"Nothing. That's where he had us. He got there first. To get in to the fish we'd have had to ram his boats and he'd have you up before the local inspectors in no time if you had done that. If he had laid his nets around ours it would have been different. You could demand sea-way and run through them if he didn't move. But this way he had us over a barrel. And he knew it. It's a trick no white man would do. But I guess even you will admit now that there isn't a drop of white blood in that dago's body."
"Then about the only way we could have beaten him," pursued Gregory, "would have been to have got there first and covered our own boats. Is that right?"
"Yes. But that is not so easy as it sounds."
"It is not so hard either," Gregory went on. "I have an idea that I think will work out all right."
Dickie's eyes flashed.
"Forget your ideas!" she snapped. "You've got to have a whole lot more than ideas when you start out to beat Mascola."
Gregory felt his patience oozing from him at her words. It was bad enough to lose an order from a firm he hoped to get in strong with, without the girl rubbing it in.
"You haven't done anything yet but find fault," he said. "You have been at this game a lot longer than I have. Maybe you have something to suggest."
Something in his voice caused Dickie to quiet down. She began to cast about in her mind for an answer.