It was a remarkable scene.  The forest slopes came right down almost to the water’s edge on either hand.  They came down from heights that rose mountainously.  And there, all along the foreshore were dotted timber-built habitations sufficient to shelter hundreds of workers.  Their quality was staunch and picturesque, and pointed much of the climate rigour they were called upon to endure.  But they only formed a background to, perhaps, the most wonderful sight of all.  A road and trolley car line skirted each foreshore, and the mind behind the searching eyes was filled with admiration for the skill and enterprise that had transplanted one of civilisation’s most advanced products here on the desperate coast of Labrador.  Many of the forest whispers of Sachigo had been incredible.  But this left the onlooker ready to believe anything of it.

The mill, and the township surrounding it, were already within view, a wide-scattered world of buildings, occupying all the lower levels of the territory on both sides of the mouth of the Beaver River before it rose to the heights from which its water power fell.

Bull was amazed.  And as he gazed, his wonder and admiration were intensified a hundredfold by his self-interest.  This place was to be in his control, possibly his possession if he made good.  He thrust back the fur cap pressed low on his forehead.

His thought leapt back on the instant to the man who had sent him down to this Sachigo.  Father Adam, with his thin, ascetic features, his long, dark hair and beard, his tall, spare figure.  His patient kindliness and sympathy, and yet with the will and force behind it which could fling the muzzle of a gun into a man’s face and force obedience.  He had sent him.  Why?  Because—­oh, it was all absurd, unreal.  And yet here he was on the steamer; and there ahead lay the wonders of Sachigo.  Well, time would prove the craziness of it all.

“Makes you wonder, eh?” The coasting skipper was at his side again.  “You know these folks needed big nerve to set up this enterprise.  It keeps me guessing at the limits where man has to quit.  I’ve spent my life on this darn coast, an’ never guessed to see the day when trolley cars ’ud run on Labrador, and the working folk ’ud sit around in their dandy houses, with electric light making things comfortable for them, and electric heat takin’ the place of the cordwood stove it seemed to me folk never could do without.  Can you beat it?  No.  You can’t.  Nor anyone else.”

“Who is it?  A corporation?” Bull asked, knowing full well the answer.  He wanted to hear, he wanted to learn all that this man could tell him.

Hardy shook his head.

“Standing,” he said.  “That was the guy’s name who started it all up.  But,” he added thoughtfully, “I never rightly knew which feller it was.  If it was Standing, or that tough hoboe feller who calls himself Bat Harker.  They never talk a heap.  But since Leslie Standing passed out o’ things eight years back—­the time I was first handed command of this kettle—­the mill’s jumped out of all notion.  Those trolleys,” he pointed at the foreshore of the cove:  “They started in to haul the ‘hands’ to their work only two years back.  I’d say it’s Bat Harker.  But he looks more like a longshore tough than a—­genius.”