"What did I tell him?" Captain Peasley laid down his knife gently and wiped the tea from his drooping mustache, then squared about in his seat. "Here's what I told him as near as my memory serves." Whereupon he broke into a tornado of nautical profanity so picturesquely British in its figures, and so whole-souled in its vigor, that his auditors could not but smile. "Then I bashed him with my boot, and bloody well pursued him over the rail. Two thousand dollars! Sweet mother of Queen Anne! Wouldn't I look well, now, handing four hundred pounds over to those highbinders? My owners would hang me." "So they demand two thousand dollars!" "Yes! Just because of some bally rot about who may and who may not work for a living on the docks at Frisco." "What are you going to do about it?" "I'm going to make a swimming delegate out of the next walking emissary that boards me. Two thousand dollars!" He hid half a slice of toast behind his mustache and stirred his tea violently. "It's Marsh again," said Big George. "I dare say," Emerson answered. "It's a hold-up pure and simple. However, if ships can be unloaded with non-union labor they can be loaded in the same manner, and Captain Peasley talks like a man who would like to have the argument out. I want you to stay here and watch our freight while I see the head of the union." CHAPTER XVII A NEW ENEMY APPEARS When Boyd returned some two hours later he found the dock deserted save for Big George, who prowled watchfully about the freight piles. "Well, did you fix it up?" the fisherman inquired. "No," exclaimed Boyd. "It's a rank frame-up, and I refused to be bled." "Good for you." "There are some things a fellow's manhood won't stand for. I'll carry that freight aboard with my own hands before I'll be robbed by a labor union at the bidding of Willis Marsh." "Say! Will you let me load this ship my way?" George asked. "Can you do it?" Balt's thick lips drew back from his yellow teeth in that smile which Emerson had come to recognize as a harbinger of the violent acts that rejoiced his lawless soul. "Listen," said he, with a chuckle. "Down the street yonder I've got a hundred fishermen. Half of them are drunk at this minute, and the rest are half drunk." "Then they are of no use to us." "I don't reckon you ever seen a herd of Kalvik fishermen out of a job, did you? Well, there's just two things they know, fishing and fighting, and this ain't the fishing season. When they hit Seattle, the police force goes up into the residence section and stufts cotton in its ears, because the only thing that is strong enough to stand between a uniform and a fisherman is a hill." "Can you induce them to work?"