MacRae ran the Blanco into Squitty Cove one afternoon and made fast alongside the Bluebird which lay to fore and aft moorings in the narrow gut of the Cove.  The Gulf outside was speckled with trollers, but there were many at anchor, resting, or cooking food.

One of the mustard pots was there, a squat fifty-foot carrier painted a gaudy yellow—­the Folly Bay house color—­flying a yellow flag with a black C in the center.  She was loading fish from two trollers, one lying on each side.  One or two more were waiting, edging up.

“He came in yesterday afternoon after you left,” Vin Ferrara told Jack.  “And he offered forty-five cents.  Some of them took it.  To-day he’s paying fifty and hinting more if he has to.”

MacRae laughed.

“We’ll match Gower’s price till he boosts us out of the bidding,” he said.  “And he won’t make much on his pack if he does that.”

“Say, Folly Bay,” Jack called across to the mustard-pot carrier, “what are you paying for bluebacks?”

The skipper took his eye off the tallyman counting in fish.

“Fifty cents,” he answered in a voice that echoed up and down the Cove.

“That must sound good to the fishermen,” MacRae called back pleasantly.  “Folly Bay’s getting generous in its declining years.”

It was the off period between tides.  There were forty boats at rest in the Cove and more coming in.  The ripple of laughter that ran over the fleet was plainly audible.  They could appreciate that.  MacRae sat down on the Blanco’s after cabin and lit a cigarette.

“Looks like they mean to get the fish,” Vin hazarded.  “Can you tilt that and make anything?”

“Let them do the tilting,” MacRae answered.  “If the fish run heavy I can make a little, even if prices go higher.  If he boosts them to seventy-five, I’d have to quit.  At that price only the men who catch the fish will make anything.  I really don’t know how much we will be able to pay when Crow Harbor opens up.”

“We’ll have some fun anyway.”  Vin’s black eyes sparkled.

It took MacRae three days to get a load.  Human nature functions pretty much the same among all men.  The trollers distrusted Folly Bay.  They said to one another that if Gower could kill off competition he would cut the price to the bone.  He had done that before.  But when a fisherman rises wearily from his bunk at three in the morning and spends the bulk of the next eighteen hours hauling four one hundred and fifty foot lines, each weighted with from six to fifteen pounds of lead, he feels that he is entitled to every cent he can secure for his day’s labor.

The Gower boats got fish.  The mustard pot came back next day, paying fifty-five cents.  A good many trollers sold him their fish before they learned that MacRae was paying the same.  And the mustard pot evidently had his orders, for he tilted the price to sixty, which forced MacRae to do the same.