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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of the Fish Patrol, by Jack London
+(#8 in our series by Jack London)
+
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+Title: Tales of the Fish Patrol
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Release Date: May, 1997  [EBook #911]
+[This file was first posted on March 22, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: May 12, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TALES OF THE FISH PATROL ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1914 edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+Tales of the Fish Patrol
+
+
+
+
+WHITE AND YELLOW
+
+
+
+San Francisco Bay is so large that often its storms are more
+disastrous to ocean-going craft than is the ocean itself in its
+violent moments.  The waters of the bay contain all manner of fish,
+wherefore its surface is ploughed by the keels of all manner of
+fishing boats manned by all manner of fishermen.  To protect the
+fish from this motley floating population many wise laws have been
+passed, and there is a fish patrol to see that these laws are
+enforced.  Exciting times are the lot of the fish patrol:  in its
+history more than one dead patrolman has marked defeat, and more
+often dead fishermen across their illegal nets have marked success.
+
+Wildest among the fisher-folk may be accounted the Chinese shrimp-
+catchers.  It is the habit of the shrimp to crawl along the bottom
+in vast armies till it reaches fresh water, when it turns about and
+crawls back again to the salt.  And where the tide ebbs and flows,
+the Chinese sink great bag-nets to the bottom, with gaping mouths,
+into which the shrimp crawls and from which it is transferred to
+the boiling-pot.  This in itself would not be bad, were it not for
+the small mesh of the nets, so small that the tiniest fishes,
+little new-hatched things not a quarter of an inch long, cannot
+pass through.  The beautiful beaches of Points Pedro and Pablo,
+where are the shrimp-catchers' villages, are made fearful by the
+stench from myriads of decaying fish, and against this wasteful
+destruction it has ever been the duty of the fish patrol to act.
+
+When I was a youngster of sixteen, a good sloop-sailor and all-
+round bay-waterman, my sloop, the Reindeer, was chartered by the
+Fish Commission, and I became for the time being a deputy
+patrolman.  After a deal of work among the Greek fishermen of the
+Upper Bay and rivers, where knives flashed at the beginning of
+trouble and men permitted themselves to be made prisoners only
+after a revolver was thrust in their faces, we hailed with delight
+an expedition to the Lower Bay against the Chinese shrimp-catchers.
+
+There were six of us, in two boats, and to avoid suspicion we ran
+down after dark and dropped anchor under a projecting bluff of land
+known as Point Pinole.  As the east paled with the first light of
+dawn we got under way again, and hauled close on the land breeze as
+we slanted across the bay toward Point Pedro.  The morning mists
+curled and clung to the water so that we could see nothing, but we
+busied ourselves driving the chill from our bodies with hot coffee.
+Also we had to devote ourselves to the miserable task of bailing,
+for in some incomprehensible way the Reindeer had sprung a generous
+leak.  Half the night had been spent in overhauling the ballast and
+exploring the seams, but the labor had been without avail.  The
+water still poured in, and perforce we doubled up in the cockpit
+and tossed it out again.
+
+After coffee, three of the men withdrew to the other boat, a
+Columbia River salmon boat, leaving three of us in the Reindeer.
+Then the two craft proceeded in company till the sun showed over
+the eastern sky-line.  Its fiery rays dispelled the clinging
+vapors, and there, before our eyes, like a picture, lay the shrimp
+fleet, spread out in a great half-moon, the tips of the crescent
+fully three miles apart, and each junk moored fast to the buoy of a
+shrimp-net.  But there was no stir, no sign of life.
+
+The situation dawned upon us.  While waiting for slack water, in
+which to lift their heavy nets from the bed of the bay, the Chinese
+had all gone to sleep below.  We were elated, and our plan of
+battle was swiftly formed.
+
+"Throw each of your two men on to a junk," whispered Le Grant to me
+from the salmon boat.  "And you make fast to a third yourself.
+We'll do the same, and there's no reason in the world why we
+shouldn't capture six junks at the least."
+
+Then we separated.  I put the Reindeer about on the other tack, ran
+up under the lee of a junk, shivered the mainsail into the wind and
+lost headway, and forged past the stern of the junk so slowly and
+so near that one of the patrolmen stepped lightly aboard.  Then I
+kept off, filled the mainsail, and bore away for a second junk.
+
+Up to this time there had been no noise, but from the first junk
+captured by the salmon boat an uproar now broke forth.  There was
+shrill Oriental yelling, a pistol shot, and more yelling.
+
+"It's all up.  They're warning the others," said George, the
+remaining patrolman, as he stood beside me in the cockpit.
+
+By this time we were in the thick of the fleet, and the alarm was
+spreading with incredible swiftness.  The decks were beginning to
+swarm with half-awakened and half-naked Chinese.  Cries and yells
+of warning and anger were flying over the quiet water, and
+somewhere a conch shell was being blown with great success.  To the
+right of us I saw the captain of a junk chop away his mooring line
+with an axe and spring to help his crew at the hoisting of the
+huge, outlandish lug-sail.  But to the left the first heads were
+popping up from below on another junk, and I rounded up the
+Reindeer alongside long enough for George to spring aboard.
+
+The whole fleet was now under way.  In addition to the sails they
+had gotten out long sweeps, and the bay was being ploughed in every
+direction by the fleeing junks.  I was now alone in the Reindeer,
+seeking feverishly to capture a third prize.  The first junk I took
+after was a clean miss, for it trimmed its sheets and shot away
+surprisingly into the wind.  By fully half a point it outpointed
+the Reindeer, and I began to feel respect for the clumsy craft.
+Realizing the hopelessness of the pursuit, I filled away, threw out
+the main-sheet, and drove down before the wind upon the junks to
+leeward, where I had them at a disadvantage.
+
+The one I had selected wavered indecisively before me, and, as I
+swung wide to make the boarding gentle, filled suddenly and darted
+away, the smart Mongols shouting a wild rhythm as they bent to the
+sweeps.  But I had been ready for this.  I luffed suddenly.
+Putting the tiller hard down, and holding it down with my body, I
+brought the main-sheet in, hand over hand, on the run, so as to
+retain all possible striking force.  The two starboard sweeps of
+the junk were crumpled up, and then the two boats came together
+with a crash.  The Reindeer's bowsprit, like a monstrous hand,
+reached over and ripped out the junk's chunky mast and towering
+sail.
+
+This was met by a curdling yell of rage.  A big Chinaman,
+remarkably evil-looking, with his head swathed in a yellow silk
+handkerchief and face badly pock-marked, planted a pike-pole on the
+Reindeer's bow and began to shove the entangled boats apart.
+Pausing long enough to let go the jib halyards, and just as the
+Reindeer cleared and began to drift astern, I leaped aboard the
+junk with a line and made fast.  He of the yellow handkerchief and
+pock-marked face came toward me threateningly, but I put my hand
+into my hip pocket, and he hesitated.  I was unarmed, but the
+Chinese have learned to be fastidiously careful of American hip
+pockets, and it was upon this that I depended to keep him and his
+savage crew at a distance.
+
+I ordered him to drop the anchor at the junk's bow, to which he
+replied, "No sabbe."  The crew responded in like fashion, and
+though I made my meaning plain by signs, they refused to
+understand.  Realizing the inexpediency of discussing the matter, I
+went forward myself, overran the line, and let the anchor go.
+
+"Now get aboard, four of you," I said in a loud voice, indicating
+with my fingers that four of them were to go with me and the fifth
+was to remain by the junk.  The Yellow Handkerchief hesitated; but
+I repeated the order fiercely (much more fiercely than I felt), at
+the same time sending my hand to my hip.  Again the Yellow
+Handkerchief was overawed, and with surly looks he led three of his
+men aboard the Reindeer.  I cast off at once, and, leaving the jib
+down, steered a course for George's junk.  Here it was easier, for
+there were two of us, and George had a pistol to fall back on if it
+came to the worst.  And here, as with my junk, four Chinese were
+transferred to the sloop and one left behind to take care of
+things.
+
+Four more were added to our passenger list from the third junk.  By
+this time the salmon boat had collected its twelve prisoners and
+came alongside, badly overloaded.  To make matters worse, as it was
+a small boat, the patrolmen were so jammed in with their prisoners
+that they would have little chance in case of trouble.
+
+"You'll have to help us out," said Le Grant.
+
+I looked over my prisoners, who had crowded into the cabin and on
+top of it.  "I can take three," I answered.
+
+"Make it four," he suggested, "and I'll take Bill with me."  (Bill
+was the third patrolman.)  "We haven't elbow room here, and in case
+of a scuffle one white to every two of them will be just about the
+right proportion."
+
+The exchange was made, and the salmon boat got up its spritsail and
+headed down the bay toward the marshes off San Rafael.  I ran up
+the jib and followed with the Reindeer.  San Rafael, where we were
+to turn our catch over to the authorities, communicated with the
+bay by way of a long and tortuous slough, or marshland creek, which
+could be navigated only when the tide was in.  Slack water had
+come, and, as the ebb was commencing, there was need for hurry if
+we cared to escape waiting half a day for the next tide.
+
+But the land breeze had begun to die away with the rising sun, and
+now came only in failing puffs.  The salmon boat got out its oars
+and soon left us far astern.  Some of the Chinese stood in the
+forward part of the cockpit, near the cabin doors, and once, as I
+leaned over the cockpit rail to flatten down the jib-sheet a bit, I
+felt some one brush against my hip pocket.  I made no sign, but out
+of the corner of my eye I saw that the Yellow Handkerchief had
+discovered the emptiness of the pocket which had hitherto overawed
+him.
+
+To make matters serious, during all the excitement of boarding the
+junks the Reindeer had not been bailed, and the water was beginning
+to slush over the cockpit floor.  The shrimp-catchers pointed at it
+and looked to me questioningly.
+
+"Yes," I said.  "Bime by, allee same dlown, velly quick, you no
+bail now.  Sabbe?"
+
+No, they did not "sabbe," or at least they shook their heads to
+that effect, though they chattered most comprehendingly to one
+another in their own lingo.  I pulled up three or four of the
+bottom boards, got a couple of buckets from a locker, and by
+unmistakable sign-language invited them to fall to.  But they
+laughed, and some crowded into the cabin and some climbed up on
+top.
+
+Their laughter was not good laughter.  There was a hint of menace
+in it, a maliciousness which their black looks verified.  The
+Yellow Handkerchief, since his discovery of my empty pocket, had
+become most insolent in his bearing, and he wormed about among the
+other prisoners, talking to them with great earnestness.
+
+Swallowing my chagrin, I stepped down into the cockpit and began
+throwing out the water.  But hardly had I begun, when the boom
+swung overhead, the mainsail filled with a jerk, and the Reindeer
+heeled over.  The day wind was springing up.  George was the
+veriest of landlubbers, so I was forced to give over bailing and
+take the tiller.  The wind was blowing directly off Point Pedro and
+the high mountains behind, and because of this was squally and
+uncertain, half the time bellying the canvas out and the other half
+flapping it idly.
+
+George was about the most all-round helpless man I had ever met.
+Among his other disabilities, he was a consumptive, and I knew that
+if he attempted to bail, it might bring on a hemorrhage.  Yet the
+rising water warned me that something must be done.  Again I
+ordered the shrimp-catchers to lend a hand with the buckets.  They
+laughed defiantly, and those inside the cabin, the water up to
+their ankles, shouted back and forth with those on top.
+
+"You'd better get out your gun and make them bail," I said to
+George.
+
+But he shook his head and showed all too plainly that he was
+afraid.  The Chinese could see the funk he was in as well as I
+could, and their insolence became insufferable.  Those in the cabin
+broke into the food lockers, and those above scrambled down and
+joined them in a feast on our crackers and canned goods.
+
+"What do we care?" George said weakly.
+
+I was fuming with helpless anger.  "If they get out of hand, it
+will be too late to care.  The best thing you can do is to get them
+in check right now."
+
+The water was rising higher and higher, and the gusts, forerunners
+of a steady breeze, were growing stiffer and stiffer.  And between
+the gusts, the prisoners, having gotten away with a week's grub,
+took to crowding first to one side and then to the other till the
+Reindeer rocked like a cockle-shell.  Yellow Handkerchief
+approached me, and, pointing out his village on the Point Pedro
+beach, gave me to understand that if I turned the Reindeer in that
+direction and put them ashore, they, in turn, would go to bailing.
+By now the water in the cabin was up to the bunks, and the bed-
+clothes were sopping.  It was a foot deep on the cockpit floor.
+Nevertheless I refused, and I could see by George's face that he
+was disappointed.
+
+"If you don't show some nerve, they'll rush us and throw us
+overboard," I said to him.  "Better give me your revolver, if you
+want to be safe."
+
+"The safest thing to do," he chattered cravenly, "is to put them
+ashore.  I, for one, don't want to be drowned for the sake of a
+handful of dirty Chinamen."
+
+"And I, for another, don't care to give in to a handful of dirty
+Chinamen to escape drowning," I answered hotly.
+
+"You'll sink the Reindeer under us all at this rate," he whined.
+"And what good that'll do I can't see."
+
+"Every man to his taste," I retorted.
+
+He made no reply, but I could see he was trembling pitifully.
+Between the threatening Chinese and the rising water he was beside
+himself with fright; and, more than the Chinese and the water, I
+feared him and what his fright might impel him to do.  I could see
+him casting longing glances at the small skiff towing astern, so in
+the next calm I hauled the skiff alongside.  As I did so his eyes
+brightened with hope; but before he could guess my intention, I
+stove the frail bottom through with a hand-axe, and the skiff
+filled to its gunwales.
+
+"It's sink or float together," I said.  "And if you'll give me your
+revolver, I'll have the Reindeer bailed out in a jiffy."
+
+"They're too many for us," he whimpered.  "We can't fight them
+all."
+
+I turned my back on him in disgust.  The salmon boat had long since
+passed from sight behind a little archipelago known as the Marin
+Islands, so no help could be looked for from that quarter.  Yellow
+Handkerchief came up to me in a familiar manner, the water in the
+cockpit slushing against his legs.  I did not like his looks.  I
+felt that beneath the pleasant smile he was trying to put on his
+face there was an ill purpose.  I ordered him back, and so sharply
+that he obeyed.
+
+"Now keep your distance," I commanded, "and don't you come closer!"
+
+"Wha' fo'?" he demanded indignantly.  "I t'ink-um talkee talkee
+heap good."
+
+"Talkee talkee," I answered bitterly, for I knew now that he had
+understood all that passed between George and me.  "What for talkee
+talkee?  You no sabbe talkee talkee."
+
+He grinned in a sickly fashion.  "Yep, I sabbe velly much.  I
+honest Chinaman."
+
+"All right," I answered.  "You sabbe talkee talkee, then you bail
+water plenty plenty.  After that we talkee talkee."
+
+He shook his head, at the same time pointing over his shoulder to
+his comrades.  "No can do.  Velly bad Chinamen, heap velly bad.  I
+t'ink-um--"
+
+"Stand back!" I shouted, for I had noticed his hand disappear
+beneath his blouse and his body prepare for a spring.
+
+Disconcerted, he went back into the cabin, to hold a council,
+apparently, from the way the jabbering broke forth.  The Reindeer
+was very deep in the water, and her movements had grown quite
+loggy.  In a rough sea she would have inevitably swamped; but the
+wind, when it did blow, was off the land, and scarcely a ripple
+disturbed the surface of the bay.
+
+"I think you'd better head for the beach," George said abruptly, in
+a manner that told me his fear had forced him to make up his mind
+to some course of action.
+
+"I think not," I answered shortly.
+
+"I command you," he said in a bullying tone.
+
+"I was commanded to bring these prisoners into San Rafael," was my
+reply.
+
+Our voices were raised, and the sound of the altercation brought
+the Chinese out of the cabin.
+
+"Now will you head for the beach?"
+
+This from George, and I found myself looking into the muzzle of his
+revolver--of the revolver he dared to use on me, but was too
+cowardly to use on the prisoners.
+
+My brain seemed smitten with a dazzling brightness.  The whole
+situation, in all its bearings, was focussed sharply before me--the
+shame of losing the prisoners, the worthlessness and cowardice of
+George, the meeting with Le Grant and the other patrol men and the
+lame explanation; and then there was the fight I had fought so
+hard, victory wrenched from me just as I thought I had it within my
+grasp.  And out of the tail of my eye I could see the Chinese
+crowding together by the cabin doors and leering triumphantly.  It
+would never do.
+
+I threw my hand up and my head down.  The first act elevated the
+muzzle, and the second removed my head from the path of the bullet
+which went whistling past.  One hand closed on George's wrist, the
+other on the revolver.  Yellow Handkerchief and his gang sprang
+toward me.  It was now or never.  Putting all my strength into a
+sudden effort, I swung George's body forward to meet them.  Then I
+pulled back with equal suddenness, ripping the revolver out of his
+fingers and jerking him off his feet.  He fell against Yellow
+Handkerchief's knees, who stumbled over him, and the pair wallowed
+in the bailing hole where the cockpit floor was torn open.  The
+next instant I was covering them with my revolver, and the wild
+shrimp-catchers were cowering and cringing away.
+
+But I swiftly discovered that there was all the difference in the
+world between shooting men who are attacking and men who are doing
+nothing more than simply refusing to obey.  For obey they would not
+when I ordered them into the bailing hole.  I threatened them with
+the revolver, but they sat stolidly in the flooded cabin and on the
+roof and would not move.
+
+Fifteen minutes passed, the Reindeer sinking deeper and deeper, her
+mainsail flapping in the calm.  But from off the Point Pedro shore
+I saw a dark line form on the water and travel toward us.  It was
+the steady breeze I had been expecting so long.  I called to the
+Chinese and pointed it out.  They hailed it with exclamations.
