flooding tide set in a slow eddy. MacRae had only to keep himself
afloat.

In five minutes his feet touched on a gravel beach. He walked dripping
out of the languid swell that ran from the turbulence outside and turned
to look back. The sloop had lodged on the rock, bilged by the ragged
granite. The mast was down, mast and sodden sails swinging at the end of
a stay as each sea swept over the rock with a hissing roar.

MacRae climbed to higher ground. He sat down beside a stunted, leaning
fir and watched his boat go. It was soon done. A bigger sea than most
tore the battered hull loose, lifted it high, let it drop. The crack of
breaking timbers cut through the boom of the surf. The next sea swept
the rock clear, and the broken, twisted hull floated awash. Caught in
the tidal eddy it began its slow journey to join the vast accumulation
of driftwood on the beach.

MacRae glanced along the island shore. He knew that shore slightly,--a
bald, cliffy stretch notched with rocky pockets in which the surf beat
itself into dirty foam. If he had grounded anywhere in that mile of
headland north of Point Old, his bones would have been broken like the
timbers of his sloop.

But his eyes did not linger there nor his thoughts upon shipwreck and
sudden death. His gaze turned across the Gulf to a tongue of land
outthrusting from the long purple reach of Vancouver Island. Behind that
point lay the Morton estate, and beside the Morton boundaries, matching
them mile for mile in wealth of virgin timber and fertile meadow, spread
the Gower lands.