"You've got a couple of mosquito bites yourself."

"Yaah." Hans grinned again.

Ramsay said, "They got our boats."

Hans said, "They got our nets, too. Joe Mannis, he told me that when we fought. They would get us, he said."

"They didn't."

"No, they didn't."

They turned at a sudden wooden scraping out on the lake, and saw the Mackinaw boat under way. Beaten and bruised, Devil Chad crouched at the oars. Hurriedly he sent the boat farther out, toward the open lake. They watched as though this were some foreign sight of no interest whatever.

Hans walked over to prod Joe Mannis with the toe of his shoe. "Get up,"

he said.

Joe Mannis stirred and groaned. He opened his eyes, blinked stupidly and raised himself on one hand. There was a deceptive gentleness in Hans'

words and tone, but Joe Mannis was not deceived. He knew that Hans meant it when he said, "Come down the beach once more after this storm. You will find something to interest only you. Then never let me see you again. If I do, I will drown you in the lake."

Hans looked out on the lake, into the gathering storm and at the receding Mackinaw boat. High waves were already clawing at it, and Devil Chad was not yet out of the bay. Hans said, "He is not a fisherman. He is not even a sailor. I myself would think twice about taking the _Spray_ out now."

Near the boat something white, something not born of the rolling whitecaps, appeared for a second and disappeared. Ramsay smiled softly.

He knew that he had again seen the White Sturgeon. He also knew what Joe Mannis would find in the morning. Devil Chad.

The three partners walked back down the sand to the embers of the pound boats. They stood near them, warming themselves in the last of the fire. Ramsay prodded the sand with his toe.

They were right back where they had started. A whole summer's hard work had gone to satisfy the greed and lust of one man. What they had left was the seine, the row boat, the forming skeleton of the _Spray II_ and the pier. Ramsay set his jaw. They could do it again. They had done it once.

He looked toward the Mackinaw boat, and discovered that it had gone out of the bay into the open lake. But his eyes were attracted by something else on the horizon.

A moment later he identified it as a plume of smoke. Five minutes afterward, storm-lashed but defiant, the _Jackson_ nosed out of the lake into the sheltered bay. Manned by able seamen, sure of herself, the _Jackson_ came up to her accustomed place at the pier. Ramsay, Hans and Pieter caught her mooring ropes.

Resplendent in his uniform, little Captain Williamson came down his rope ladder and strutted on the pier. "A blow," he said, as though a storm on Lake Michigan meant nothing to him. "We'll tie up here until it's over, then go back to Chicago. Have you got any fish?"

"Some," Ramsay admitted.

He thought of the ten barrels of whitefish that were ready for shipment, and he watched Captain Williamson's face fall. The little captain emitted a long sigh. "Some, eh? I was hoping for better news. Chicago's growing like a weed in the sun, and it's hungry. Most of the fishermen made their last shipments ten days ago. The markets are almost empty, and even sturgeon's bringing five cents a pound."

For one brief second the storm clouds parted and the sun shone through.

Then the sky was again overcast and the storm leaped furiously. Ramsay turned his shining face toward Hans and Pieter. The tons of sturgeon in the pond ... At five cents a pound there would be more than enough money to replace everything and to buy the finest planking for the _Spray II_.

Ramsay said, "Save plenty of room on the _Jackson_. We'll need it."

On top of the ridge-pole, Captain Klaus fluttered his long wings and curved his sinuous neck. As though he approved thoroughly he called, "_Quark!_"