+Then I pointed to the sail and to the water in the Reindeer, and
+indicated by signs that when the wind reached the sail, what of the
+water aboard we would capsize.  But they jeered defiantly, for they
+knew it was in my power to luff the helm and let go the main-sheet,
+so as to spill the wind and escape damage.
+
+But my mind was made up.  I hauled in the main-sheet a foot or two,
+took a turn with it, and bracing my feet, put my back against the
+tiller.  This left me one hand for the sheet and one for the
+revolver.  The dark line drew nearer, and I could see them looking
+from me to it and back again with an apprehension they could not
+successfully conceal.  My brain and will and endurance were pitted
+against theirs, and the problem was which could stand the strain of
+imminent death the longer and not give in.
+
+Then the wind struck us.  The main-sheet tautened with a brisk
+rattling of the blocks, the boom uplifted, the sail bellied out,
+and the Reindeer heeled over--over, and over, till the lee-rail
+went under, the cabin windows went under, and the bay began to pour
+in over the cockpit rail.  So violently had she heeled over, that
+the men in the cabin had been thrown on top of one another into the
+lee bunk, where they squirmed and twisted and were washed about,
+those underneath being perilously near to drowning.
+
+The wind freshened a bit, and the Reindeer went over farther than
+ever.  For the moment I thought she was gone, and I knew that
+another puff like that and she surely would go.  While I pressed
+her under and debated whether I should give up or not, the Chinese
+cried for mercy.  I think it was the sweetest sound I have ever
+heard.  And then, and not until then, did I luff up and ease out
+the main-sheet.  The Reindeer righted very slowly, and when she was
+on an even keel was so much awash that I doubted if she could be
+saved.
+
+But the Chinese scrambled madly into the cockpit and fell to
+bailing with buckets, pots, pans, and everything they could lay
+hands on.  It was a beautiful sight to see that water flying over
+the side!  And when the Reindeer was high and proud on the water
+once more, we dashed away with the breeze on our quarter, and at
+the last possible moment crossed the mud flats and entered the
+slough.
+
+The spirit of the Chinese was broken, and so docile did they become
+that ere we made San Rafael they were out with the tow-rope, Yellow
+Handkerchief at the head of the line.  As for George, it was his
+last trip with the fish patrol.  He did not care for that sort of
+thing, he explained, and he thought a clerkship ashore was good
+enough for him.  And we thought so too.
+
+
+
+THE KING OF THE GREEKS
+
+
+
+Big Alec had never been captured by the fish patrol.  It was his
+boast that no man could take him alive, and it was his history that
+of the many men who had tried to take him dead none had succeeded.
+It was also history that at least two patrolmen who had tried to
+take him dead had died themselves.  Further, no man violated the
+fish laws more systematically and deliberately than Big Alec.
+
+He was called "Big Alec" because of his gigantic stature.  His
+height was six feet three inches, and he was correspondingly broad-
+shouldered and deep-chested.  He was splendidly muscled and hard as
+steel, and there were innumerable stories in circulation among the
+fisher-folk concerning his prodigious strength.  He was as bold and
+dominant of spirit as he was strong of body, and because of this he
+was widely known by another name, that of "The King of the Greeks."
+The fishing population was largely composed of Greeks, and they
+looked up to him and obeyed him as their chief.  And as their
+chief, he fought their fights for them, saw that they were
+protected, saved them from the law when they fell into its
+clutches, and made them stand by one another and himself in time of
+trouble.
+
+In the old days, the fish patrol had attempted his capture many
+disastrous times and had finally given it over, so that when the
+word was out that he was coming to Benicia, I was most anxious to
+see him.  But I did not have to hunt him up.  In his usual bold
+way, the first thing he did on arriving was to hunt us up.  Charley
+Le Grant and I at the time were under a patrol-man named Carmintel,
+and the three of us were on the Reindeer, preparing for a trip,
+when Big Alec stepped aboard.  Carmintel evidently knew him, for
+they shook hands in recognition.  Big Alec took no notice of
+Charley or me.
+
+"I've come down to fish sturgeon a couple of months," he said to
+Carmintel.
+
+His eyes flashed with challenge as he spoke, and we noticed the
+patrolman's eyes drop before him.
+
+"That's all right, Alec," Carmintel said in a low voice.  "I'll not
+bother you.  Come on into the cabin, and we'll talk things over,"
+he added.
+
+When they had gone inside and shut the doors after them, Charley
+winked with slow deliberation at me.  But I was only a youngster,
+and new to men and the ways of some men, so I did not understand.
+Nor did Charley explain, though I felt there was something wrong
+about the business.
+
+Leaving them to their conference, at Charley's suggestion we
+boarded our skiff and pulled over to the Old Steamboat Wharf, where
+Big Alec's ark was lying.  An ark is a house-boat of small though
+comfortable dimensions, and is as necessary to the Upper Bay
+fisherman as are nets and boats.  We were both curious to see Big
+Alec's ark, for history said that it had been the scene of more
+than one pitched battle, and that it was riddled with bullet-holes.
+
+We found the holes (stopped with wooden plugs and painted over),
+but there were not so many as I had expected.  Charley noted my
+look of disappointment, and laughed; and then to comfort me he gave
+an authentic account of one expedition which had descended upon Big
+Alec's floating home to capture him, alive preferably, dead if
+necessary.  At the end of half a day's fighting, the patrolmen had
+drawn off in wrecked boats, with one of their number killed and
+three wounded.  And when they returned next morning with
+reinforcements they found only the mooring-stakes of Big Alec's
+ark; the ark itself remained hidden for months in the fastnesses of
+the Suisun tules.
+
+"But why was he not hanged for murder?" I demanded.  "Surely the
+United States is powerful enough to bring such a man to justice."
+
+"He gave himself up and stood trial," Charley answered.  "It cost
+him fifty thousand dollars to win the case, which he did on
+technicalities and with the aid of the best lawyers in the state.
+Every Greek fisherman on the river contributed to the sum.  Big
+Alec levied and collected the tax, for all the world like a king.
+The United States may be all-powerful, my lad, but the fact remains
+that Big Alec is a king inside the United States, with a country
+and subjects all his own."
+
+"But what are you going to do about his fishing for sturgeon?  He's
+bound to fish with a 'Chinese line.'"
+
+Charley shrugged his shoulders.  "We'll see what we will see," he
+said enigmatically.
+
+Now a "Chinese line" is a cunning device invented by the people
+whose name it bears.  By a simple system of floats, weights, and
+anchors, thousands of hooks, each on a separate leader, are
+suspended at a distance of from six inches to a foot above the
+bottom.  The remarkable thing about such a line is the hook.  It is
+barbless, and in place of the barb, the hook is filed long and
+tapering to a point as sharp as that of a needle.  These hoods are
+only a few inches apart, and when several thousand of them are
+suspended just above the bottom, like a fringe, for a couple of
+hundred fathoms, they present a formidable obstacle to the fish
+that travel along the bottom.
+
+Such a fish is the sturgeon, which goes rooting along like a pig,
+and indeed is often called "pig-fish."  Pricked by the first hook
+it touches, the sturgeon gives a startled leap and comes into
+contact with half a dozen more hooks.  Then it threshes about
+wildly, until it receives hook after hook in its soft flesh; and
+the hooks, straining from many different angles, hold the luckless
+fish fast until it is drowned.  Because no sturgeon can pass
+through a Chinese line, the device is called a trap in the fish
+laws; and because it bids fair to exterminate the sturgeon, it is
+branded by the fish laws as illegal.  And such a line, we were
+confident, Big Alec intended setting, in open and flagrant
+violation of the law.
+
+Several days passed after the visit of Big Alec, during which
+Charley and I kept a sharp watch on him.  He towed his ark around
+the Solano Wharf and into the big bight at Turner's Shipyard.  The
+bight we knew to be good ground for sturgeon, and there we felt
+sure the King of the Greeks intended to begin operations.  The tide
+circled like a mill-race in and out of this bight, and made it
+possible to raise, lower, or set a Chinese line only at slack
+water.  So between the tides Charley and I made it a point for one
+or the other of us to keep a lookout from the Solano Wharf.
+
+On the fourth day I was lying in the sun behind the stringer-piece
+of the wharf, when I saw a skiff leave the distant shore and pull
+out into the bight.  In an instant the glasses were at my eyes and
+I was following every movement of the skiff.  There were two men in
+it, and though it was a good mile away, I made out one of them to
+be Big Alec; and ere the skiff returned to shore I made out enough
+more to know that the Greek had set his line.
+
+"Big Alec has a Chinese line out in the bight off Turner's
+Shipyard," Charley Le Grant said that afternoon to Carmintel.
+
+A fleeting expression of annoyance passed over the patrolman's
+face, and then he said, "Yes?" in an absent way, and that was all.
+
+Charley bit his lip with suppressed anger and turned on his heel.
+
+"Are you game, my lad?" he said to me later on in the evening, just
+as we finished washing down the Reindeer's decks and were preparing
+to turn in.
+
+A lump came up in my throat, and I could only nod my head.
+
+"Well, then," and Charley's eyes glittered in a determined way,
+"we've got to capture Big Alec between us, you and I, and we've got
+to do it in spite of Carmintel.  Will you lend a hand?"
+
+"It's a hard proposition, but we can do it," he added after a
+pause.
+
+"Of course we can," I supplemented enthusiastically.
+
+And then he said, "Of course we can," and we shook hands on it and
+went to bed.
+
+But it was no easy task we had set ourselves.  In order to convict
+a man of illegal fishing, it was necessary to catch him in the act
+with all the evidence of the crime about him--the hooks, the lines,
+the fish, and the man himself.  This meant that we must take Big
+Alec on the open water, where he could see us coming and prepare
+for us one of the warm receptions for which he was noted.
+
+"There's no getting around it," Charley said one morning.  "If we
+can only get alongside it's an even toss, and there's nothing left
+for us but to try and get alongside.  Come on, lad."
+
+We were in the Columbia River salmon boat, the one we had used
+against the Chinese shrimp-catchers.  Slack water had come, and as
+we dropped around the end of the Solano Wharf we saw Big Alec at
+work, running his line and removing the fish.
+
+"Change places," Charley commanded, "and steer just astern of him
+as though you're going into the shipyard."
+
+I took the tiller, and Charley sat down on a thwart amidships,
+placing his revolver handily beside him.
+
+"If he begins to shoot," he cautioned, "get down in the bottom and
+steer from there, so that nothing more than your hand will be
+exposed."
+
+I nodded, and we kept silent after that, the boat slipping gently
+through the water and Big Alec growing nearer and nearer.  We could
+see him quite plainly, gaffing the sturgeon and throwing them into
+the boat while his companion ran the line and cleared the hooks as
+he dropped them back into the water.  Nevertheless, we were five
+hundred yards away when the big fisherman hailed us.
+
+"Here!  You!  What do you want?" he shouted.
+
+"Keep going," Charley whispered, "just as though you didn't hear
+him."
+
+The next few moments were very anxious ones.  The fisherman was
+studying us sharply, while we were gliding up on him every second.
+
+"You keep off if you know what's good for you!" he called out
+suddenly, as though he had made up his mind as to who and what we
+were.  "If you don't, I'll fix you!"
+
+He brought a rifle to his shoulder and trained it on me.
+
+"Now will you keep off?" he demanded.
+
+I could hear Charley groan with disappointment.  "Keep off," he
+whispered; "it's all up for this time."
+
+I put up the tiller and eased the sheet, and the salmon boat ran
+off five or six points.  Big Alec watched us till we were out of
+range, when he returned to his work.
+
+"You'd better leave Big Alec alone," Carmintel said, rather sourly,
+to Charley that night.
+
+"So he's been complaining to you, has he?"  Charley said
+significantly.
+
+Carmintel flushed painfully.  "You'd better leave him alone, I tell
+you," he repeated.  "He's a dangerous man, and it won't pay to fool
+with him."
+
+"Yes," Charley answered softly; "I've heard that it pays better to
+leave him alone."
+
+This was a direct thrust at Carmintel, and we could see by the
+expression of his face that it sank home.  For it was common
+knowledge that Big Alec was as willing to bribe as to fight, and
+that of late years more than one patrolman had handled the
+fisherman's money.
+
+"Do you mean to say--" Carmintel began, in a bullying tone.
+
+But Charley cut him off shortly.  "I mean to say nothing," he said.
+"You heard what I said, and if the cap fits, why--"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, and Carmintel glowered at him,
+speechless.
+
+"What we want is imagination," Charley said to me one day, when we
+had attempted to creep upon Big Alec in the gray of dawn and had
+been shot at for our trouble.
+
+And thereafter, and for many days, I cudgelled my brains trying to
+imagine some possible way by which two men, on an open stretch of
+water, could capture another who knew how to use a rifle and was
+never to be found without one.  Regularly, every slack water,
+without slyness, boldly and openly in the broad day, Big Alec was
+to be seen running his line.  And what made it particularly
+exasperating was the fact that every fisherman, from Benicia to
+Vallejo knew that he was successfully defying us.  Carmintel also
+bothered us, for he kept us busy among the shad-fishers of San
+Pablo, so that we had little time to spare on the King of the
+Greeks.  But Charley's wife and children lived at Benicia, and we
+had made the place our headquarters, so that we always returned to
+it.
+
+"I'll tell you what we can do," I said, after several fruitless
+weeks had passed; "we can wait some slack water till Big Alec has
+run his line and gone ashore with the fish, and then we can go out
+and capture the line.  It will put him to time and expense to make
+another, and then we'll figure to capture that too.  If we can't
+capture him, we can discourage him, you see."
+
+Charley saw, and said it wasn't a bad idea.  We watched our chance,
+and the next low-water slack, after Big Alec had removed the fish
+from the line and returned ashore, we went out in the salmon boat.
+We had the bearings of the line from shore marks, and we knew we
+would have no difficulty in locating it.  The first of the flood
+tide was setting in, when we ran below where we thought the line
+was stretched and dropped over a fishing-boat anchor.  Keeping a
+short rope to the anchor, so that it barely touched the bottom, we
+dragged it slowly along until it stuck and the boat fetched up hard
+and fast.
+
+"We've got it," Charley cried.  "Come on and lend a hand to get it
+in."
+
+Together we hove up the rope till the anchor I came in sight with
+the sturgeon line caught across one of the flukes.  Scores of the
+murderous-looking hooks flashed into sight as we cleared the
+anchor, and we had just started to run along the line to the end
+where we could begin to lift it, when a sharp thud in the boat
+startled us.  We looked about, but saw nothing and returned to our
+work.  An instant later there was a similar sharp thud and the
+gunwale splintered between Charley's body and mine.
+
+"That's remarkably like a bullet, lad," he said reflectively.  "And
+it's a long shot Big Alec's making."
+
+"And he's using smokeless powder," he concluded, after an
+examination of the mile-distant shore.  "That's why we can't hear
+the report."
+
+I looked at the shore, but could see no sign of Big Alec, who was
+undoubtedly hidden in some rocky nook with us at his mercy.  A
+third bullet struck the water, glanced, passed singing over our
+heads, and struck the water again beyond.
+
+"I guess we'd better get out of this," Charley remarked coolly.
+"What do you think, lad?"
+
+I thought so, too, and said we didn't want the line anyway.
+Whereupon we cast off and hoisted the spritsail.  The bullets
+ceased at once, and we sailed away, unpleasantly confident that Big
+Alec was laughing at our discomfiture.
+
+And more than that, the next day on the fishing wharf, where we
+were inspecting nets, he saw fit to laugh and sneer at us, and this
+before all the fishermen.  Charley's face went black with anger;
+but beyond promising Big Alec that in the end he would surely land
+him behind the bars, he controlled himself and said nothing.  The
+King of the Greeks made his boast that no fish patrol had ever
+taken him or ever could take him, and the fishermen cheered him and
+said it was true.  They grew excited, and it looked like trouble
+for a while; but Big Alec asserted his kingship and quelled them.
+
+Carmintel also laughed at Charley, and dropped sarcastic remarks,
+and made it hard for him.  But Charley refused to be angered,
+though he told me in confidence that he intended to capture Big
+Alec if it took all the rest of his life to accomplish it.
+
+"I don't know how I'll do it," he said, "but do it I will, as sure
+as I am Charley Le Grant.  The idea will come to me at the right
+and proper time, never fear."
+
+And at the right time it came, and most unexpectedly.  Fully a
+month had passed, and we were constantly up and down the river, and
+down and up the bay, with no spare moments to devote to the
+particular fisherman who ran a Chinese line in the bight of
+Turner's Shipyard.  We had called in at Selby's Smelter one
+afternoon, while on patrol work, when all unknown to us our
+opportunity happened along.  It appeared in the guise of a helpless
+yacht loaded with seasick people, so we could hardly be expected to
+recognize it as the opportunity.  It was a large sloop-yacht, and
+it was helpless inasmuch as the trade-wind was blowing half a gale
+and there were no capable sailors aboard.
+
+From the wharf at Selby's we watched with careless interest the
+lubberly manoeuvre performed of bringing the yacht to anchor, and
+the equally lubberly manoeuvre of sending the small boat ashore.  A
+very miserable-looking man in draggled ducks, after nearly swamping
+the boat in the heavy seas, passed us the painter and climbed out.
+He staggered about as though the wharf were rolling, and told us
+his troubles, which were the troubles of the yacht.  The only
+rough-weather sailor aboard, the man on whom they all depended, had
+been called back to San Francisco by a telegram, and they had
+attempted to continue the cruise alone.  The high wind and big seas
+of San Pablo Bay had been too much for them; all hands were sick,
+nobody knew anything or could do anything; and so they had run in
+to the smelter either to desert the yacht or to get somebody to
+bring it to Benicia.  In short, did we know of any sailors who
+would bring the yacht into Benicia?
