KINDRED OF THE DUST

I

In the living-room of The Dreamerie, his home on Tyee Head, Hector
McKaye, owner of the Tyee Lumber Company and familiarly known as "The
Laird," was wont to sit in his hours of leisure, smoking and building
castles in Spain--for his son Donald. Here he planned the acquisition
of more timber and the installation of an electric-light plant to
furnish light, heat, and power to his own town of Port Agnew; ever and
anon he would gaze through the plate-glass windows out to sea and
watch for his ships to come home. Whenever The Laird put his dreams
behind him, he always looked seaward. In the course of time, his
home-bound skippers, sighting the white house on the headland and
knowing that The Laird was apt to be up there watching, formed the
habit of doing something that pleased their owner mightily. When the
northwest trades held steady and true, and while the tide was still at
the flood, they would scorn the services of the tug that went out to
meet them and come ramping into the bight, all their white sails set
and the glory of the sun upon them; as they swept past, far below The
Laird, they would dip his house-flag--a burgee, scarlet-edged, with a
fir tree embroidered in green on a field of white--the symbol to the
world that here was a McKaye ship. And when the house-flag fluttered
half-way to the deck and climbed again to the masthead, the soul of
Hector McKaye would thrill.

"Guid lads! My bonny brave lads!" he would murmur aloud, with just a
touch of his parents' accent, and press a button which discharged an
ancient brass cannon mounted at the edge of the cliff. Whenever he saw
one of his ships in the offing--and he could identify his ships as far
as he could see them--he ordered the gardener to load this cannon.

Presently the masters began to dip the house-flag when outward bound,
and discovered that, whether The Laird sat at his desk in the mill
office or watched from the cliff, they drew an answering salute.

This was their hail and farewell.

KINDRED OF THE DUST