played, he had played there.

He looked for another familiar figure or two, without noting them.

"The fish are biting fast for this time of year," he reflected. "It's a
wonder dad and Peter Ferrara aren't out. And I never knew Bill Munro to
miss anything like this."

He looked a little longer, over across the tip of Sangster Island two
miles westward, with its Elephant's Head,--the extended trunk of which
was a treacherous reef bared only at low tide. He looked at the
Elephant's unwinking eye, which was a twenty-foot hole through a hump of
sandstone, and smiled. He had fished for salmon along the kelp beds
there and dug clams under the eye of the Elephant long, long ago. It did
seem a long time ago that he had been a youngster in overalls,
adventuring alone in a dugout about these bold headlands.

He rose at last. The November wind chilled him through the heavy
mackinaw. He looked back at the Gower cottage, like a snowflake in a
setting of emerald; he looked at the Gower yacht; and the puzzled frown
returned to his face.

Then he picked up his bag and walked rapidly along the brow of the
cliffs toward Squitty Cove.




CHAPTER III