"What's up?" "There's six of your men in the bunk-house all beat up; they don't look like they'd fish any more for a while. Marsh's men threw their salmon overboard, and they had another fight. Things are getting warm." "We can't allow ourselves to be driven from the banks," said Boyd, quickly. "I'll get the shoremen together right away. Find Alton, and bring him along; we'll need every man we can get." "Nothing doing with that party; he's quit like a house cat, and gone to bed." "Very well; he's no good, anyhow; he's better out of the way." He hurried through the building, now silent and half deserted, gathering a crew; then, leaving only the Orientals and the watchman to guard the plant, he loaded his men into the boats and set out. All that afternoon and on through the long, murky hours of the night the battle raged on the lower reaches of the Kalvik. Boat crews clashed; half-clad men cursed each other and fought with naked fists, with oars and clubs; and when these failed, they drove at one another with wicked one-tined fish "pues." All night the hordes of salmon swarmed upward toward the fatal waters of their birth, through sagging nets that were torn and slit; beneath keels that rocked to the impact of struggling, heedless bodies. CHAPTER XXIV WHEREIN "THE GRANDE DAME" ARRIVES, LADEN WITH DISAPPOINTMENTS As the sun slanted up between the southward hills, out from the gossamer haze that lay like filmy forest smoke above the ocean came a snow-white yacht. She stole inward past the headlands, as silent as a wraith, leaving a long, black streamer penciled against the sky; so still was the dawn that the breath from her funnel lay like a trail behind her, slowly fading and blending with the colors of the morning. The waters were gleaming nickel beneath her prow, and she clove them like a blade; against the dove-gray sky her slender rigging was traced as by some finely pointed instrument; her sides were as clean as the stainless breasts of the gulls that floated near the shore. As she came proudly up through the fleets of fishing-boats, perfect in every line and gliding with stately dignity, the grimy little crafts drew aside as if in awe, while tired-eyed men stared silently at her as if at a vision.