+
+Charley looked at me.  The Reindeer was lying in a snug place.  We
+had nothing on hand in the way of patrol work till midnight.  With
+the wind then blowing, we could sail the yacht into Benicia in a
+couple of hours, have several more hours ashore, and come back to
+the smelter on the evening train.
+
+"All right, captain," Charley said to the disconsolate yachtsman,
+who smiled in sickly fashion at the title.
+
+"I'm only the owner," he explained.
+
+We rowed him aboard in much better style than he had come ashore,
+and saw for ourselves the helplessness of the passengers.  There
+were a dozen men and women, and all of them too sick even to appear
+grateful at our coming.  The yacht was rolling savagely, broad on,
+and no sooner had the owner's feet touched the deck than he
+collapsed and joined, the others.  Not one was able to bear a hand,
+so Charley and I between us cleared the badly tangled running gear,
+got up sail, and hoisted anchor.
+
+It was a rough trip, though a swift one.  The Carquinez Straits
+were a welter of foam and smother, and we came through them wildly
+before the wind, the big mainsail alternately dipping and flinging
+its boom skyward as we tore along.  But the people did not mind.
+They did not mind anything.  Two or three, including the owner,
+sprawled in the cockpit, shuddering when the yacht lifted and raced
+and sank dizzily into the trough, and between-whiles regarding the
+shore with yearning eyes.  The rest were huddled on the cabin floor
+among the cushions.  Now and again some one groaned, but for the
+most part they were as limp as so many dead persons.
+
+As the bight at Turner's Shipyard opened out, Charley edged into it
+to get the smoother water.  Benicia was in view, and we were
+bowling along over comparatively easy water, when a speck of a boat
+danced up ahead of us, directly in our course.  It was low-water
+slack.  Charley and I looked at each other.  No word was spoken,
+but at once the yacht began a most astonishing performance, veering
+and yawing as though the greenest of amateurs was at the wheel.  It
+was a sight for sailormen to see.  To all appearances, a runaway
+yacht was careering madly over the bight, and now and again
+yielding a little bit to control in a desperate effort to make
+Benicia.
+
+The owner forgot his seasickness long enough to look anxious.  The
+speck of a boat grew larger and larger, till we could see Big Alec
+and his partner, with a turn of the sturgeon line around a cleat,
+resting from their labor to laugh at us.  Charley pulled his
+sou'wester over his eyes, and I followed his example, though I
+could not guess the idea he evidently had in mind and intended to
+carry into execution.
+
+We came foaming down abreast of the skiff, so close that we could
+hear above the wind the voices of Big Alec and his mate as they
+shouted at us with all the scorn that professional watermen feel
+for amateurs, especially when amateurs are making fools of
+themselves.
+
+We thundered on past the fishermen, and nothing had happened.
+Charley grinned at the disappointment he saw in my face, and then
+shouted:
+
+"Stand by the main-sheet to jibe!"
+
+He put the wheel hard over, and the yacht whirled around
+obediently.  The main-sheet slacked and dipped, then shot over our
+heads after the boom and tautened with a crash on the traveller.
+The yacht heeled over almost on her beam ends, and a great wail
+went up from the seasick passengers as they swept across the cabin
+floor in a tangled mass and piled into a heap in the starboard
+bunks.
+
+But we had no time for them.  The yacht, completing the manoeuvre,
+headed into the wind with slatting canvas, and righted to an even
+keel.  We were still plunging ahead, and directly in our path was
+the skiff.  I saw Big Alec dive overboard and his mate leap for our
+bowsprit.  Then came the crash as we struck the boat, and a series
+of grinding bumps as it passed under our bottom.
+
+"That fixes his rifle," I heard Charley mutter, as he sprang upon
+the deck to look for Big Alec somewhere astern.
+
+The wind and sea quickly stopped our forward movement, and we began
+to drift backward over the spot where the skiff had been.  Big
+Alec's black head and swarthy face popped up within arm's reach;
+and all unsuspecting and very angry with what he took to be the
+clumsiness of amateur sailors, he was hauled aboard.  Also he was
+out of breath, for he had dived deep and stayed down long to escape
+our keel.
+
+The next instant, to the perplexity and consternation of the owner,
+Charley was on top of Big Alec in the cockpit, and I was helping
+bind him with gaskets.  The owner was dancing excitedly about and
+demanding an explanation, but by that time Big Alec's partner had
+crawled aft from the bowsprit and was peering apprehensively over
+the rail into the cockpit.  Charley's arm shot around his neck and
+the man landed on his back beside Big Alec.
+
+"More gaskets!" Charley shouted, and I made haste to supply them.
+
+The wrecked skiff was rolling sluggishly a short distance to
+windward, and I trimmed the sheets while Charley took the wheel and
+steered for it.
+
+"These two men are old offenders," he explained to the angry owner;
+"and they are most persistent violators of the fish and game laws.
+You have seen them caught in the act, and you may expect to be
+subpoenaed as witness for the state when the trial comes off."
+
+As he spoke he rounded alongside the skiff.  It had been torn from
+the line, a section of which was dragging to it.  He hauled in
+forty or fifty feet with a young sturgeon still fast in a tangle of
+barbless hooks, slashed that much of the line free with his knife,
+and tossed it into the cockpit beside the prisoners.
+
+"And there's the evidence, Exhibit A, for the people," Charley
+continued.  "Look it over carefully so that you may identify it in
+the court-room with the time and place of capture."
+
+And then, in triumph, with no more veering and yawing, we sailed
+into Benicia, the King of the Greeks bound hard and fast in the
+cockpit, and for the first time in his life a prisoner of the fish
+patrol.
+
+
+
+A RAID ON THE OYSTER PIRATES
+
+
+
+Of the fish patrolmen under whom we served at various times,
+Charley Le Grant and I were agreed, I think, that Neil Partington
+was the best.  He was neither dishonest nor cowardly; and while he
+demanded strict obedience when we were under his orders, at the
+same time our relations were those of easy comradeship, and he
+permitted us a freedom to which we were ordinarily unaccustomed, as
+the present story will show.
+
+Neil's family lived in Oakland, which is on the Lower Bay, not more
+than six miles across the water from San Francisco.  One day, while
+scouting among the Chinese shrimp-catchers of Point Pedro, he
+received word that his wife was very ill; and within the hour the
+Reindeer was bowling along for Oakland, with a stiff northwest
+breeze astern.  We ran up the Oakland Estuary and came to anchor,
+and in the days that followed, while Neil was ashore, we tightened
+up the Reindeer's rigging, overhauled the ballast, scraped down,
+and put the sloop into thorough shape.
+
+This done, time hung heavy on our hands.  Neil's wife was
+dangerously ill, and the outlook was a week's lie-over, awaiting
+the crisis.  Charley and I roamed the docks, wondering what we
+should do, and so came upon the oyster fleet lying at the Oakland
+City Wharf.  In the main they were trim, natty boats, made for
+speed and bad weather, and we sat down on the stringer-piece of the
+dock to study them.
+
+"A good catch, I guess," Charley said, pointing to the heaps of
+oysters, assorted in three sizes, which lay upon their decks.
+
+Pedlers were backing their wagons to the edge of the wharf, and
+from the bargaining and chaffering that went on, I managed to learn
+the selling price of the oysters.
+
+"That boat must have at least two hundred dollars' worth aboard," I
+calculated.  "I wonder how long it took to get the load?"
+
+"Three or four days," Charley answered.  "Not bad wages for two
+men--twenty-five dollars a day apiece."
+
+The boat we were discussing, the Ghost, lay directly beneath us.
+Two men composed its crew.  One was a squat, broad-shouldered
+fellow with remarkably long and gorilla-like arms, while the other
+was tall and well proportioned, with clear blue eyes and a mat of
+straight black hair.  So unusual and striking was this combination
+of hair and eyes that Charley and I remained somewhat longer than
+we intended.
+
+And it was well that we did.  A stout, elderly man, with the dress
+and carriage of a successful merchant, came up and stood beside us,
+looking down upon the deck of the Ghost.  He appeared angry, and
+the longer he looked the angrier he grew.
+
+"Those are my oysters," he said at last.  "I know they are my
+oysters.  You raided my beds last night and robbed me of them."
+
+The tall man and the short man on the Ghost looked up.
+
+"Hello, Taft," the short man said, with insolent familiarity.
+(Among the bayfarers he had gained the nickname of "The Centipede"
+on account of his long arms.)  "Hello, Taft," he repeated, with the
+same touch of insolence.  "Wot 'r you growling about now?"
+
+"Those are my oysters--that's what I said.  You've stolen them from
+my beds."
+
+"Yer mighty wise, ain't ye?" was the Centipede's sneering reply.
+"S'pose you can tell your oysters wherever you see 'em?"
+
+"Now, in my experience," broke in the tall man, "oysters is oysters
+wherever you find 'em, an' they're pretty much alike all the Bay
+over, and the world over, too, for that matter.  We're not wantin'
+to quarrel with you, Mr. Taft, but we jes' wish you wouldn't
+insinuate that them oysters is yours an' that we're thieves an'
+robbers till you can prove the goods."
+
+"I know they're mine; I'd stake my life on it!" Mr. Taft snorted.
+
+"Prove it," challenged the tall man, who we afterward learned was
+known as "The Porpoise" because of his wonderful swimming
+abilities.
+
+Mr. Taft shrugged his shoulders helplessly.  Of course he could not
+prove the oysters to be his, no matter how certain he might be.
+
+"I'd give a thousand dollars to have you men behind the bars!" he
+cried.  "I'll give fifty dollars a head for your arrest and
+conviction, all of you!"
+
+A roar of laughter went up from the different boats, for the rest
+of the pirates had been listening to the discussion.
+
+"There's more money in oysters," the Porpoise remarked dryly.
+
+Mr. Taft turned impatiently on his heel and walked away.  From out
+of the corner of his eye, Charley noted the way he went.  Several
+minutes later, when he had disappeared around a corner, Charley
+rose lazily to his feet.  I followed him, and we sauntered off in
+the opposite direction to that taken by Mr. Taft.
+
+"Come on!  Lively!" Charley whispered, when we passed from the view
+of the oyster fleet.
+
+Our course was changed at once, and we dodged around corners and
+raced up and down side-streets till Mr. Taft's generous form loomed
+up ahead of us.
+
+"I'm going to interview him about that reward," Charley explained,
+as we rapidly over-hauled the oyster-bed owner.  "Neil will be
+delayed here for a week, and you and I might as well be doing
+something in the meantime.  What do you say?"
+
+"Of course, of course," Mr. Taft said, when Charley had introduced
+himself and explained his errand.  "Those thieves are robbing me of
+thousands of dollars every year, and I shall be glad to break them
+up at any price,--yes, sir, at any price.  As I said, I'll give
+fifty dollars a head, and call it cheap at that.  They've robbed my
+beds, torn down my signs, terrorized my watchmen, and last year
+killed one of them.  Couldn't prove it.  All done in the blackness
+of night.  All I had was a dead watchman and no evidence.  The
+detectives could do nothing.  Nobody has been able to do anything
+with those men.  We have never succeeded in arresting one of them.
+So I say, Mr.--What did you say your name was?"
+
+"Le Grant," Charley answered.
+
+"So I say, Mr. Le Grant, I am deeply obliged to you for the
+assistance you offer.  And I shall be glad, most glad, sir, to co-
+operate with you in every way.  My watchmen and boats are at your
+disposal.  Come and see me at the San Francisco offices any time,
+or telephone at my expense.  And don't be afraid of spending money.
+I'll foot your expenses, whatever they are, so long as they are
+within reason.  The situation is growing desperate, and something
+must be done to determine whether I or that band of ruffians own
+those oyster beds."
+
+"Now we'll see Neil," Charley said, when he had seen Mr. Taft upon
+his train to San Francisco.
+
+Not only did Neil Partington interpose no obstacle to our
+adventure, but he proved to be of the greatest assistance.  Charley
+and I knew nothing of the oyster industry, while his head was an
+encyclopaedia of facts concerning it.  Also, within an hour or so,
+he was able to bring to us a Greek boy of seventeen or eighteen who
+knew thoroughly well the ins and outs of oyster piracy.
+
+At this point I may as well explain that we of the fish patrol were
+free lances in a way.  While Neil Partington, who was a patrolman
+proper, received a regular salary, Charley and I, being merely
+deputies, received only what we earned--that is to say, a certain
+percentage of the fines imposed on convicted violators of the fish
+laws.  Also, any rewards that chanced our way were ours.  We
+offered to share with Partington whatever we should get from Mr.
+Taft, but the patrolman would not hear of it.  He was only too
+happy, he said, to do a good turn for us, who had done so many for
+him.
+
+We held a long council of war, and mapped out the following line of
+action.  Our faces were unfamiliar on the Lower Bay, but as the
+Reindeer was well known as a fish-patrol sloop, the Greek boy,
+whose name was Nicholas, and I were to sail some innocent-looking
+craft down to Asparagus Island and join the oyster pirates' fleet.
+Here, according to Nicholas's description of the beds and the
+manner of raiding, it was possible for us to catch the pirates in
+the act of stealing oysters, and at the same time to get them in
+our power.  Charley was to be on the shore, with Mr. Taft's
+watchmen and a posse of constables, to help us at the right time.
+
+"I know just the boat," Neil said, at the conclusion of the
+discussion, "a crazy old sloop that's lying over at Tiburon.  You
+and Nicholas can go over by the ferry, charter it for a song, and
+sail direct for the beds."
+
+"Good luck be with you, boys," he said at parting, two days later.
+"Remember, they are dangerous men, so be careful."
+
+Nicholas and I succeeded in chartering the sloop very cheaply; and
+between laughs, while getting up sail, we agreed that she was even
+crazier and older than she had been described.  She was a big,
+flat-bottomed, square-sterned craft, sloop-rigged, with a sprung
+mast, slack rigging, dilapidated sails, and rotten running-gear,
+clumsy to handle and uncertain in bringing about, and she smelled
+vilely of coal tar, with which strange stuff she had been smeared
+from stem to stern and from cabin-roof to centreboard.  And to cap
+it all, Coal Tar Maggie was printed in great white letters the
+whole length of either side.
+
+It was an uneventful though laughable run from Tiburon to Asparagus
+Island, where we arrived in the afternoon of the following day.
+The oyster pirates, a fleet of a dozen sloops, were lying at anchor
+on what was known as the "Deserted Beds."  The Coal Tar Maggie came
+sloshing into their midst with a light breeze astern, and they
+crowded on deck to see us.  Nicholas and I had caught the spirit of
+the crazy craft, and we handled her in most lubberly fashion.
+
+"Wot is it?" some one called.
+
+"Name it 'n' ye kin have it!" called another.
+
+"I swan naow, ef it ain't the old Ark itself!" mimicked the
+Centipede from the deck of the Ghost.
+
+"Hey!  Ahoy there, clipper ship!" another wag shouted.  "Wot's yer
+port?"
+
+We took no notice of the joking, but acted, after the manner of
+greenhorns, as though the Coal Tar Maggie required our undivided
+attention.  I rounded her well to windward of the Ghost, and
+Nicholas ran for'ard to drop the anchor.  To all appearances it was
+a bungle, the way the chain tangled and kept the anchor from
+reaching the bottom.  And to all appearances Nicholas and I were
+terribly excited as we strove to clear it.  At any rate, we quite
+deceived the pirates, who took huge delight in our predicament.
+
+But the chain remained tangled, and amid all kinds of mocking
+advice we drifted down upon and fouled the Ghost, whose bowsprit
+poked square through our mainsail and ripped a hole in it as big as
+a barn door.  The Centipede and the Porpoise doubled up on the
+cabin in paroxysms of laughter, and left us to get clear as best we
+could.  This, with much unseaman-like performance, we succeeded in
+doing, and likewise in clearing the anchor-chain, of which we let
+out about three hundred feet.  With only ten feet of water under
+us, this would permit the Coal Tar Maggie to swing in a circle six
+hundred feet in diameter, in which circle she would be able to foul
+at least half the fleet.
+
+The oyster pirates lay snugly together at short hawsers, the
+weather being fine, and they protested loudly at our ignorance in
+putting out such an unwarranted length of anchor-chain.  And not
+only did they protest, for they made us heave it in again, all but
+thirty feet.
+
+Having sufficiently impressed them with our general lubberliness,
+Nicholas and I went below to congratulate ourselves and to cook
+supper.  Hardly had we finished the meal and washed the dishes,
+when a skiff ground against the Coal Tar Maggie's side, and heavy
+feet trampled on deck.  Then the Centipede's brutal face appeared
+in the companionway, and he descended into the cabin, followed by
+the Porpoise.  Before they could seat themselves on a bunk, another
+skiff came alongside, and another, and another, till the whole
+fleet was represented by the gathering in the cabin.
+
+"Where'd you swipe the old tub?" asked a squat and hairy man, with
+cruel eyes and Mexican features.
+
+"Didn't swipe it," Nicholas answered, meeting them on their own
+ground and encouraging the idea that we had stolen the Coal Tar
+Maggie.  "And if we did, what of it?"
+
+"Well, I don't admire your taste, that's all," sneered he of the
+Mexican features.  "I'd rot on the beach first before I'd take a
+tub that couldn't get out of its own way."
+
+"How were we to know till we tried her?" Nicholas asked, so
+innocently as to cause a laugh.  "And how do you get the oysters?"
+he hurried on.  "We want a load of them; that's what we came for, a
+load of oysters."
+
+"What d'ye want 'em for?" demanded the Porpoise.
