"But we haven't touched anything," Hans said smilingly. He turned to Jake Hillis. "Have we?"

Jake Hillis, too dull-witted for quick evasion, said, "No, you haven't."

Cold rage mounted within Ramsay. He swung his shotgun so that the muzzle centered squarely on Devil Chad. If it came to a gun battle, he decided grimly, his arch-enemy would at least be shot at.

Hans, unruffled, took command. "Where is your net? Show us."

"Right here."

Ramsay heard the mockery in Hans' voice. "And I suppose that it is a gill net?"

"How'd you know that?" Devil Chad challenged.

"I gazed into my crystal ball," Hans said smoothly, "and I discovered that, when one fisherman wishes to eliminate a competitor, he can always stretch a gill net across the tunnel of a pound net. There is certain to be a battle, and whoever survives controls the fishing."

Ramsay began to understand. Fishing on Lake Michigan was governed by no enforceable law but only by the ethics of the fishermen themselves. Most of them were ethical; when one found a good fishing ground, others usually respected his rights. But there was no law that said they had to respect them. Should one fisherman care to trespass on the rights of another, he could always find some way to provoke a quarrel. Then, regardless of anything else that happened, he could say that he was only trying to protect his property or claim in some other way that his was a just quarrel. Few people would be able to prove to the contrary.

Then a blue-and-white buoy, a marker used on a gill net, floated into sight. Hans saw it, too, and again his voice was mocking. "Is that the net you mean?"

There were subdued voices on the Mackinaw boat. Joe Mannis put his shotgun down and stepped to the bow of the boat with a gaff hook in his hand. He lay prone, stabbed with the gaff, and hooked the buoy. Foot by foot he reeled in thirty yards of tattered gill net. Hans' scornful laughter rolled like a barrel through the mist and bounded back in echoes. Ramsay, highly amused, echoed Hans.

"Find your other buoy!" Hans called. "Pull it in, take it home, and repair your gill net! But do not again set it on our fishing grounds!"

The Mackinaw boat floated into the mist. Ramsay saw the baffled rage on Devil Chad's face. But mostly he was aware of the contempt of Hans for Devil Chad.

"Here!" Hans called. "You're missing a man!" He turned to Jake Hillis.

The constable glowered back, like a stupid horse.

"Want to swim over and join your little friends?" Hans invited.

"No."

"Well, we brought you out from the sand. We'll take you back to the sand."

Hans' shoulders were shaking with silent mirth as he bent his back to the pound boat's oars. He steered in to the pier they had built, and expertly nosed the boat in to its landing. A mist-draped wraith, Marta, awaited them. "What happened?" she queried anxiously.

"Nothing," Pieter assured her.

"A great deal," Hans corrected. "They caught the White Sturgeon, for no other fish in the lake could have wrecked a net so completely. I told you we have a friend."

He took a pouch from his pocket, counted five silver dollars from it, and dropped them into Jake Hillis' hand. Captain Klaus flew down from the house top to alight on Hans' shoulder. "_Quark!_" he squawked.

As though he understood perfectly, Hans said, "That is right, my little one." And to Jake Hillis he said, "If you see them, tell them not to come again."

Deliberately turning his back on the constable, Hans stared out over the lake. Then Jake Hillis was gone, and somehow it was as though he had never even been with them. Ramsay waited expectantly. Hans turned away from his intent study of the lake, and he was frowning as though there was some complicated problem which he must solve. Yet when he spoke, his voice betrayed nothing abnormal and there was no sign that he might have been under the least strain. "Perhaps it would be well not to fish again today. That is a shame, for the season draws to a close and we cannot fish much longer, anyway. Still, we have done all that it is necessary to do, and next year we will be well-situated. We will have gear and tackle. I go to work on the boat."

Ramsay asked, "Do you think they will come again?"

Hans answered deliberately, "I do not think so, but no man may say for certain. They are not without determined and intelligent leadership. If he does come again, he will come hard and directly at us. He will not bother with the nets. There is no need to keep a patrol on the lake tonight."

Without another word Hans turned on his heel and strode off to where the _Spray II_ was supported on its blocks. Ramsay went into the barn, shouldered a hundred-pound sack of cornmeal, and carried it to the pond in which he had imprisoned almost countless sturgeon. With both hands he cast the ground corn into the pool, and returned for another sack, and another. Then he stood with the last empty sack limp in his hands, idly watching the pond.

