"The harbor lights were out; all the world of sea and sky and barren rock was black. It was Saturday—long after night, the first snow flying in the dark. Half a gale from the north ran whimpering through the rigging, by turns wrathful and plaintive—a restless wind: it would not leave the night at ease. The trader Good Samaritan lay at anchor in Poor Man's Harbor on the Newfoundland coast: this on her last voyage of that season for the shore fish. Tumm, the clerk, was still wide awake, musing quietly in the seclusion of a cloud of tobacco smoke. By all the signs, the inevitable was at hand; and presently, as we had foreseen, the pregnant silence fell..." 'Every Man for Himself' is a seaside adventure. It features a collection of tales of sea faring themes. The tales are as told by the fisherman Tumm to his ship mates aboard "the Good Samaritan."