+
+"Oh, to give away to our friends, of course," Nicholas retorted.
+"That's what you do with yours, I suppose."
+
+This started another laugh, and as our visitors grew more genial we
+could see that they had not the slightest suspicion of our identity
+or purpose.
+
+"Didn't I see you on the dock in Oakland the other day?" the
+Centipede asked suddenly of me.
+
+"Yep," I answered boldly, taking the bull by the horns.  "I was
+watching you fellows and figuring out whether we'd go oystering or
+not.  It's a pretty good business, I calculate, and so we're going
+in for it.  That is," I hastened to add, "if you fellows don't
+mind."
+
+"I'll tell you one thing, which ain't two things," he replied, "and
+that is you'll have to hump yerself an' get a better boat.  We
+won't stand to be disgraced by any such box as this.  Understand?"
+
+"Sure," I said.  "Soon as we sell some oysters we'll outfit in
+style."
+
+"And if you show yerself square an' the right sort," he went on,
+"why, you kin run with us.  But if you don't" (here his voice
+became stern and menacing), "why, it'll be the sickest day of yer
+life.  Understand?"
+
+"Sure," I said.
+
+After that and more warning and advice of similar nature, the
+conversation became general, and we learned that the beds were to
+be raided that very night.  As they got into their boats, after an
+hour's stay, we were invited to join them in the raid with the
+assurance of "the more the merrier."
+
+"Did you notice that short, Mexican-looking chap?" Nicholas asked,
+when they had departed to their various sloops.  "He's Barchi, of
+the Sporting Life Gang, and the fellow that came with him is
+Skilling.  They're both out now on five thousand dollars' bail."
+
+I had heard of the Sporting Life Gang before, a crowd of hoodlums
+and criminals that terrorized the lower quarters of Oakland, and
+two-thirds of which were usually to be found in state's prison for
+crimes that ranged from perjury and ballot-box stuffing to murder.
+
+"They are not regular oyster pirates," Nicholas continued.
+"They've just come down for the lark and to make a few dollars.
+But we'll have to watch out for them."
+
+We sat in the cockpit and discussed the details of our plan till
+eleven o'clock had passed, when we heard the rattle of an oar in a
+boat from the direction of the Ghost.  We hauled up our own skiff,
+tossed in a few sacks, and rowed over.  There we found all the
+skiffs assembling, it being the intention to raid the beds in a
+body.
+
+To my surprise, I found barely a foot of water where we had dropped
+anchor in ten feet.  It was the big June run-out of the full moon,
+and as the ebb had yet an hour and a half to run, I knew that our
+anchorage would be dry ground before slack water.
+
+Mr. Taft's beds were three miles away, and for a long time we rowed
+silently in the wake of the other boats, once in a while grounding
+and our oar blades constantly striking bottom.  At last we came
+upon soft mud covered with not more than two inches of water--not
+enough to float the boats.  But the pirates at once were over the
+side, and by pushing and pulling on the flat-bottomed skiffs, we
+moved steadily along.
+
+The full moon was partly obscured by high-flying clouds, but the
+pirates went their way with the familiarity born of long practice.
+After half a mile of the mud, we came upon a deep channel, up which
+we rowed, with dead oyster shoals looming high and dry on either
+side.  At last we reached the picking grounds.  Two men, on one of
+the shoals, hailed us and warned us off.  But the Centipede, the
+Porpoise, Barchi, and Skilling took the lead, and followed by the
+rest of us, at least thirty men in half as many boats, rowed right
+up to the watchmen.
+
+"You'd better slide outa this here," Barchi said threateningly, "or
+we'll fill you so full of holes you wouldn't float in molasses."
+
+The watchmen wisely retreated before so overwhelming a force, and
+rowed their boat along the channel toward where the shore should
+be.  Besides, it was in the plan for them to retreat.
+
+We hauled the noses of the boats up on the shore side of a big
+shoal, and all hands, with sacks, spread out and began picking.
+Every now and again the clouds thinned before the face of the moon,
+and we could see the big oysters quite distinctly.  In almost no
+time sacks were filled and carried back to the boats, where fresh
+ones were obtained.  Nicholas and I returned often and anxiously to
+the boats with our little loads, but always found some one of the
+pirates coming or going.
+
+"Never mind," he said; "no hurry.  As they pick farther and farther
+away, it will take too long to carry to the boats.  Then they'll
+stand the full sacks on end and pick them up when the tide comes in
+and the skiffs will float to them."
+
+Fully half an hour went by, and the tide had begun to flood, when
+this came to pass.  Leaving the pirates at their work, we stole
+back to the boats.  One by one, and noiselessly, we shoved them off
+and made them fast in an awkward flotilla.  Just as we were shoving
+off the last skiff, our own, one of the men came upon us.  It was
+Barchi.  His quick eye took in the situation at a glance, and he
+sprang for us; but we went clear with a mighty shove, and he was
+left floundering in the water over his head.  As soon as he got
+back to the shoal he raised his voice and gave the alarm.
+
+We rowed with all our strength, but it was slow going with so many
+boats in tow.  A pistol cracked from the shoal, a second, and a
+third; then a regular fusillade began.  The bullets spat and spat
+all about us; but thick clouds had covered the moon, and in the dim
+darkness it was no more than random firing.  It was only by chance
+that we could be hit.
+
+"Wish we had a little steam launch," I panted.
+
+"I'd just as soon the moon stayed hidden," Nicholas panted back.
+
+It was slow work, but every stroke carried us farther away from the
+shoal and nearer the shore, till at last the shooting died down,
+and when the moon did come out we were too far away to be in
+danger.  Not long afterward we answered a shoreward hail, and two
+Whitehall boats, each pulled by three pairs of oars, darted up to
+us.  Charley's welcome face bent over to us, and he gripped us by
+the hands while he cried, "Oh, you joys!  You joys!  Both of you!"
+
+When the flotilla had been landed, Nicholas and I and a watchman
+rowed out in one of the Whitehalls, with Charley in the stern-
+sheets.  Two other Whitehalls followed us, and as the moon now
+shone brightly, we easily made out the oyster pirates on their
+lonely shoal.  As we drew closer, they fired a rattling volley from
+their revolvers, and we promptly retreated beyond range.
+
+"Lot of time," Charley said.  "The flood is setting in fast, and by
+the time it's up to their necks there won't be any fight left in
+them."
+
+So we lay on our oars and waited for the tide to do its work.  This
+was the predicament of the pirates:  because of the big run-out,
+the tide was now rushing back like a mill-race, and it was
+impossible for the strongest swimmer in the world to make against
+it the three miles to the sloops.  Between the pirates and the
+shore were we, precluding escape in that direction.  On the other
+hand, the water was rising rapidly over the shoals, and it was only
+a question of a few hours when it would be over their heads.
+
+It was beautifully calm, and in the brilliant white moonlight we
+watched them through our night glasses and told Charley of the
+voyage of the Coal Tar Maggie.  One o'clock came, and two o'clock,
+and the pirates were clustering on the highest shoal, waist-deep in
+water.
+
+"Now this illustrates the value of imagination," Charley was
+saying.  "Taft has been trying for years to get them, but he went
+at it with bull strength and failed.  Now we used our heads . . ."
+
+Just then I heard a scarcely audible gurgle of water, and holding
+up my hand for silence, I turned and pointed to a ripple slowly
+widening out in a growing circle.  It was not more than fifty feet
+from us.  We kept perfectly quiet and waited.  After a minute the
+water broke six feet away, and a black head and white shoulder
+showed in the moonlight.  With a snort of surprise and of suddenly
+expelled breath, the head and shoulder went down.
+
+We pulled ahead several strokes and drifted with the current.  Four
+pairs of eyes searched the surface of the water, but never another
+ripple showed, and never another glimpse did we catch of the black
+head and white shoulder.
+
+"It's the Porpoise," Nicholas said.  "It would take broad daylight
+for us to catch him."
+
+At a quarter to three the pirates gave their first sign of
+weakening.  We heard cries for help, in the unmistakable voice of
+the Centipede, and this time, on rowing closer, we were not fired
+upon.  The Centipede was in a truly perilous plight.  Only the
+heads and shoulders of his fellow-marauders showed above the water
+as they braced themselves against the current, while his feet were
+off the bottom and they were supporting him.
+
+"Now, lads," Charley said briskly, "we have got you, and you can't
+get away.  If you cut up rough, we'll have to leave you alone and
+the water will finish you.  But if you're good we'll take you
+aboard, one man at a time, and you'll all be saved.  What do you
+say?"
+
+"Ay," they chorused hoarsely between their chattering teeth.
+
+"Then one man at a time, and the short men first."
+
+The Centipede was the first to be pulled aboard, and he came
+willingly, though he objected when the constable put the handcuffs
+on him.  Barchi was next hauled in, quite meek and resigned from
+his soaking.  When we had ten in, our boat we drew back, and the
+second Whitehall was loaded.  The third Whitehall received nine
+prisoners only--a catch of twenty-nine in all.
+
+"You didn't get the Porpoise," the Centipede said exultantly, as
+though his escape materially diminished our success.
+
+Charley laughed.  "But we saw him just the same, a-snorting for
+shore like a puffing pig."
+
+It was a mild and shivering band of pirates that we marched up the
+beach to the oyster house.  In answer to Charley's knock, the door
+was flung open, and a pleasant wave of warm air rushed out upon us.
+
+"You can dry your clothes here, lads, and get some hot coffee,"
+Charley announced, as they filed in.
+
+And there, sitting ruefully by the fire, with a steaming mug in his
+hand, was the Porpoise.  With one accord Nicholas and I looked at
+Charley.  He laughed gleefully.
+
+"That comes of imagination," he said.  "When you see a thing,
+you've got to see it all around, or what's the good of seeing it at
+all?  I saw the beach, so I left a couple of constables behind to
+keep an eye on it.  That's all."
+
+
+
+THE SIEGE OF THE "LANCASHIRE QUEEN"
+
+
+
+Possibly our most exasperating experience on the fish patrol was
+when Charley Le Grant and I laid a two weeks' siege to a big four-
+masted English ship.  Before we had finished with the affair, it
+became a pretty mathematical problem, and it was by the merest
+chance that we came into possession of the instrument that brought
+it to a successful termination.
+
+After our raid on the oyster pirates we had returned to Oakland,
+where two more weeks passed before Neil Partington's wife was out
+of danger and on the highroad to recovery.  So it was after an
+absence of a month, all told, that we turned the Reindeer's nose
+toward Benicia.  When the cat's away the mice will play, and in
+these four weeks the fishermen had become very bold in violating
+the law.  When we passed Point Pedro we noticed many signs of
+activity among the shrimp-catchers, and, well into San Pablo Bay,
+we observed a widely scattered fleet of Upper Bay fishing-boats
+hastily pulling in their nets and getting up sail.
+
+This was suspicious enough to warrant investigation, and the first
+and only boat we succeeded in boarding proved to have an illegal
+net.  The law permitted no smaller mesh for catching shad than one
+that measured seven and one-half inches inside the knots, while the
+mesh of this particular net measured only three inches.  It was a
+flagrant breach of the rules, and the two fishermen were forthwith
+put under arrest.  Neil Partington took one of them with him to
+help manage the Reindeer, while Charley and I went on ahead with
+the other in the captured boat.
+
+But the shad fleet had headed over toward the Petaluma shore in
+wild flight, and for the rest of the run through San Pablo Bay we
+saw no more fishermen at all.  Our prisoner, a bronzed and bearded
+Greek, sat sullenly on his net while we sailed his craft.  It was a
+new Columbia River salmon boat, evidently on its first trip, and it
+handled splendidly.  Even when Charley praised it, our prisoner
+refused to speak or to notice us, and we soon gave him up as a most
+unsociable fellow.
+
+We ran up the Carquinez Straits and edged into the bight at
+Turner's Shipyard for smoother water.  Here were lying several
+English steel sailing ships, waiting for the wheat harvest; and
+here, most unexpectedly, in the precise place where we had captured
+Big Alec, we came upon two Italians in a skiff that was loaded with
+a complete "Chinese" sturgeon line.  The surprise was mutual, and
+we were on top of them before either they or we were aware.
+Charley had barely time to luff into the wind and run up to them.
+I ran forward and tossed them a line with orders to make it fast.
+One of the Italians took a turn with it over a cleat, while I
+hastened to lower our big spritsail.  This accomplished, the salmon
+boat dropped astern, dragging heavily on the skiff.
+
+Charley came forward to board the prize, but when I proceeded to
+haul alongside by means of the line, the Italians cast it off.  We
+at once began drifting to leeward, while they got out two pairs of
+oars and rowed their light craft directly into the wind.  This
+manoeuvre for the moment disconcerted us, for in our large and
+heavily loaded boat we could not hope to catch them with the oars.
+But our prisoner came unexpectedly to our aid.  His black eyes were
+flashing eagerly, and his face was flushed with suppressed
+excitement, as he dropped the centre-board, sprang forward with a
+single leap, and put up the sail.
+
+"I've always heard that Greeks don't like Italians," Charley
+laughed, as he ran aft to the tiller.
+
+And never in my experience have I seen a man so anxious for the
+capture of another as was our prisoner in the chase that followed.
+His eyes fairly snapped, and his nostrils quivered and dilated in a
+most extraordinary way.  Charley steered while he tended the sheet;
+and though Charley was as quick and alert as a cat, the Greek could
+hardly control his impatience.
+
+The Italians were cut off from the shore, which was fully a mile
+away at its nearest point.  Did they attempt to make it, we could
+haul after them with the wind abeam, and overtake them before they
+had covered an eighth of the distance.  But they were too wise to
+attempt it, contenting themselves with rowing lustily to windward
+along the starboard side of a big ship, the Lancashire Queen.  But
+beyond the ship lay an open stretch of fully two miles to the shore
+in that direction.  This, also, they dared not attempt, for we were
+bound to catch them before they could cover it.  So, when they
+reached the bow of the Lancashire Queen, nothing remained but to
+pass around and row down her port side toward the stern, which
+meant rowing to leeward and giving us the advantage.
+
+We in the salmon boat, sailing close on the wind, tacked about and
+crossed the ship's bow.  Then Charley put up the tiller and headed
+down the port side of the ship, the Greek letting out the sheet and
+grinning with delight.  The Italians were already half-way down the
+ship's length; but the stiff breeze at our back drove us after them
+far faster than they could row.  Closer and closer we came, and I,
+lying down forward, was just reaching out to grasp the skiff, when
+it ducked under the great stern of the Lancashire Queen.
+
+The chase was virtually where it had begun.  The Italians were
+rowing up the starboard side of the ship, and we were hauled close
+on the wind and slowly edging out from the ship as we worked to
+windward.  Then they darted around her bow and began the row down
+her port side, and we tacked about, crossed her bow, and went
+plunging down the wind hot after them.  And again, just as I was
+reaching for the skiff, it ducked under the ship's stern and out of
+danger.  And so it went, around and around, the skiff each time
+just barely ducking into safety.
+
+By this time the ship's crew had become aware of what was taking
+place, and we could see their heads in a long row as they looked at
+us over the bulwarks.  Each time we missed the skiff at the stern,
+they set up a wild cheer and dashed across to the other side of the
+Lancashire Queen to see the chase to wind-ward.  They showered us
+and the Italians with jokes and advice, and made our Greek so angry
+that at least once on each circuit he raised his fist and shook it
+at them in a rage.  They came to look for this, and at each display
+greeted it with uproarious mirth.
+
+"Wot a circus!" cried one.
+
+"Tork about yer marine hippodromes,--if this ain't one, I'd like to
+know!" affirmed another.
+
+"Six-days-go-as-yer-please," announced a third.  "Who says the
+dagoes won't win?"
+
+On the next tack to windward the Greek offered to change places
+with Charley.
+
+"Let-a me sail-a de boat," he demanded.  "I fix-a them, I catch-a
+them, sure."
+
+This was a stroke at Charley's professional pride, for pride
+himself he did upon his boat-sailing abilities; but he yielded the
+tiller to the prisoner and took his place at the sheet.  Three
+times again we made the circuit, and the Greek found that he could
+get no more speed out of the salmon boat than Charley had.
+
+"Better give it up," one of the sailors advised from above.
+
+The Greek scowled ferociously and shook his fist in his customary
+fashion.  In the meanwhile my mind had not been idle, and I had
+finally evolved an idea.
+
+"Keep going, Charley, one time more," I said.
+
+And as we laid out on the next tack to wind-ward, I bent a piece of
+line to a small grappling hook I had seen lying in the bail-hole.
+The end of the line I made fast to the ring-bolt in the bow, and
+with the hook out of sight I waited for the next opportunity to use
+it.  Once more they made their leeward pull down the port side of
+the Lancashire Queen, and once more we churned down after them
+before the wind.  Nearer and nearer we drew, and I was making
+believe to reach for them as before.  The stern of the skiff was
+not six feet away, and they were laughing at me derisively as they
+ducked under the ship's stern.  At that instant I suddenly arose
+and threw the grappling iron.  It caught fairly and squarely on the
+rail of the skiff, which was jerked backward out of safety as the
+rope tautened and the salmon boat ploughed on.
+
+A groan went up from the row of sailors above, which quickly
+changed to a cheer as one of the Italians whipped out a long
+sheath-knife and cut the rope.  But we had drawn them out of
+safety, and Charley, from his place in the stern-sheets, reached
+over and clutched the stern of the skiff.  The whole thing happened
+in a second of time, for the first Italian was cutting the rope and
+Charley was clutching the skiff when the second Italian dealt him a
+rap over the head with an oar, Charley released his hold and
+collapsed, stunned, into the bottom of the salmon boat, and the
+Italians bent to their oars and escaped back under the ship's
+stern.
