fish business are going to have a lot of grievances. But just now they
are chiefly grouching at you."

MacRae seldom set foot ashore those crowded days. But he passed within
sight of Squitty Cove and Poor Man's Rock once at least in each
forty-eight hours. For weeks he had seen smoke drifting blue from the
cottage chimney in Cradle Bay. He saw now and then the flutter of
something white or blue on the lawn that he knew must be Betty. Part of
the time a small power boat swung to the mooring in the bay where the
shining _Arrow_ nosed to wind and tide in other days. He heard current
talk among the fishermen concerning the Gowers. Gower himself was
spending his time between the cottage and Folly Bay.

The cannery opened five days in advance of the sockeye season on the
Fraser. When the Gower collecting boats made their first round MacRae
knew that he had a fight on his hands. Gower, it seemed to him, had
bared his teeth at last.

The way of the blueback salmon might have furnished a theme for Solomon.
In all the years during which these fish had run in the Gulf of Georgia
neither fishermen, canners, nor the government ichthyologists were
greatly wiser concerning their nature or habits or life history. Grounds
where they swarmed one season might prove barren the next. Where they
came from, out of what depths of the far Pacific those silvery hordes
marshaled themselves, no man knew. Nor, when they vanished in late
August, could any man say whither they went. They did not ascend the
streams. No blueback was ever taken with red spawn in his belly. They
were a mystery which no man had unraveled, no matter that he took them
by thousands in order that he himself might subsist upon their flesh.
One thing the trollers did know,--where the small feed swarmed, in shoal