"Yes," he answered. "Wasn't sure whether my clock was right so I set it half an hour ahead."
Still holding him in the rays of the light, the girl examined him critically.
"All right but your shoes," she announced. "You'll break your neck in those leather soles. I'll see if I can rustle a pair of tennis-shoes."
She vanished suddenly and a moment later he saw her light fall upon the burly figures of three bare-footed fishermen shuffling along the dock. She greeted the men familiarly.
"Got that coil for you, Tom. Cache it this time where those thieving devils won't beat you to it. Coils are hard to get right now. Bill, you'd better run down Lucas way and scout around for barracuda. They were beginning to hit in there strong this time last year. How's the baby? I phoned to town last night for that medicine I told you about. They said they'd shoot it out on the first mail."
As she spoke Gregory saw other shadows draw near and hover for a moment in the circle of light. From the hillside above the town lights gleamed from the windows of the fishing colony, the intervening spaces of darkness narrowing second by second until the village stood out like a great checker-board of lights and shadows. Against the background of lights he could see the slender figure of the girl passing among the huge fishermen who towered like giants above her. Radiating energy wherever she went, criticizing some, commending others and joking away the early-morning grouch, she directed the movements of the constantly increasing stream of men who thronged the dock and despatched the boats one by one into the darkness.
When she returned to Gregory's side for a moment she held in her hand a tattered pair of rubber-soled shoes. "They're better than nothing," she explained.
"When you are a full-fledged fisherman you won't need shoes. You'll get so you can use your toes like fingers and——"
The rays of her flash-light, which swept the wharf as she spoke, suddenly brought into view the figure of a man lunging unsteadily along the dock. Leaving her sentence unfinished, she was by his side in an instant.