+
+The Greek took both tiller and sheet and continued the chase around
+the Lancashire Queen, while I attended to Charley, on whose head a
+nasty lump was rapidly rising.  Our sailor audience was wild with
+delight, and to a man encouraged the fleeing Italians.  Charley sat
+up, with one hand on his head, and gazed about him sheepishly.
+
+"It will never do to let them escape now," he said, at the same
+time drawing his revolver.
+
+On our next circuit, he threatened the Italians with the weapon;
+but they rowed on stolidly, keeping splendid stroke and utterly
+disregarding him.
+
+"If you don't stop, I'll shoot," Charley said menacingly.
+
+But this had no effect, nor were they to be frightened into
+surrendering even when he fired several shots dangerously close to
+them.  It was too much to expect him to shoot unarmed men, and this
+they knew as well as we did; so they continued to pull doggedly
+round and round the ship.
+
+"We'll run them down, then!" Charley exclaimed.  "We'll wear them
+out and wind them!"
+
+So the chase continued.  Twenty times more we ran them around the
+Lancashire Queen, and at last we could see that even their iron
+muscles were giving out.  They were nearly exhausted, and it was
+only a matter of a few more circuits, when the game took on a new
+feature.  On the row to windward they always gained on us, so that
+they were half-way down the ship's side on the row to leeward when
+we were passing the bow.  But this last time, as we passed the bow,
+we saw them escaping up the ship's gangway, which had been suddenly
+lowered.  It was an organized move on the part of the sailors,
+evidently countenanced by the captain; for by the time we arrived
+where the gangway had been, it was being hoisted up, and the skiff,
+slung in the ship's davits, was likewise flying aloft out of reach.
+
+The parley that followed with the captain was short and snappy.  He
+absolutely forbade us to board the Lancashire Queen, and as
+absolutely refused to give up the two men.  By this time Charley
+was as enraged as the Greek.  Not only had he been foiled in a long
+and ridiculous chase, but he had been knocked senseless into the
+bottom of his boat by the men who had escaped him.
+
+"Knock off my head with little apples," he declared emphatically,
+striking the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, "if those
+two men ever escape me!  I'll stay here to get them if it takes the
+rest of my natural life, and if I don't get them, then I promise
+you I'll live unnaturally long or until I do get them, or my name's
+not Charley Le Grant!"
+
+And then began the siege of the Lancashire Queen, a siege memorable
+in the annals of both fishermen and fish patrol.  When the Reindeer
+came along, after a fruitless pursuit of the shad fleet, Charley
+instructed Neil Partington to send out his own salmon boat, with
+blankets, provisions, and a fisherman's charcoal stove.  By sunset
+this exchange of boats was made, and we said good-by to our Greek,
+who perforce had to go into Benicia and be locked up for his own
+violation of the law.  After supper, Charley and I kept alternate
+four-hour watches till day-light.  The fishermen made no attempt to
+escape that night, though the ship sent out a boat for scouting
+purposes to find if the coast were clear.
+
+By the next day we saw that a steady siege was in order, and we
+perfected our plans with an eye to our own comfort.  A dock, known
+as the Solano Wharf, which ran out from the Benicia shore, helped
+us in this.  It happened that the Lancashire Queen, the shore at
+Turner's Shipyard, and the Solano Wharf were the corners of a big
+equilateral triangle.  From ship to shore, the side of the triangle
+along which the Italians had to escape, was a distance equal to
+that from the Solano Wharf to the shore, the side of the triangle
+along which we had to travel to get to the shore before the
+Italians.  But as we could sail much faster than they could row, we
+could permit them to travel about half their side of the triangle
+before we darted out along our side.  If we allowed them to get
+more than half-way, they were certain to beat us to shore; while if
+we started before they were half-way, they were equally certain to
+beat us back to the ship.
+
+We found that an imaginary line, drawn from the end of the wharf to
+a windmill farther along the shore, cut precisely in half the line
+of the triangle along which the Italians must escape to reach the
+land.  This line made it easy for us to determine how far to let
+them run away before we bestirred ourselves in pursuit.  Day after
+day we would watch them through our glasses as they rowed leisurely
+along toward the half-way point; and as they drew close into line
+with the windmill, we would leap into the boat and get up sail.  At
+sight of our preparation, they would turn and row slowly back to
+the Lancashire Queen, secure in the knowledge that we could not
+overtake them.
+
+To guard against calms--when our salmon boat would be useless--we
+also had in readiness a light rowing skiff equipped with spoon-
+oars.  But at such times, when the wind failed us, we were forced
+to row out from the wharf as soon as they rowed from the ship.  In
+the night-time, on the other hand, we were compelled to patrol the
+immediate vicinity of the ship; which we did, Charley and I
+standing four-hour watches turn and turn about.  The Italians,
+however, preferred the daytime in which to escape, and so our long
+night vigils were without result.
+
+"What makes me mad," said Charley, "is our being kept from our
+honest beds while those rascally lawbreakers are sleeping soundly
+every night.  But much good may it do them," he threatened.  "I'll
+keep them on that ship till the captain charges them board, as sure
+as a sturgeon's not a catfish!"
+
+It was a tantalizing problem that confronted us.  As long as we
+were vigilant, they could not escape; and as long as they were
+careful, we would be unable to catch them.  Charley cudgelled his
+brains continually, but for once his imagination failed him.  It
+was a problem apparently without other solution than that of
+patience.  It was a waiting game, and whichever waited the longer
+was bound to win.  To add to our irritation, friends of the
+Italians established a code of signals with them from the shore, so
+that we never dared relax the siege for a moment.  And besides
+this, there were always one or two suspicious-looking fishermen
+hanging around the Solano Wharf and keeping watch on our actions.
+We could do nothing but "grin and bear it," as Charley said, while
+it took up all our time and prevented us from doing other work.
+
+The days went by, and there was no change in the situation.  Not
+that no attempts were made to change it.  One night friends from
+the shore came out in a skiff and attempted to confuse us while the
+two Italians escaped.  That they did not succeed was due to the
+lack of a little oil on the ship's davits.  For we were drawn back
+from the pursuit of the strange boat by the creaking of the davits,
+and arrived at the Lancashire Queen just as the Italians were
+lowering their skiff.  Another night, fully half a dozen skiffs
+rowed around us in the darkness, but we held on like a leech to the
+side of the ship and frustrated their plan till they grew angry and
+showered us with abuse.  Charley laughed to himself in the bottom
+of the boat.
+
+"It's a good sign, lad," he said to me.  "When men begin to abuse,
+make sure they're losing patience; and shortly after they lose
+patience, they lose their heads.  Mark my words, if we only hold
+out, they'll get careless some fine day, and then we'll get them."
+
+But they did not grow careless, and Charley confessed that this was
+one of the times when all signs failed.  Their patience seemed
+equal to ours, and the second week of the siege dragged
+monotonously along.  Then Charley's lagging imagination quickened
+sufficiently to suggest a ruse.  Peter Boyelen, a new patrolman and
+one unknown to the fisher-folk, happened to arrive in Benicia and
+we took him into our plan.  We were as secret as possible about it,
+but in some unfathomable way the friends ashore got word to the
+beleaguered Italians to keep their eyes open.
+
+On the night we were to put our ruse into effect, Charley and I
+took up our usual station in our rowing skiff alongside the
+Lancashire Queen.  After it was thoroughly dark, Peter Boyelen came
+out in a crazy duck boat, the kind you can pick up and carry away
+under one arm.  When we heard him coming along, paddling noisily,
+we slipped away a short distance into the darkness, and rested on
+our oars.  Opposite the gangway, having jovially hailed the anchor-
+watch of the Lancashire Queen and asked the direction of the
+Scottish Chiefs, another wheat ship, he awkwardly capsized himself.
+The man who was standing the anchor-watch ran down the gangway and
+hauled him out of the water.  This was what he wanted, to get
+aboard the ship; and the next thing he expected was to be taken on
+deck and then below to warm up and dry out.  But the captain
+inhospitably kept him perched on the lowest gang-way step,
+shivering miserably and with his feet dangling in the water, till
+we, out of very pity, rowed in from the darkness and took him off.
+The jokes and gibes of the awakened crew sounded anything but sweet
+in our ears, and even the two Italians climbed up on the rail and
+laughed down at us long and maliciously.
+
+"That's all right," Charley said in a low voice, which I only could
+hear.  "I'm mighty glad it's not us that's laughing first.  We'll
+save our laugh to the end, eh, lad?"
+
+He clapped a hand on my shoulder as he finished, but it seemed to
+me that there was more determination than hope in his voice.
+
+It would have been possible for us to secure the aid of United
+States marshals and board the English ship, backed by Government
+authority.  But the instructions of the Fish Commission were to the
+effect that the patrolmen should avoid complications, and this one,
+did we call on the higher powers, might well end in a pretty
+international tangle.
+
+The second week of the siege drew to its close, and there was no
+sign of change in the situation.  On the morning of the fourteenth
+day the change came, and it came in a guise as unexpected and
+startling to us as it was to the men we were striving to capture.
+
+Charley and I, after our customary night vigil by the side of the
+Lancashire Queen, rowed into the Solana Wharf.
+
+"Hello!" cried Charley, in surprise.  "In the name of reason and
+common sense, what is that?  Of all unmannerly craft did you ever
+see the like?"
+
+Well might he exclaim, for there, tied up to the dock, lay the
+strangest looking launch I had ever seen.  Not that it could be
+called a launch, either, but it seemed to resemble a launch more
+than any other kind of boat.  It was seventy feet long, but so
+narrow was it, and so bare of superstructure, that it appeared much
+smaller than it really was.  It was built wholly of steel, and was
+painted black.  Three smokestacks, a good distance apart and raking
+well aft, arose in single file amidships; while the bow, long and
+lean and sharp as a knife, plainly advertised that the boat was
+made for speed.  Passing under the stern, we read Streak, painted
+in small white letters.
+
+Charley and I were consumed with curiosity.  In a few minutes we
+were on board and talking with an engineer who was watching the
+sunrise from the deck.  He was quite willing to satisfy our
+curiosity, and in a few minutes we learned that the Streak had come
+in after dark from San Francisco; that this was what might be
+called the trial trip; and that she was the property of Silas Tate,
+a young mining millionaire of California, whose fad was high-speed
+yachts.  There was some talk about turbine engines, direct
+application of steam, and the absence of pistons, rods, and
+cranks,--all of which was beyond me, for I was familiar only with
+sailing craft; but I did understand the last words of the engineer.
+
+"Four thousand horse-power and forty-five miles an hour, though you
+wouldn't think it," he concluded proudly.
+
+"Say it again, man!  Say it again!" Charley exclaimed in an excited
+voice.
+
+"Four thousand horse-power and forty-five miles an hour," the
+engineer repeated, grinning good-naturedly.
+
+"Where's the owner?" was Charley's next question.  "Is there any
+way I can speak to him?"
+
+The engineer shook his head.  "No, I'm afraid not.  He's asleep,
+you see."
+
+At that moment a young man in blue uniform came on deck farther aft
+and stood regarding the sunrise.
+
+"There he is, that's him, that's Mr. Tate," said the engineer.
+
+Charley walked aft and spoke to him, and while he talked earnestly
+the young man listened with an amused expression on his face.  He
+must have inquired about the depth of water close in to the shore
+at Turner's Shipyard, for I could see Charley making gestures and
+explaining.  A few minutes later he came back in high glee.
+
+"Come on lad," he said.  "On to the dock with you.  We've got
+them!"
+
+It was our good fortune to leave the Streak when we did, for a
+little later one of the spy fishermen appeared.  Charley and I took
+up our accustomed places, on the stringer-piece, a little ahead of
+the Streak and over our own boat, where we could comfortably watch
+the Lancashire Queen.  Nothing occurred till about nine o'clock,
+when we saw the two Italians leave the ship and pull along their
+side of the triangle toward the shore.  Charley looked as
+unconcerned as could be, but before they had covered a quarter of
+the distance, he whispered to me:
+
+"Forty-five miles an hour . . . nothing can save them . . . they
+are ours!"
+
+Slowly the two men rowed along till they were nearly in line with
+the windmill.  This was the point where we always jumped into our
+salmon boat and got up the sail, and the two men, evidently
+expecting it, seemed surprised when we gave no sign.
+
+When they were directly in line with the windmill, as near to the
+shore as to the ship, and nearer the shore than we had ever allowed
+them before, they grew suspicious.  We followed them through the
+glasses, and saw them standing up in the skiff and trying to find
+out what we were doing.  The spy fisherman, sitting beside us on
+the stringer-piece was likewise puzzled.  He could not understand
+our inactivity.  The men in the skiff rowed nearer the shore, but
+stood up again and scanned it, as if they thought we might be in
+hiding there.  But a man came out on the beach and waved a
+handkerchief to indicate that the coast was clear.  That settled
+them.  They bent to the oars to make a dash for it.  Still Charley
+waited.  Not until they had covered three-quarters of the distance
+from the Lancashire Queen, which left them hardly more than a
+quarter of a mile to gain the shore, did Charley slap me on the
+shoulder and cry:
+
+"They're ours!  They're ours!"
+
+We ran the few steps to the side of the Streak and jumped aboard.
+Stern and bow lines were cast off in a jiffy.  The Streak shot
+ahead and away from the wharf.  The spy fisherman we had left
+behind on the stringer-piece pulled out a revolver and fired five
+shots into the air in rapid succession.  The men in the skiff gave
+instant heed to the warning, for we could see them pulling away
+like mad.
+
+But if they pulled like mad, I wonder how our progress can be
+described?  We fairly flew.  So frightful was the speed with which
+we displaced the water, that a wave rose up on either side our bow
+and foamed aft in a series of three stiff, up-standing waves, while
+astern a great crested billow pursued us hungrily, as though at
+each moment it would fall aboard and destroy us.  The Streak was
+pulsing and vibrating and roaring like a thing alive.  The wind of
+our progress was like a gale--a forty-five-mile gale.  We could not
+face it and draw breath without choking and strangling.  It blew
+the smoke straight back from the mouths of the smoke-stacks at a
+direct right angle to the perpendicular.  In fact, we were
+travelling as fast as an express train.  "We just STREAKED it," was
+the way Charley told it afterward, and I think his description
+comes nearer than any I can give.
+
+As for the Italians in the skiff--hardly had we started, it seemed
+to me, when we were on top of them.  Naturally, we had to slow down
+long before we got to them; but even then we shot past like a
+whirlwind and were compelled to circle back between them and the
+shore.  They had rowed steadily, rising from the thwarts at every
+stroke, up to the moment we passed them, when they recognized
+Charley and me.  That took the last bit of fight out of them.  They
+hauled in their oars, and sullenly submitted to arrest.
+
+"Well, Charley," Neil Partington said, as we discussed it on the
+wharf afterward, "I fail to see where your boasted imagination came
+into play this time."
+
+But Charley was true to his hobby.  "Imagination?" he demanded,
+pointing to the Streak.  "Look at that! just look at it!  If the
+invention of that isn't imagination, I should like to know what
+is."
+
+"Of course," he added, "it's the other fellow's imagination, but it
+did the work all the same."
+
+
+
+CHARLEY'S COUP
+
+
+
+Perhaps our most laughable exploit on the fish patrol, and at the
+same time our most dangerous one, was when we rounded in, at a
+single haul, an even score of wrathful fishermen.  Charley called
+it a "coop," having heard Neil Partington use the term; but I think
+he misunderstood the word, and thought it meant "coop," to catch,
+to trap.  The fishermen, however, coup or coop, must have called it
+a Waterloo, for it was the severest stroke ever dealt them by the
+fish patrol, while they had invited it by open and impudent
+defiance of the law.
+
+During what is called the "open season" the fishermen might catch
+as many salmon as their luck allowed and their boats could hold.
+But there was one important restriction.  From sun-down Saturday
+night to sun-up Monday morning, they were not permitted to set a
+net.  This was a wise provision on the part of the Fish Commission,
+for it was necessary to give the spawning salmon some opportunity
+to ascend the river and lay their eggs.  And this law, with only an
+occasional violation, had been obediently observed by the Greek
+fishermen who caught salmon for the canneries and the market.
+
+One Sunday morning, Charley received a telephone call from a friend
+in Collinsville, who told him that the full force of fishermen was
+out with its nets.  Charley and I jumped into our salmon boat and
+started for the scene of the trouble.  With a light favoring wind
+at our back we went through the Carquinez Straits, crossed Suisun
+Bay, passed the Ship Island Light, and came upon the whole fleet at
+work.
+
+But first let me describe the method by which they worked.  The net
+used is what is known as a gill-net.  It has a simple diamond-
+shaped mesh which measures at least seven and one-half inches
+between the knots.  From five to seven and even eight hundred feet
+in length, these nets are only a few feet wide.  They are not
+stationary, but float with the current, the upper edge supported on
+the surface by floats, the lower edge sunk by means of leaden
+weights,
+
+This arrangement keeps the net upright in the current and
+effectually prevents all but the smaller fish from ascending the
+river.  The salmon, swimming near the surface, as is their custom,
+run their heads through these meshes, and are prevented from going
+on through by their larger girth of body, and from going back
+because of their gills, which catch in the mesh.  It requires two
+fishermen to set such a net,--one to row the boat, while the other,
+standing in the stern, carefully pays out the net.  When it is all
+out, stretching directly across the stream, the men make their boat
+fast to one end of the net and drift along with it.
