day’s gathering on the Blanco’s deck, and the two crews would dress salmon till their hands were sore.  But it saved both time and fuel to have that great carrying capacity, and the freezing plant which automatically chilled the fish.  MacRae could stay on the grounds till he was fully loaded.  He could slash through to Vancouver at nine knots instead of seven.  A sea that would toss the old wrecked Blackbird like a dory and keep her low decks continually awash let the Blanco pass with only a moderate pitch and roll.

MacRae worked hard.  He found ease in work.  When the last salmon was dressed and stowed below, many times under the glow of electric bulbs strung along the cargo boom, he would fall into his bunk and sleep dreamlessly.  Decks streaming with blood and offal, plastered with slime and clinging scales—­until such time as they were washed down—­ceased to annoy him.  No man can make omelettes without breaking eggs.  Only the fortunate few can make money without soiling their hands.  There is no room in the primary stages of taking salmon for those who shrink from sweat and strain, from elemental stress.  The white-collared and the lily-fingered cannot function there.  The pink meat my lady toys with on Limoges china comes to her table by ways that would appal her.  Only the men who toil aboard the fishing boats, with line and gear and gutting knife know in what travail this harvest of the sea is reaped.

MacRae played fair, according to his conception of fair play.  He based his payments on a decent profit, without which he could not carry on.  Running heavier cargoes at less cost he raised the price to the fishermen as succeeding runs of blueback salmon were made up of larger, heavier fish.  Other buyers came, lingered awhile, cursed him and went away.  They could not run to Vancouver with small quantities of salmon and meet his price.  But MacRae in the Blanco could take six, eight, ten thousand salmon profitably on a margin which the other buyers said was folly.

The trolling fleet swelled in numbers.  The fish were there.  The old-timers had prophesied a big blueback year, and for once their prophecy was by way of being fulfilled.  The fish schooled in great shoals off Nanaimo, around Gray Rock, the Ballenas, passed on to Sangster and Squitty.  And the fleet followed a hundred strong, each day increasing,—­Indians, Greeks, Japanese, white men, raking the salmon grounds with glittering spoon hooks, gathering in the fish.

In early June MacRae was delivering eighteen thousand salmon a week to the Terminal Fish Company.  He was paying forty cents a fish, more than any troller in the Gulf of Georgia had ever got for June bluebacks, more than any buyer had ever paid before the opening of the canneries heightened the demand.  He was clearing nearly a thousand dollars a week for himself, and he was putting unheard-of sums in the pockets of the fishermen.  MacRae believed these men understood how this was possible, that they had a feeling of cooeperating with him for their common good.  They had sold their catches on a take-it-or-leave-it basis for years.  He had put a club in their hands as well as money in their pockets.  They would stand with him against less scrupulous, more remorseless exploiters of their labor.  They would see that he got fish.  They told him that.