Poor Man's Rock

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

Away beyond the Sisters—three gaunt gray rocks rising out of the sea miles offshore in a fairway down which passed all the Alaska-bound steamers, with a lone lighthouse on the middle rock—away north of Folly Bay there opened wide trolling grounds about certain islands which lay off the Vancouver Island shore,—Hornby, Lambert Channel, Yellow Rock, Cape Lazo. In other seasons the blueback runs lingered about Squitty for a while and then passed on to those kelp-grown and reef-strewed grounds. This season these salmon appeared first far south of Squitty. The trolling scouts, the restless wanderers of the fleet, who could not abide sitting still and waiting in patience for the fish to come, first picked them up by the Gulf Islands, very near that great highway to the open sea known as the Strait of San Juan. The blueback pushed on the Gray Rock to the Ballenas, as if the blackfish and seal and shark that hung always about the schools to prey were herding them to some given point. Very shortly after they could be taken in the shadow of the Ballenas light the schools swarmed about the Cove end of Squitty Island, between the Elephant on Sangster and Poor Man's Rock. For days on end the sea was alive with them. In the gray of dawn and the reddened dusk they played upon the surface of the sea as far as the eye reached. And always at such times they struck savagely at a glittering spoon hook. Beyond Squitty they vanished. Fifty and sixty salmon daily to a boat off the Squitty headlands dwindled to fifteen and twenty at the Folly Bay end. Those restless trollers who crossed the Gulf to Hornby and Yellow Rock Light got little for their pains. Between Folly Bay and the swirling tide races off the desolate head of Cape Mudge the blueback disappeared. But at Squitty the runs held constant. There were off days, but the fish were always there. The trollers hung at the south end, sheltering at night in the Cove, huddled rubstrake to rubstrake and bow to stern, so many were they in that little space, on days when the southeaster made the cliffs shudder under the shock of breaking seas. If fishing slackened for a day or two they did not scatter as in other days. There would be another run hard on the heels of the last. And there was.

MacRae ran the Blanco into Squitty Cove one afternoon and made fast alongside the Bluebird which lay to fore and aft moorings in the narrow gut of the Cove. The Gulf outside was speckled with trollers, but there were many at anchor, resting, or cooking food.

One of the mustard pots was there, a squat fifty-foot carrier painted a gaudy yellow—the Folly Bay house color—flying a yellow flag with a black C in the center. She was loading fish from two trollers, one lying on each side. One or two more were waiting, edging up.

"He came in yesterday afternoon after you left," Vin Ferrara told Jack. "And he offered forty-five cents. Some of them took it. To-day he's paying fifty and hinting more if he has to."

MacRae laughed.

"We'll match Gower's price till he boosts us out of the bidding," he said. "And he won't make much on his pack if he does that."

"Say, Folly Bay," Jack called across to the mustard-pot carrier, "what are you paying for bluebacks?"

The skipper took his eye off the tallyman counting in fish.

"Fifty cents," he answered in a voice that echoed up and down the Cove.

"That must sound good to the fishermen," MacRae called back pleasantly. "Folly Bay's getting generous in its declining years."