+
+As we came upon the fleet of law-breaking fishermen, each boat two
+or three hundred yards from its neighbors, and boats and nets
+dotting the river as far as we could see, Charley said:
+
+"I've only one regret, lad, and that is that I have'nt a thousand
+arms so as to be able to catch them all.  As it is, we'll only be
+able to catch one boat, for while we are tackling that one it will
+be up nets and away with the rest."
+
+As we drew closer, we observed none of the usual flurry and
+excitement which our appearance invariably produced.  Instead, each
+boat lay quietly by its net, while the fishermen favored us with
+not the slightest attention.
+
+"It's curious," Charley muttered.  "Can it be they don't recognize
+us?"
+
+I said that it was impossible, and Charley agreed; yet there was a
+whole fleet, manned by men who knew us only too well, and who took
+no more notice of us than if we were a hay scow or a pleasure
+yacht.
+
+This did not continue to be the case, however, for as we bore down
+upon the nearest net, the men to whom it belonged detached their
+boat and rowed slowly toward the shore.  The rest of the boats
+showed no, sign of uneasiness.
+
+"That's funny," was Charley's remark.  "But we can confiscate the
+net, at any rate."
+
+We lowered sail, picked up one end of the net, and began to heave
+it into the boat.  But at the first heave we heard a bullet zip-
+zipping past us on the water, followed by the faint report of a
+rifle.  The men who had rowed ashore were shooting at us.  At the
+next heave a second bullet went zipping past, perilously near.
+Charley took a turn around a pin and sat down.  There were no more
+shots.  But as soon as he began to heave in, the shooting
+recommenced.
+
+"That settles it," he said, flinging the end of the net overboard.
+"You fellows want it worse than we do, and you can have it."
+
+We rowed over toward the next net, for Charley was intent on
+finding out whether or not we were face to face with an organized
+defiance.  As we approached, the two fishermen proceeded to cast
+off from their net and row ashore, while the first two rowed back
+and made fast to the net we had abandoned.  And at the second net
+we were greeted by rifle shots till we desisted and went on to the
+third, where the manoeuvre was again repeated.
+
+Then we gave it up, completely routed, and hoisted sail and started
+on the long windward beat back to Benicia.  A number of Sundays
+went by, on each of which the law was persistently violated.  Yet,
+short of an armed force of soldiers, we could do nothing.  The
+fishermen had hit upon a new idea and were using it for all it was
+worth, while there seemed no way by which we could get the better
+of them.
+
+About this time Neil Partington happened along from the Lower Bay,
+where he had been for a number of weeks.  With him was Nicholas,
+the Greek boy who had helped us in our raid on the oyster pirates,
+and the pair of them took a hand.  We made our arrangements
+carefully.  It was planned that while Charley and I tackled the
+nets, they were to be hidden ashore so as to ambush the fishermen
+who landed to shoot at us.
+
+It was a pretty plan.  Even Charley said it was.  But we reckoned
+not half so well as the Greeks.  They forestalled us by ambushing
+Neil and Nicholas and taking them prisoners, while, as of old,
+bullets whistled about our ears when Charley and I attempted to
+take possession of the nets.  When we were again beaten off, Neil
+Partington and Nicholas were released.  They were rather shamefaced
+when they put in an appearance, and Charley chaffed them
+unmercifully.  But Neil chaffed back, demanding to know why
+Charley's imagination had not long since overcome the difficulty.
+
+"Just you wait; the idea'll come all right," Charley promised.
+
+"Most probably," Neil agreed.  "But I'm afraid the salmon will be
+exterminated first, and then there will be no need for it when it
+does come."
+
+Neil Partington, highly disgusted with his adventure, departed for
+the Lower Bay, taking Nicholas with him, and Charley and I were
+left to our own resources.  This meant that the Sunday fishing
+would be left to itself, too, until such time as Charley's idea
+happened along.  I puzzled my head a good deal to find out some way
+of checkmating the Greeks, as also did Charley, and we broached a
+thousand expedients which on discussion proved worthless.
+
+The fishermen, on the other hand, were in high feather, and their
+boasts went up and down the river to add to our discomfiture.
+Among all classes of them we became aware of a growing
+insubordination.  We were beaten, and they were losing respect for
+us.  With the loss of respect, contempt began to arise.  Charley
+began to be spoken of as the "olda woman," and I received my rating
+as the "pee-wee kid."  The situation was fast becoming unbearable,
+and we knew that we should have to deliver a stunning stroke at the
+Greeks in order to regain the old-time respect in which we had
+stood.
+
+Then one morning the idea came.  We were down on Steamboat Wharf,
+where the river steamers made their landings, and where we found a
+group of amused long-shoremen and loafers listening to the hard-
+luck tale of a sleepy-eyed young fellow in long sea-boots.  He was
+a sort of amateur fisherman, he said, fishing for the local market
+of Berkeley.  Now Berkeley was on the Lower Bay, thirty miles away.
+On the previous night, he said, he had set his net and dozed off to
+sleep in the bottom of the boat.
+
+The next he knew it was morning, and he opened his eyes to find his
+boat rubbing softly against the piles of Steamboat Wharf at
+Benicia.  Also he saw the river steamer Apache lying ahead of him,
+and a couple of deck-hands disentangling the shreds of his net from
+the paddle-wheel.  In short, after he had gone to sleep, his
+fisherman's riding light had gone out, and the Apache had run over
+his net.  Though torn pretty well to pieces, the net in some way
+still remained foul, and he had had a thirty-mile tow out of his
+course.
+
+Charley nudged me with his elbow.  I grasped his thought on the
+instant, but objected:
+
+"We can't charter a steamboat."
+
+"Don't intend to," he rejoined.  "But let's run over to Turner's
+Shipyard.  I've something in my mind there that may be of use to
+us."
+
+And over we went to the shipyard, where Charley led the way to the
+Mary Rebecca, lying hauled out on the ways, where she was being
+cleaned and overhauled.  She was a scow-schooner we both knew well,
+carrying a cargo of one hundred and forty tons and a spread of
+canvas greater than other schooner on the bay.
+
+"How d'ye do, Ole," Charley greeted a big blue-shirted Swede who
+was greasing the jaws of the main gaff with a piece of pork rind.
+
+Ole grunted, puffed away at his pipe, and went on greasing.  The
+captain of a bay schooner is supposed to work with his hands just
+as well as the men.
+
+Ole Ericsen verified Charley's conjecture that the Mary Rebecca, as
+soon as launched, would run up the San Joaquin River nearly to
+Stockton for a load of wheat.  Then Charley made his proposition,
+and Ole Ericsen shook his head.
+
+"Just a hook, one good-sized hook," Charley pleaded.
+
+"No, Ay tank not," said Ole Ericsen.  "Der Mary Rebecca yust hang
+up on efery mud-bank with that hook.  Ay don't want to lose der
+Mary Rebecca.  She's all Ay got."
+
+"No, no," Charley hurried to explain.  "We can put the end of the
+hook through the bottom from the outside, and fasten it on the
+inside with a nut.  After it's done its work, why, all we have to
+do is to go down into the hold, unscrew the nut, and out drops the
+hook.  Then drive a wooden peg into the hole, and the Mary Rebecca
+will be all right again."
+
+Ole Ericsen was obstinate for a long time; but in the end, after we
+had had dinner with him, he was brought round to consent.
+
+"Ay do it, by Yupiter!" he said, striking one huge fist into the
+palm of the other hand.  "But yust hurry you up wid der hook.  Der
+Mary Rebecca slides into der water to-night."
+
+It was Saturday, and Charley had need to hurry.  We headed for the
+shipyard blacksmith shop, where, under Charley's directions, a most
+generously curved book of heavy steel was made.  Back we hastened
+to the Mary Rebecca.  Aft of the great centre-board case, through
+what was properly her keel, a hole was bored.  The end of the hook
+was inserted from the outside, and Charley, on the inside, screwed
+the nut on tightly.  As it stood complete, the hook projected over
+a foot beneath the bottom of the schooner.  Its curve was something
+like the curve of a sickle, but deeper.
+
+In the late afternoon the Mary Rebecca was launched, and
+preparations were finished for the start up-river next morning.
+Charley and Ole intently studied the evening sky for signs of wind,
+for without a good breeze our project was doomed to failure.  They
+agreed that there were all the signs of a stiff westerly wind--not
+the ordinary afternoon sea-breeze, but a half-gale, which even then
+was springing up.
+
+Next morning found their predictions verified.  The sun was shining
+brightly, but something more than a half-gale was shrieking up the
+Carquinez Straits, and the Mary Rebecca got under way with two
+reefs in her mainsail and one in her foresail.  We found it quite
+rough in the Straits and in Suisun Bay; but as the water grew more
+land-locked it became calm, though without let-up in the wind.
+
+Off Ship Island Light the reefs were shaken out, and at Charley's
+suggestion a big fisherman's staysail was made all ready for
+hoisting, and the maintopsail, bunched into a cap at the masthead,
+was overhauled so that it could be set on an instant's notice.
+
+We were tearing along, wing-and-wing, before the wind, foresail to
+starboard and mainsail to port, as we came upon the salmon fleet.
+There they were, boats and nets, as on that first Sunday when they
+had bested us, strung out evenly over the river as far as we could
+see.  A narrow space on the right-hand side of the channel was left
+clear for steamboats, but the rest of the river was covered with
+the wide-stretching nets.  The narrow space was our logical course,
+but Charley, at the wheel, steered the Mary Rebecca straight for
+the nets.  This did not cause any alarm among the fishermen,
+because up-river sailing craft are always provided with "shoes" on
+the ends of their keels, which permit them to slip over the nets
+without fouling them.
+
+"Now she takes it!" Charley cried, as we dashed across the middle
+of a line of floats which marked a net.  At one end of this line
+was a small barrel buoy, at the other the two fishermen in their
+boat.  Buoy and boat at once began to draw together, and the
+fishermen to cry out, as they were jerked after us.  A couple of
+minutes later we hooked a second net, and then a third, and in this
+fashion we tore straight up through the centre of the fleet.
+
+The consternation we spread among the fishermen was tremendous.  As
+fast as we hooked a net the two ends of it, buoy and boat, came
+together as they dragged out astern; and so many buoys and boats,
+coming together at such breakneck speed, kept the fishermen on the
+jump to avoid smashing into one another.  Also, they shouted at us
+like mad to heave to into the wind, for they took it as some
+drunken prank on the part of scow-sailors, little dreaming that we
+were the fish patrol.
+
+The drag of a single net is very heavy, and Charley and Ole Ericsen
+decided that even in such a wind ten nets were all the Mary Rebecca
+could take along with her.  So when we had hooked ten nets, with
+ten boats containing twenty men streaming along behind us, we
+veered to the left out of the fleet and headed toward Collinsville.
+
+We were all jubilant.  Charley was handling the wheel as though he
+were steering the winning yacht home in a race.  The two sailors
+who made up the crew of the Mary Rebecca, were grinning and joking.
+Ole Ericsen was rubbing his huge hands in child-like glee.
+
+"Ay tank you fish patrol fallers never ban so lucky as when you
+sail with Ole Ericsen," he was saying, when a rifle cracked sharply
+astern, and a bullet gouged along the newly painted cabin, glanced
+on a nail, and sang shrilly onward into space.
+
+This was too much for Ole Ericsen.  At sight of his beloved
+paintwork thus defaced, he jumped up and shook his fist at the
+fishermen; but a second bullet smashed into the cabin not six
+inches from his head, and he dropped down to the deck under cover
+of the rail.
+
+All the fishermen had rifles, and they now opened a general
+fusillade.  We were all driven to cover--even Charley, who was
+compelled to desert the wheel.  Had it not been for the heavy drag
+of the nets, we would inevitably have broached to at the mercy of
+the enraged fishermen.  But the nets, fastened to the bottom of the
+Mary Rebecca well aft, held her stern into the wind, and she
+continued to plough on, though somewhat erratically.
+
+Charley, lying on the deck, could just manage to reach the lower
+spokes of the wheel; but while he could steer after a fashion, it
+was very awkward.  Ole Ericsen bethought himself of a large piece
+of sheet steel in the empty hold.
+
+It was in fact a plate from the side of the New Jersey, a steamer
+which had recently been wrecked outside the Golden Gate, and in the
+salving of which the Mary Rebecca had taken part.
+
+Crawling carefully along the deck, the two sailors, Ole, and myself
+got the heavy plate on deck and aft, where we reared it as a shield
+between the wheel and the fishermen.  The bullets whanged and
+banged against it till it rang like a bull's-eye, but Charley
+grinned in its shelter, and coolly went on steering.
+
+So we raced along, behind us a howling, screaming bedlam of
+wrathful Greeks, Collinsville ahead, and bullets spat-spatting all
+around us.
+
+"Ole," Charley said in a faint voice, "I don't know what we're
+going to do."
+
+Ole Ericsen, lying on his back close to the rail and grinning
+upward at the sky, turned over on his side and looked at him.  "Ay
+tank we go into Collinsville yust der same," he said.
+
+"But we can't stop," Charley groaned.  "I never thought of it, but
+we can't stop."
+
+A look of consternation slowly overspread Ole Ericsen's broad face.
+It was only too true.  We had a hornet's nest on our hands, and to
+stop at Collinsville would be to have it about our ears.
+
+"Every man Jack of them has a gun," one of the sailors remarked
+cheerfully.
+
+"Yes, and a knife, too," the other sailor added.
+
+It was Ole Ericsen's turn to groan.  "What for a Svaidish faller
+like me monkey with none of my biziness, I don't know," he
+soliloquized.
+
+A bullet glanced on the stern and sang off to starboard like a
+spiteful bee.  "There's nothing to do but plump the Mary Rebecca
+ashore and run for it," was the verdict of the first cheerful
+sailor.
+
+"And leaf der Mary Rebecca?" Ole demanded, with unspeakable horror
+in his voice.
+
+"Not unless you want to," was the response.  "But I don't want to
+be within a thousand miles of her when those fellers come aboard"--
+indicating the bedlam of excited Greeks towing behind.
+
+We were right in at Collinsville then, and went foaming by within
+biscuit-toss of the wharf.
+
+"I only hope the wind holds out," Charley said, stealing a glance
+at our prisoners.
+
+"What of der wind?" Ole demanded disconsolately.  "Der river will
+not hold out, and then . . . and then . . ."
+
+"It's head for tall timber, and the Greeks take the hindermost,"
+adjudged the cheerful sailor, while Ole was stuttering over what
+would happen when we came to the end of the river.
+
+We had now reached a dividing of the ways.  To the left was the
+mouth of the Sacramento River, to the right the mouth of the San
+Joaquin.  The cheerful sailor crept forward and jibed over the
+foresail as Charley put the helm to starboard and we swerved to the
+right into the San Joaquin.  The wind, from which we had been
+running away on an even keel, now caught us on our beam, and the
+Mary Rebecca was pressed down on her port side as if she were about
+to capsize.
+
+Still we dashed on, and still the fishermen dashed on behind.  The
+value of their nets was greater than the fines they would have to
+pay for violating the fish laws; so to cast off from their nets and
+escape, which they could easily do, would profit them nothing.
+Further, they remained by their nets instinctively, as a sailor
+remains by his ship.  And still further, the desire for vengeance
+was roused, and we could depend upon it that they would follow us
+to the ends of the earth, if we undertook to tow them that far.
+
+The rifle-firing had ceased, and we looked astern to see what our
+prisoners were doing.  The boats were strung along at unequal
+distances apart, and we saw the four nearest ones bunching
+together.  This was done by the boat ahead trailing a small rope
+astern to the one behind.  When this was caught, they would cast
+off from their net and heave in on the line till they were brought
+up to the boat in front.  So great was the speed at which we were
+travelling, however, that this was very slow work.  Sometimes the
+men would strain to their utmost and fail to get in an inch of the
+rope; at other times they came ahead more rapidly.
+
+When the four boats were near enough together for a man to pass
+from one to another, one Greek from each of three got into the
+nearest boat to us, taking his rifle with him.  This made five in
+the foremost boat, and it was plain that their intention was to
+board us.  This they undertook to do, by main strength and sweat,
+running hand over hand the float-line of a net.  And though it was
+slow, and they stopped frequently to rest, they gradually drew
+nearer.
+
+Charley smiled at their efforts, and said, "Give her the topsail,
+Ole."
+
+The cap at the mainmast head was broken out, and sheet and downhaul
+pulled flat, amid a scattering rifle fire from the boats; and the
+Mary Rebecca lay over and sprang ahead faster than ever.
+
+But the Greeks were undaunted.  Unable, at the increased speed, to
+draw themselves nearer by means of their hands, they rigged from
+the blocks of their boat sail what sailors call a "watch-tackle."
+One of them, held by the legs by his mates, would lean far over the
+bow and make the tackle fast to the float-line.  Then they would
+heave in on the tackle till the blocks were together, when the
+manoeuvre would be repeated.
+
+"Have to give her the staysail," Charley said.
+
+Ole Ericsen looked at the straining Mary Rebecca and shook his
+head.  "It will take der masts out of her," he said.
+
+"And we'll be taken out of her if you don't," Charley replied.
+
+Ole shot an anxious glance at his masts, another at the boat load
+of armed Greeks, and consented.
+
+The five men were in the bow of the boat--a bad place when a craft
+is towing.  I was watching the behavior of their boat as the great
+fisherman's staysail, far, far larger than the top-sail and used
+only in light breezes, was broken out.  As the Mary Rebecca lurched
+forward with a tremendous jerk, the nose of the boat ducked down
+into the water, and the men tumbled over one another in a wild rush
+into the stern to save the boat from being dragged sheer under
+water.
+
+"That settles them!" Charley remarked, though he was anxiously
+studying the behavior of the Mary Rebecca, which was being driven
+under far more canvas than she was rightly able to carry.
