Bull’s return home had been a time of great looking forward.  Life to him had become full of every alluring possibility.  He saw the approaching fulfilment of his hopes and aims.  The contemplation of the pending war with the Skandinavia only afforded his fighting instincts satisfaction.  Then there was that other.  That great, new sensation which stirred him so deeply—­Nancy McDonald.  So he had returned home full of enthusiasm and ready to tackle any and every problem that presented itself.

He had just completed the telling of the story he had brought back with him.  It was a story of success that had stirred even the cast-iron emotions of Bat Harker.  Nor had it lost anything in the telling, for Bull was more deeply moved than he knew.

The recounting of his dealings in London with the man, Sir Frank Leader, had been coloured by the enthusiasm with which the Englishman had inspired him.  Sir Frank Leader was known as the uncrowned king of the world’s pulp-wood trade.  But Bull felt, and declared, that the appellation did not come within measurable distance of expressing the man’s real genius.  Then there were those others:  Stanton Brothers, and Lord Downtree, and the virile, youthful creature, Ray Birchall.  All of them were strong pillars of support for the ruling genius of the house of Leader & Company.  But it was the man himself, the head of it, who claimed all Bull’s admiration for his intensity of national spirit, and the wide generosity of his enterprise.

The story he had had to tell was simple in its completeness.  Before setting out on his journey he had spent months in preparation of the ground by means of voluminous correspondence and documentary evidence.  It was a preparation that left it only necessary to convince through personal appeal on his arrival in London.  This had been achieved in the broad fashion that appealed to the men he encountered.  His “hand” had been laid down.  Every card of it was offered for their closest scrutiny, even to the baring of the last reservation which his intimate knowledge of the merciless climate of Labrador might have inspired.

The appeal of this method had been instant to Sir Frank Leader.  And the appeal had been as much the man himself as the thing he offered.  The result of it all was Bull’s early return home with the man’s whole organisation fathering his enterprise, and with a guarantee of his incomparable fleet of freighters being flung into the pool.  Leader had swept up the whole proposition into his widely embracing arms, and taken it to himself.  Subject to Ray Birchall’s ultimate report, after personal inspection on the spot of the properties involved, the flotation was to be launched for some seventy million dollars, and thus the consummation of Sachigo’s original inspiration would be achieved.

Bat had listened to the story almost without comment.  He had missed nothing of it.  Neither had he failed to observe the man telling it.  The story itself was all so tremendous, so far removed from the work that pre-occupied him that he had little desire to probe deeper into it.  But the success of it all stirred him.  Oh, yes.  It had stirred him deeply, and his mind had immediately flown to that other who had laboured for just this achievement and had staggered under the burden of it all.