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.