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Updated: May 1, 2025
This podgy man with the bright blue eyes and heavy jaw, who had been Donald MacRae's jealous Nemesis, had lost everything that was supposed to make life worth living to men of his type. And he did not seem to care. He seemed quite content to smoke a pipe and troll for salmon. He seemed to be a stranger to suffering. He did not even seem to be aware of discomfort, or of loss.
A half-minute of quiet prowling revealed our full quota of livestock, even to the pack-horse that bore our beds and grub, each one tied hard and fast to a tree. Also our six-shooters reposed in their scabbards, the four belts hooked over the horn of MacRae's saddle. Maybe it didn't feel good to be on the hurricane deck of a good horse once more!
He knew the game was lost, so far as he was concerned, and he was mustering his forces in a last effort to save himself. And MacRae's patience snapped like a frayed thread before many minutes of futile query. "Get me a rope off one of those pack-horses, Sarge," he snapped.
His round stomach less round by far than it had been two months earlier shook with silent laughter. His eyes twinkled. His thick, stubby fingers drummed on the chair arm. MacRae's face grew hot. He recognized the unfinished sentence as one of his own, words he had flung in Gower's face not so long since. If that was the way of it he could save his breath. He turned silently. "Wait."
They found the Blackbird pounding on the rocks, and we found Steve Ferrara where you left him. And we followed you here by the blood you spattered along the way." A line from the Rhyme of the Three Sealers came into MacRae's mind as befitting. But he was thinking of his father and not so much of himself as he quoted: "'Sorrow is me, in a lonely sea, And a sinful fight I fall."
The grooms arrived from Lairg, in the tandem, with the doctor and a rural policeman. Bude had telegraphed to Scotland Yard from Lochinver for detectives, and to Glasgow, Oban, Tobermory, Salen, in fact to every place he thought likely, with minute particulars of Miss Macrae's appearance and dress.
'My daughter is restored to me and my son, said the millionaire softly. There was silence. Mr. Macrae was the first to recover his self-possession. 'Sit down, dear, he said, gently disengaging Emmeline, 'and tell me all about it. Who were the wretches? I can forgive them now. Miss Macrae's eyes were bent on the carpet; she seemed reluctant to speak.
I was told that Macrae would be landed only in case of perfect certainty to reach Anadyrsk in boats, and I confess I don't like such surprises as Colonel Bulkley has made me now. For the present our duty consists in doing our utmost to extricate them from where they are, and you must get every dog-sledge you can, stuff them with dog-food and provisions, and go at once in search of Macrae's camp."
But in MacRae's memory there had never been any mothers or sisters or daughters save Dolly. There were nine male Ferraras when Jack MacRae went to France. Dolores' father was dead. Uncle Peter was a bachelor. He had two brothers, and each brother had bred three sons. Four of these sons had left their boats and gear to go overseas. Two of them would never come back.
Part of the old guard stuck tight to MacRae. But there were new men fishing; there were Japanese and illiterate Greeks. It was not to be expected that these men should indulge in far-sighted calculations. But it was a trifle disappointing to see how readily any troller would unload his catch into a mustard pot if neither of MacRae's carriers happened to be at hand.
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