+
+"Next stop is Antioch!" announced the cheerful sailor, after the
+manner of a railway conductor.  "And next comes Merryweather!"
+
+"Come here, quick," Charley said to me.
+
+I crawled across the deck and stood upright beside him in the
+shelter of the sheet steel.
+
+"Feel in my inside pocket," he commanded, "and get my notebook.
+That's right.  Tear out a blank page and write what I tell you."
+
+And this is what I wrote:
+
+
+Telephone to Merryweather, to the sheriff, the constable, or the
+judge.  Tell them we are coming and to turn out the town.  Arm
+everybody.  Have them down on the wharf to meet us or we are gone
+gooses.
+
+
+"Now make it good and fast to that marlin-spike, and stand by to
+toss it ashore."
+
+I did as he directed.  By then we were close to Antioch.  The wind
+was shouting through our rigging, the Mary Rebecca was half over on
+her side and rushing ahead like an ocean greyhound.  The seafaring
+folk of Antioch had seen us breaking out topsail and staysail, a
+most reckless performance in such weather, and had hurried to the
+wharf-ends in little groups to find out what was the matter.
+
+Straight down the water front we boomed, Charley edging in till a
+man could almost leap ashore.  When he gave the signal I tossed the
+marlinspike.  It struck the planking of the wharf a resounding
+smash, bounced along fifteen or twenty feet, and was pounced upon
+by the amazed onlookers.
+
+It all happened in a flash, for the next minute Antioch was behind
+and we were heeling it up the San Joaquin toward Merryweather, six
+miles away.  The river straightened out here into its general
+easterly course, and we squared away before the wind, wing-and-wing
+once more, the foresail bellying out to starboard.
+
+Ole Ericsen seemed sunk into a state of stolid despair.  Charley
+and the two sailors were looking hopeful, as they had good reason
+to be.  Merryweather was a coal-mining town, and, it being Sunday,
+it was reasonable to expect the men to be in town.  Further, the
+coal-miners had never lost any love for the Greek fishermen, and
+were pretty certain to render us hearty assistance.
+
+We strained our eyes for a glimpse of the town, and the first sight
+we caught of it gave us immense relief.  The wharves were black
+with men.  As we came closer, we could see them still arriving,
+stringing down the main street, guns in their hands and on the run.
+Charley glanced astern at the fishermen with a look of ownership in
+his eye which till then had been missing.  The Greeks were plainly
+overawed by the display of armed strength and were putting their
+own rifles away.
+
+We took in topsail and staysail, dropped the main peak, and as we
+got abreast of the principal wharf jibed the mainsail.  The Mary
+Rebecca shot around into the wind, the captive fishermen describing
+a great arc behind her, and forged ahead till she lost way, when
+lines we're flung ashore and she was made fast.  This was
+accomplished under a hurricane of cheers from the delighted miners.
+
+Ole Ericsen heaved a great sigh.  "Ay never tank Ay see my wife
+never again," he confessed.
+
+"Why, we were never in any danger," said Charley.
+
+Ole looked at him incredulously.
+
+"Sure, I mean it," Charley went on.  "All we had to do, any time,
+was to let go our end--as I am going to do now, so that those
+Greeks can untangle their nets."
+
+He went below with a monkey-wrench, unscrewed the nut, and let the
+hook drop off.  When the Greeks had hauled their nets into their
+boats and made everything shipshape, a posse of citizens took them
+off our hands and led them away to jail.
+
+"Ay tank Ay ban a great big fool," said Ole Ericsen.  But he
+changed his mind when the admiring townspeople crowded aboard to
+shake hands with him, and a couple of enterprising newspaper men
+took photographs of the Mary Rebecca and her captain.
+
+
+
+DEMETRIOS CONTOS
+
+
+
+It must not be thought, from what I have told of the Greek
+fishermen, that they were altogether bad.  Far from it.  But they
+were rough men, gathered together in isolated communities and
+fighting with the elements for a livelihood.  They lived far away
+from the law and its workings, did not understand it, and thought
+it tyranny.  Especially did the fish laws seem tyrannical.  And
+because of this, they looked upon the men of the fish patrol as
+their natural enemies.
+
+We menaced their lives, or their living, which is the same thing,
+in many ways.  We confiscated illegal traps and nets, the materials
+of which had cost them considerable sums and the making of which
+required weeks of labor.  We prevented them from catching fish at
+many times and seasons, which was equivalent to preventing them
+from making as good a living as they might have made had we not
+been in existence.  And when we captured them, they were brought
+into the courts of law, where heavy cash fines were collected from
+them.  As a result, they hated us vindictively.  As the dog is the
+natural enemy of the cat, the snake of man, so were we of the fish
+patrol the natural enemies of the fishermen.
+
+But it is to show that they could act generously as well as hate
+bitterly that this story of Demetrios Contos is told.  Demetrios
+Contos lived in Vallejo.  Next to Big Alec, he was the largest,
+bravest, and most influential man among the Greeks.  He had given
+us no trouble, and I doubt if he would ever have clashed with us
+had he not invested in a new salmon boat.  This boat was the cause
+of all the trouble.  He had had it built upon his own model, in
+which the lines of the general salmon boat were somewhat modified.
+
+To his high elation he found his new boat very fast--in fact,
+faster than any other boat on the bay or rivers.  Forthwith he grew
+proud and boastful:  and, our raid with the Mary Rebecca on the
+Sunday salmon fishers having wrought fear in their hearts, he sent
+a challenge up to Benicia.  One of the local fishermen conveyed it
+to us; it was to the effect that Demetrios Contos would sail up
+from Vallejo on the following Sunday, and in the plain sight of
+Benicia set his net and catch salmon, and that Charley Le Grant,
+patrolman, might come and get him if he could.  Of course Charley
+and I had heard nothing of the new boat.  Our own boat was pretty
+fast, and we were not afraid to have a brush with any other that
+happened along.
+
+Sunday came.  The challenge had been bruited abroad, and the
+fishermen and seafaring folk of Benicia turned out to a man,
+crowding Steamboat Wharf till it looked like the grand stand at a
+football match.  Charley and I had been sceptical, but the fact of
+the crowd convinced us that there was something in Demetrios
+Contos's dare.
+
+In the afternoon, when the sea-breeze had picked up in strength,
+his sail hove into view as he bowled along before the wind.  He
+tacked a score of feet from the wharf, waved his hand theatrically,
+like a knight about to enter the lists, received a hearty cheer in
+return, and stood away into the Straits for a couple of hundred
+yards.  Then he lowered sail, and, drifting the boat sidewise by
+means of the wind, proceeded to set his net.  He did not set much
+of it, possibly fifty feet; yet Charley and I were thunderstruck at
+the man's effrontery.  We did not know at the time, but we learned
+afterward, that the net he used was old and worthless.  It COULD
+catch fish, true; but a catch of any size would have torn it to
+pieces.
+
+Charley shook his head and said:
+
+"I confess, it puzzles me.  What if he has out only fifty feet?  He
+could never get it in if we once started for him.  And why does he
+come here anyway, flaunting his law-breaking in our faces?  Right
+in our home town, too."
+
+Charley's voice took on an aggrieved tone, and he continued for
+some minutes to inveigh against the brazenness of Demetrios Contos.
+
+In the meantime, the man in question was lolling in the stern of
+his boat and watching the net floats.  When a large fish is meshed
+in a gill-net, the floats by their agitation advertise the fact.
+And they evidently advertised it to Demetrios, for he pulled in
+about a dozen feet of net, and held aloft for a moment, before he
+flung it into the bottom of the boat, a big, glistening salmon.  It
+was greeted by the audience on the wharf with round after round of
+cheers.  This was more than Charley could stand.
+
+"Come on, lad," he called to me; and we lost no time jumping into
+our salmon boat and getting up sail.
+
+The crowd shouted warning to Demetrios, and as we darted out from
+the wharf we saw him slash his worthless net clear with a long
+knife.  His sail was all ready to go up, and a moment later it
+fluttered in the sunshine.  He ran aft, drew in the sheet, and
+filled on the long tack toward the Contra Costa Hills.
+
+By this time we were not more than thirty feet astern.  Charley was
+jubilant.  He knew our boat was fast, and he knew, further, that in
+fine sailing few men were his equals.  He was confident that we
+should surely catch Demetrios, and I shared his confidence.  But
+somehow we did not seem to gain.
+
+It was a pretty sailing breeze.  We were gliding sleekly through
+the water, but Demetrios was slowly sliding away from us.  And not
+only was he going faster, but he was eating into the wind a
+fraction of a point closer than we.  This was sharply impressed
+upon us when he went about under the Contra Costa Hills and passed
+us on the other tack fully one hundred feet dead to windward.
+
+"Whew!" Charley exclaimed.  "Either that boat is a daisy, or we've
+got a five-gallon coal-oil can fast to our keel!"
+
+It certainly looked it one way or the other.  And by the time
+Demetrios made the Sonoma Hills, on the other side of the Straits,
+we were so hopelessly outdistanced that Charley told me to slack
+off the sheet, and we squared away for Benicia.  The fishermen on
+Steamboat Wharf showered us with ridicule when we returned and tied
+up.  Charley and I got out and walked away, feeling rather
+sheepish, for it is a sore stroke to one's pride when he thinks he
+has a good boat and knows how to sail it, and another man comes
+along and beats him.
+
+Charley mooned over it for a couple of days; then word was brought
+to us, as before, that on the next Sunday Demetrios Contos would
+repeat his performance.  Charley roused himself.  He had our boat
+out of the water, cleaned and repainted its bottom, made a trifling
+alteration about the centre-board, overhauled the running gear, and
+sat up nearly all of Saturday night sewing on a new and much larger
+sail.  So large did he make it, in fact, that additional ballast
+was imperative, and we stowed away nearly five hundred extra pounds
+of old railroad iron in the bottom of the boat.
+
+Sunday came, and with it came Demetrios Contos, to break the law
+defiantly in open day.  Again we had the afternoon sea-breeze, and
+again Demetrios cut loose some forty or more feet of his rotten
+net, and got up sail and under way under our very noses.  But he
+had anticipated Charley's move, and his own sail peaked higher than
+ever, while a whole extra cloth had been added to the after leech.
+
+It was nip and tuck across to the Contra Costa Hills, neither of us
+seeming to gain or to lose.  But by the time we had made the return
+tack to the Sonoma Hills, we could see that, while we footed it at
+about equal speed, Demetrios had eaten into the wind the least bit
+more than we.  Yet Charley was sailing our boat as finely and
+delicately as it was possible to sail it, and getting more out of
+it than he ever had before.
+
+Of course, he could have drawn his revolver and fired at Demetrios;
+but we had long since found it contrary to our natures to shoot at
+a fleeing man guilty of only a petty offence.  Also a sort of tacit
+agreement seemed to have been reached between the patrolmen and the
+fishermen.  If we did not shoot while they ran away, they, in turn,
+did not fight if we once laid hands on them.  Thus Demetrios Contos
+ran away from us, and we did no more than try our best to overtake
+him; and, in turn, if our boat proved faster than his, or was
+sailed better, he would, we knew, make no resistance when we caught
+up with him.
+
+With our large sails and the healthy breeze romping up the
+Carquinez Straits, we found that our sailing was what is called
+"ticklish."  We had to be constantly on the alert to avoid a
+capsize, and while Charley steered I held the main-sheet in my hand
+with but a single turn round a pin, ready to let go at any moment.
+Demetrios, we could see, sailing his boat alone, had his hands
+full.
+
+But it was a vain undertaking for us to attempt to catch him.  Out
+of his inner consciousness he had evolved a boat that was better
+than ours.  And though Charley sailed fully as well, if not the
+least bit better, the boat he sailed was not so good as the
+Greek's.
+
+"Slack away the sheet," Charley commanded; and as our boat fell off
+before the wind, Demetrios's mocking laugh floated down to us.
+
+Charley shook his head, saying, "It's no use.  Demetrios has the
+better boat.  If he tries his performance again, we must meet it
+with some new scheme."
+
+This time it was my imagination that came to the rescue.
+
+"What's the matter," I suggested, on the Wednesday following, "with
+my chasing Demetrios in the boat next Sunday, while you wait for
+him on the wharf at Vallejo when he arrives?"
+
+Charley considered it a moment and slapped his knee.
+
+"A good idea!  You're beginning to use that head of yours.  A
+credit to your teacher, I must say."
+
+"But you mustn't chase him too far," he went on, the next moment,
+"or he'll head out into San Pablo Bay instead of running home to
+Vallejo, and there I'll be, standing lonely on the wharf and
+waiting in vain for him to arrive."
+
+On Thursday Charley registered an objection to my plan.
+
+"Everybody'll know I've gone to Vallejo, and you can depend upon it
+that Demetrios will know, too.  I'm afraid we'll have to give up
+the idea."
+
+This objection was only too valid, and for the rest of the day I
+struggled under my disappointment.  But that night a new way seemed
+to open to me, and in my eagerness I awoke Charley from a sound
+sleep.
+
+"Well," he grunted, "what's the matter?  House afire?"
+
+"No," I replied, "but my head is.  Listen to this.  On Sunday you
+and I will be around Benicia up to the very moment Demetrios's sail
+heaves into sight.  This will lull everybody's suspicions.  Then,
+when Demetrios's sail does heave in sight, do you stroll leisurely
+away and up-town.  All the fishermen will think you're beaten and
+that you know you're beaten."
+
+"So far, so good," Charley commented, while I paused to catch
+breath.
+
+"And very good indeed," I continued proudly.  "You stroll
+carelessly up-town, but when you're once out of sight you leg it
+for all you're worth for Dan Maloney's.  Take the little mare of
+his, and strike out on the country road for Vallejo.  The road's in
+fine condition, and you can make it in quicker time than Demetrios
+can beat all the way down against the wind."
+
+"And I'll arrange right away for the mare, first thing in the
+morning," Charley said, accepting the modified plan without
+hesitation.
+
+"But, I say," he said, a little later, this time waking ME out of a
+sound sleep.
+
+I could hear him chuckling in the dark.
+
+"I say, lad, isn't it rather a novelty for the fish patrol to be
+taking to horseback?"
+
+"Imagination," I answered.  "It's what you're always preaching--
+'keep thinking one thought ahead of the other fellow, and you're
+bound to win out.'"
+
+"He! he!" he chuckled.  "And if one thought ahead, including a
+mare, doesn't take the other fellow's breath away this time, I'm
+not your humble servant, Charley Le Grant."
+
+"But can you manage the boat alone?" he asked, on Friday.
+"Remember, we've a ripping big sail on her."
+
+I argued my proficiency so well that he did not refer to the matter
+again till Saturday, when he suggested removing one whole cloth
+from the after leech.  I guess it was the disappointment written on
+my face that made him desist; for I, also, had a pride in my boat-
+sailing abilities, and I was almost wild to get out alone with the
+big sail and go tearing down the Carquinez Straits in the wake of
+the flying Greek.
+
+As usual, Sunday and Demetrios Contos arrived together.  It had
+become the regular thing for the fishermen to assemble on Steamboat
+Wharf to greet his arrival and to laugh at our discomfiture.  He
+lowered sail a couple of hundred yards out and set his customary
+fifty feet of rotten net.
+
+"I suppose this nonsense will keep up as long as his old net holds
+out," Charley grumbled, with intention, in the hearing of several
+of the Greeks.
+
+"Den I give-a heem my old-a net-a," one of them spoke up, promptly
+and maliciously,
+
+"I don't care," Charley answered.  "I've got some old net myself he
+can have--if he'll come around and ask for it."
+
+They all laughed at this, for they could afford to be sweet-
+tempered with a man so badly outwitted as Charley was.
+
+"Well, so long, lad," Charley called to me a moment later.  "I
+think I'll go up-town to Maloney's."
+
+"Let me take the boat out?" I asked.
+
+"If you want to," was his answer, as he turned on his heel and
+walked slowly away.
+
+Demetrios pulled two large salmon out of his net, and I jumped into
+the boat.  The fishermen crowded around in a spirit of fun, and
+when I started to get up sail overwhelmed me with all sorts of
+jocular advice.  They even offered extravagant bets to one another
+that I would surely catch Demetrios, and two of them, styling
+themselves the committee of judges, gravely asked permission to
+come along with me to see how I did it.
+
+But I was in no hurry.  I waited to give Charley all the time I
+could, and I pretended dissatisfaction with the stretch of the sail
+and slightly shifted the small tackle by which the huge sprit
+forces up the peak.  It was not until I was sure that Charley had
+reached Dan Maloney's and was on the little mare's back, that I
+cast off from the wharf and gave the big sail to the wind.  A stout
+puff filled it and suddenly pressed the lee gunwale down till a
+couple of buckets of water came inboard.  A little thing like this
+will happen to the best small-boat sailors, and yet, though I
+instantly let go the sheet and righted, I was cheered
+sarcastically, as though I had been guilty of a very awkward
+blunder.
+
+When Demetrios saw only one person in the fish patrol boat, and
+that one a boy, he proceeded to play with me.  Making a short tack
+out, with me not thirty feet behind, he returned, with his sheet a
+little free, to Steamboat Wharf.  And there he made short tacks,
+and turned and twisted and ducked around, to the great delight of
+his sympathetic audience.  I was right behind him all the time, and
+I dared to do whatever he did, even when he squared away before the
+wind and jibed his big sail over--a most dangerous trick with such
+a sail in such a wind.
+
+He depended upon the brisk sea breeze and the strong ebb-tide,
+which together kicked up a nasty sea, to bring me to grief.  But I
+was on my mettle, and never in all my life did I sail a boat better
+than on that day.  I was keyed up to concert pitch, my brain was
+working smoothly and quickly, my hands never fumbled once, and it
+seemed that I almost divined the thousand little things which a
+small-boat sailor must be taking into consideration every second.
