MacRae sprawled unheeding.
Blood from his broken face oozed over the boards.