It had been an exciting summer, the most adventurous and most satisfying he could remember, but it must soon end.

Already there was a hint of frost in the air, and frost meant that the whitefish would soon spawn. Nothing could persuade Hans to fish in the spawning season, when every fish caught meant the loss of perhaps ten that might be. Even if Hans would have fished, autumn meant storms when none but a fool would venture onto the lake in a small boat.

Ramsay turned slowly away from the pond. He wandered over to where Hans was working on the _Spray II_. It was to be a Mackinaw boat, somewhat like a canoe, and it was to be used for setting gill nets. These, Ramsay understood, could be set almost as soon as the ice went out.

Handy with almost any sort of tool, Hans himself had fashioned a wood vise that turned on a wooden gear. He had a section of cedar stump clamped in the vise, and with a rasp and a fine-toothed saw he was painstakingly fashioning a rib for the _Spray II_. Unhurried, a true artist, he shaped one side of the rib to the other. When he had finished, it was a perfect thing, so evenly balanced that a feather's weight on either side might have unbalanced it. Ramsay wandered away, satisfied. The _Spray II_ was to be no ordinary vessel. There would not be another Mackinaw boat on Lake Michigan to match it.

Restlessly Ramsay worked on the seine until Marta called them. He ate, went to bed, and dropped into his usual instant deep slumber.

At first he was vaguely irritated because noises in the night disturbed him. Then he identified those sounds as the crying of an alarmed sea gull. Captain Klaus, on top of the roof, was vehemently protesting something. Ramsay became aware of a strange, unreal sunrise reflecting through his bedroom window.

Fully awake, he rushed to the window, and saw that, down on the beach, all their boats were burning fiercely.

CHAPTER TWELVE

_THE POND_

Captain Klaus made a swooping flight that carried him out toward the burning boats. Frightened by a puff of smoke, he flew back to the top of the house and continued to call querulously.

For a moment Ramsay stood still, petrified by the spectacle. Then his shout alarmed the house. "Hans! Pieter!"

By the light that flickered through his window he sprang for his clothing and hastily pulled his trousers on. Letting the tails and front hang out, he donned his shirt and put shoes on his bare feet. He was aware of muffled cries echoing from the rest of the house, and a lighted candle flared in the hall.

He rushed out to meet Hans coming from his bedroom, and a second later Pieter's door flew open. Only half-awake and less than half-dressed, the latter blinked like a sleepy dog in the candle's little light.

Marta peered uneasily over his shoulder. "What is it?"

"The boats are burning!" Ramsay gasped.

With a mighty, outraged lion's roar, Pieter came fully awake and sprang toward the stairs. For one brief second Ramsay was aware of Marta's face, dead-white, then he leaped to follow Pieter. Holding the candle aloft, Hans followed. Again the Dutch fisherman seemed to take complete command of the situation. There was anger in his voice but no trace of panic when he warned the other two, "Slowly! Go slowly!"

His hand on the kitchen door, Pieter halted. Ramsay paused uncertainly behind him, and Hans blew the candle out. The Dutch fisherman had weathered so many savage storms that he seemed to know exactly what to do, no matter what the crisis. Ramsay watched and approved. He must learn to be more like Hans and to rule the emergencies that arose rather than let them rule him.

Hans spoke again, "Let us not go like sheep to the slaughter. If they came again, they are probably armed and they may shoot. Pieter, get the guns."

Pieter shuffled off to the dark kitchen and came back. Ramsay felt the familiar shotgun being pressed into his hands, and he knew that Hans and Pieter each had a pistol. Because that seemed the thing to do, Ramsay waited until Hans acted. The Dutch fisherman spoke again, and his voice remained unruffled. "We cannot tell who or what is out there. Until we discover exactly, keep out of the light cast by the burning boats. Do not use your guns unless they shoot first. Then shoot to kill. Come on."

Silent as a shadow, Hans slipped into the blackness that reigned at the back of the house. Pieter followed, while Ramsay brought up the rear. He shivered, but only part of his chill was caused by the cold night. This afternoon on the pound boat he had felt only tense excitement. But then Hans and Pieter had backed him and their presence had been a very real thing. Now, in the night, he was almost completely unaware of them. It was as though he stood completely alone.

Ramsay felt his way along the rear wall of the house to the corner, and there the darkness was broken by the glare from the burning boats.

Ramsay crept up beside Hans and peered around the corner.