+
+It was Demetrios who came to grief instead.  Something went wrong
+with his centre-board, so that it jammed in the case and would not
+go all the way down.  In a moment's breathing space, which he had
+gained from me by a clever trick, I saw him working impatiently
+with the centre-board, trying to force it down.  I gave him little
+time, and he was compelled quickly to return to the tiller and
+sheet.
+
+The centre-board made him anxious.  He gave over playing with me,
+and started on the long beat to Vallejo.  To my joy, on the first
+long tack across, I found that I could eat into the wind just a
+little bit closer than he.  Here was where another man in the boat
+would have been of value to him; for, with me but a few feet
+astern, he did not dare let go the tiller and run amidships to try
+to force down the centre-board.
+
+Unable to hang on as close in the eye of the wind as formerly, he
+proceeded to slack his sheet a trifle and to ease off a bit, in
+order to outfoot me.  This I permitted him to do till I had worked
+to windward, when I bore down upon him.  As I drew close, he
+feinted at coming about.  This led me to shoot into the wind to
+forestall him.  But it was only a feint, cleverly executed, and he
+held back to his course while I hurried to make up lost ground.
+
+He was undeniably smarter than I when it came to manoeuvring.  Time
+after time I all but had him, and each time he tricked me and
+escaped.  Besides, the wind was freshening, constantly, and each of
+us had his hands full to avoid capsizing.  As for my boat, it could
+not have been kept afloat but for the extra ballast.  I sat cocked
+over the weather gunwale, tiller in one hand and sheet in the
+other; and the sheet, with a single turn around a pin, I was very
+often forced to let go in the severer puffs.  This allowed the sail
+to spill the wind, which was equivalent to taking off so much
+driving power, and of course I lost ground.  My consolation was
+that Demetrios was as often compelled to do the same thing.
+
+The strong ebb-tide, racing down the Straits in the teeth of the
+wind, caused an unusually heavy and spiteful sea, which dashed
+aboard continually.  I was dripping wet, and even the sail was wet
+half-way up the after leech.  Once I did succeed in outmanoeuvring
+Demetrios, so that my bow bumped into him amidships.  Here was
+where I should have had another man.  Before I could run forward
+and leap aboard, he shoved the boats apart with an oar, laughing
+mockingly in my face as he did so.
+
+We were now at the mouth of the Straits, in a bad stretch of water.
+Here the Vallejo Straits and the Carquinez Straits rushed directly
+at each other.  Through the first flowed all the water of Napa
+River and the great tide-lands; through the second flowed all the
+water of Suisun Bay and the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.  And
+where such immense bodies of water, flowing swiftly, clashed
+together, a terrible tide-rip was produced.  To make it worse, the
+wind howled up San Pablo Bay for fifteen miles and drove in a
+tremendous sea upon the tide-rip.
+
+Conflicting currents tore about in all directions, colliding,
+forming whirlpools, sucks, and boils, and shooting up spitefully
+into hollow waves which fell aboard as often from leeward as from
+windward.  And through it all, confused, driven into a madness of
+motion, thundered the great smoking seas from San Pablo Bay.
+
+I was as wildly excited as the water.  The boat was behaving
+splendidly, leaping and lurching through the welter like a race-
+horse.  I could hardly contain myself with the joy of it.  The huge
+sail, the howling wind, the driving seas, the plunging boat--I, a
+pygmy, a mere speck in the midst of it, was mastering the elemental
+strife, flying through it and over it, triumphant and victorious.
+
+And just then, as I roared along like a conquering hero, the boat
+received a frightful smash and came instantly to a dead stop.  I
+was flung forward and into the bottom.  As I sprang up I caught a
+fleeting glimpse of a greenish, barnacle-covered object, and knew
+it at once for what it was, that terror of navigation, a sunken
+pile.  No man may guard against such a thing.  Water-logged and
+floating just beneath the surface, it was impossible to sight it in
+the troubled water in time to escape.
+
+The whole bow of the boat must have been crushed in, for in a few
+seconds the boat was half full.  Then a couple of seas filled it,
+and it sank straight down, dragged to bottom by the heavy ballast.
+So quickly did it all happen that I was entangled in the sail and
+drawn under.  When I fought my way to the surface, suffocating, my
+lungs almost bursting, I could see nothing of the oars.  They must
+have been swept away by the chaotic currents.  I saw Demetrios
+Contos looking back from his boat, and heard the vindictive and
+mocking tones of his voice as he shouted exultantly.  He held
+steadily on his course, leaving me to perish.
+
+There was nothing to do but to swim for it, which, in that wild
+confusion, was at the best a matter of but a few moments.  Holding
+my breath and working with my hands, I managed to get off my heavy
+sea-boots and my jacket.  Yet there was very little breath I could
+catch to hold, and I swiftly discovered that it was not so much a
+matter of swimming as of breathing.
+
+I was beaten and buffeted, smashed under by the great San Pablo
+whitecaps, and strangled by the hollow tide-rip waves which flung
+themselves into my eyes, nose, and mouth.  Then the strange sucks
+would grip my legs and drag me under, to spout me up in some fierce
+boiling, where, even as I tried to catch my breath, a great
+whitecap would crash down upon my head.
+
+It was impossible to survive any length of time.  I was breathing
+more water than air, and drowning all the time.  My senses began to
+leave me, my head to whirl around.  I struggled on, spasmodically,
+instinctively, and was barely half conscious when I felt myself
+caught by the shoulders and hauled over the gunwale of a boat.
+
+For some time I lay across a seat where I had been flung, face
+downward, and with the water running out of my mouth.  After a
+while, still weak and faint, I turned around to see who was my
+rescuer.  And there, in the stern, sheet in one hand and tiller in
+the other, grinning and nodding good-naturedly, sat Demetrios
+Contos.  He had intended to leave me to drown,--he said so
+afterward,--but his better self had fought the battle, conquered,
+and sent him back to me.
+
+"You all-a right?" he asked.
+
+I managed to shape a "yes" on my lips, though I could not yet
+speak.
+
+"You sail-a de boat verr-a good-a," he said.  "So good-a as a man."
+
+A compliment from Demetrios Contos was a compliment indeed, and I
+keenly appreciated it, though I could only nod my head in
+acknowledgment.
+
+We held no more conversation, for I was busy recovering and he was
+busy with the boat.  He ran in to the wharf at Vallejo, made the
+boat fast, and helped me out.  Then it was, as we both stood on the
+wharf, that Charley stepped out from behind a net-rack and put his
+hand on Demetrios Contos's arm.
+
+"He saved my life, Charley," I protested; "and I don't think he
+ought to be arrested."
+
+A puzzled expression came into Charley's face, which cleared
+immediately after, in a way it had when he made up his mind.
+
+"I can't help it, lad," he said kindly.  "I can't go back on my
+duty, and it's plain duty to arrest him.  To-day is Sunday; there
+are two salmon in his boat which he caught to-day.  What else can I
+do?"
+
+"But he saved my life," I persisted, unable to make any other
+argument.
+
+Demetrios Contos's face went black with rage when he learned
+Charley's judgment.  He had a sense of being unfairly treated.  The
+better part of his nature had triumphed, he had performed a
+generous act and saved a helpless enemy, and in return the enemy
+was taking him to jail.
+
+Charley and I were out of sorts with each other when we went back
+to Benicia.  I stood for the spirit of the law and not the letter;
+but by the letter Charley made his stand.  As far as he could see,
+there was nothing else for him to do.  The law said distinctly that
+no salmon should be caught on Sunday.  He was a patrolman, and it
+was his duty to enforce that law.  That was all there was to it.
+He had done his duty, and his conscience was clear.  Nevertheless,
+the whole thing seemed unjust to me, and I felt very sorry for
+Demetrios Contos.
+
+Two days later we went down to Vallejo to the trial.  I had to go
+along as a witness, and it was the most hateful task that I ever
+performed in my life when I testified on the witness stand to
+seeing Demetrios catch the two salmon Charley had captured him
+with.
+
+Demetrios had engaged a lawyer, but his case was hopeless.  The
+jury was out only fifteen minutes, and returned a verdict of
+guilty.  The judge sentenced Demetrios to pay a fine of one hundred
+dollars or go to jail for fifty days.
+
+Charley stepped up to the clerk of the court.  "I want to pay that
+fine," he said, at the same time placing five twenty-dollar gold
+pieces on the desk.  "It--it was the only way out of it, lad," he
+stammered, turning to me.
+
+The moisture rushed into my eyes as I seized his hand.  "I want to
+pay--" I began.
+
+"To pay your half?" he interrupted.  "I certainly shall expect you
+to pay it."
+
+In the meantime Demetrios had been informed by his lawyer that his
+fee likewise had been paid by Charley.
+
+Demetrios came over to shake Charley's hand, and all his warm
+Southern blood flamed in his face.  Then, not to be outdone in
+generosity, he insisted on paying his fine and lawyer's fee
+himself, and flew half-way into a passion because Charley refused
+to let him.
+
+More than anything else we ever did, I think, this action of
+Charley's impressed upon the fishermen the deeper significance of
+the law.  Also Charley was raised high in their esteem, while I
+came in for a little share of praise as a boy who knew how to sail
+a boat.  Demetrios Contos not only never broke the law again, but
+he became a very good friend of ours, and on more than one occasion
+he ran up to Benicia to have a gossip with us.
+
+
+
+YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF
+
+
+
+"I'm not wanting to dictate to you, lad," Charley said; "but I'm
+very much against your making a last raid.  You've gone safely
+through rough times with rough men, and it would be a shame to have
+something happen to you at the very end."
+
+"But how can I get out of making a last raid?" I demanded, with the
+cocksureness of youth.  "There always has to be a last, you know,
+to anything."
+
+Charley crossed his legs, leaned back, and considered the problem.
+"Very true.  But why not call the capture of Demetrios Contos the
+last?  You're back from it safe and sound and hearty, for all your
+good wetting, and--and--"  His voice broke and he could not speak
+for a moment.  "And I could never forgive myself if anything
+happened to you now."
+
+I laughed at Charley's fears while I gave in to the claims of his
+affection, and agreed to consider the last raid already performed.
+We had been together for two years, and now I was leaving the fish
+patrol in order to go back and finish my education.  I had earned
+and saved money to put me through three years at the high school,
+and though the beginning of the term was several months away, I
+intended doing a lot of studying for the entrance examinations.
+
+My belongings were packed snugly in a sea-chest, and I was all
+ready to buy my ticket and ride down on the train to Oakland, when
+Neil Partington arrived in Benicia.  The Reindeer was needed
+immediately for work far down on the Lower Bay, and Neil said he
+intended to run straight for Oakland.  As that was his home and as
+I was to live with his family while going to school, he saw no
+reason, he said, why I should not put my chest aboard and come
+along.
+
+So the chest went aboard, and in the middle of the afternoon we
+hoisted the Reindeer's big mainsail and cast off.  It was
+tantalizing fall weather.  The sea-breeze, which had blown steadily
+all summer, was gone, and in its place were capricious winds and
+murky skies which made the time of arriving anywhere extremely
+problematical.  We started on the first of the ebb, and as we
+slipped down the Carquinez Straits, I looked my last for some time
+upon Benicia and the bight at Turner's Shipyard, where we had
+besieged the Lancashire Queen, and had captured Big Alec, the King
+of the Greeks.  And at the mouth of the Straits I looked with not a
+little interest upon the spot where a few days before I should have
+drowned but for the good that was in the nature of Demetrios
+Contos.
+
+A great wall of fog advanced across San Pablo Bay to meet us, and
+in a few minutes the Reindeer was running blindly through the damp
+obscurity.  Charley, who was steering, seemed to have an instinct
+for that kind of work.  How he did it, he himself confessed that he
+did not know; but he had a way of calculating winds, currents,
+distance, time, drift, and sailing speed that was truly marvellous.
+
+"It looks as though it were lifting," Neil Partington said, a
+couple of hours after we had entered the fog.  "Where do you say we
+are, Charley?"
+
+Charley looked at his watch, "Six o'clock, and three hours more of
+ebb," he remarked casually.
+
+"But where do you say we are?" Neil insisted.
+
+Charley pondered a moment, and then answered, "The tide has edged
+us over a bit out of our course, but if the fog lifts right now, as
+it is going to lift, you'll find we're not more than a thousand
+miles off McNear's Landing."
+
+"You might be a little more definite by a few miles, anyway," Neil
+grumbled, showing by his tone that he disagreed.
+
+"All right, then," Charley said, conclusively, "not less than a
+quarter of a mile, not more than a half."
+
+The wind freshened with a couple of little puffs, and the fog
+thinned perceptibly.
+
+"McNear's is right off there," Charley said, pointing directly into
+the fog on our weather beam.
+
+The three of us were peering intently in that direction, when the
+Reindeer struck with a dull crash and came to a standstill.  We ran
+forward, and found her bowsprit entangled in the tanned rigging of
+a short, chunky mast.  She had collided, head on, with a Chinese
+junk lying at anchor.
+
+At the moment we arrived forward, five Chinese, like so many bees,
+came swarming out of the little 'tween-decks cabin, the sleep still
+in their eyes.
+
+Leading them came a big, muscular man, conspicuous for his pock-
+marked face and the yellow silk handkerchief swathed about his
+head.  It was Yellow Handkerchief, the Chinaman whom we had
+arrested for illegal shrimp-fishing the year before, and who, at
+that time, had nearly sunk the Reindeer, as he had nearly sunk it
+now by violating the rules of navigation.
+
+"What d'ye mean, you yellow-faced heathen, lying here in a fairway
+without a horn a-going?" Charley cried hotly.
+
+"Mean?" Neil calmly answered.  "Just take a look--that's what he
+means."
+
+Our eyes followed the direction indicated by Neil's finger, and we
+saw the open amidships of the junk, half filled, as we found on
+closer examination, with fresh-caught shrimps.  Mingled with the
+shrimps were myriads of small fish, from a quarter of an inch
+upward in size.
+
+Yellow Handkerchief had lifted the trap-net at high-water slack,
+and, taking advantage of the concealment offered by the fog, had
+boldly been lying by, waiting to lift the net again at low-water
+slack.
+
+"Well," Neil hummed and hawed, "in all my varied and extensive
+experience as a fish patrolman, I must say this is the easiest
+capture I ever made.  What'll we do with them, Charley?"
+
+"Tow the junk into San Rafael, of course," came the answer.
+Charley turned to me.  "You stand by the junk, lad, and I'll pass
+you a towing line.  If the wind doesn't fail us, we'll make the
+creek before the tide gets too low, sleep at San Rafael, and arrive
+in Oakland to-morrow by midday."
+
+So saying, Charley and Neil returned to the Reindeer and got under
+way, the junk towing astern.  I went aft and took charge of the
+prize, steering by means of an antiquated tiller and a rudder with
+large, diamond-shaped holes, through which the water rushed back
+and forth.
+
+By now the last of the fog had vanished, and Charley's estimate of
+our position was confirmed by the sight of McNear's Landing a short
+half-mile away.  Following along the west shore, we rounded Point
+Pedro in plain view of the Chinese shrimp villages, and a great to-
+do was raised when they saw one of their junks towing behind the
+familiar fish patrol sloop.
+
+The wind, coming off the land, was rather puffy and uncertain, and
+it would have been more to our advantage had it been stronger.  San
+Rafael Creek, up which we had to go to reach the town and turn over
+our prisoners to the authorities, ran through wide-stretching
+marshes, and was difficult to navigate on a falling tide, while at
+low tide it was impossible to navigate at all.  So, with the tide
+already half-ebbed, it was necessary for us to make time.  This the
+heavy junk prevented, lumbering along behind and holding the
+Reindeer back by just so much dead weight.
+
+"Tell those coolies to get up that sail," Charley finally called to
+me.  "We don't want to hang up on the mud flats for the rest of the
+night."
+
+I repeated the order to Yellow Handkerchief, who mumbled it huskily
+to his men.  He was suffering from a bad cold, which doubled him up
+in convulsive coughing spells and made his eyes heavy and
+bloodshot.  This made him more evil-looking than ever, and when he
+glared viciously at me I remembered with a shiver the close shave I
+had had with him at the time of his previous arrest.
+
+His crew sullenly tailed on to the halyards, and the strange,
+outlandish sail, lateen in rig and dyed a warm brown, rose in the
+air.  We were sailing on the wind, and when Yellow Handkerchief
+flattened down the sheet the junk forged ahead and the tow-line
+went slack.  Fast as the Reindeer could sail, the junk outsailed
+her; and to avoid running her down I hauled a little closer on the
+wind.  But the junk likewise outpointed, and in a couple of minutes
+I was abreast of the Reindeer and to windward.  The tow-line had
+now tautened, at right angles to the two boats, and the predicament
+was laughable.
+
+"Cast off!" I shouted.
+
+Charley hesitated.
+
+"It's all right," I added.  "Nothing can happen.  We'll make the
+creek on this tack, and you'll be right behind me all the way up to
+San Rafael."
+
+At this Charley cast off, and Yellow Handkerchief sent one of his
+men forward to haul in the line.  In the gathering darkness I could
+just make out the mouth of San Rafael Creek, and by the time we
+entered it I could barely see its banks.  The Reindeer was fully
+five minutes astern, and we continued to leave her astern as we
+beat up the narrow, winding channel.  With Charley behind us, it
+seemed I had little to fear from my five prisoners; but the
+darkness prevented my keeping a sharp eye on them, so I transferred
+my revolver from my trousers pocket to the side pocket of my coat,
+where I could more quickly put my hand on it.
+
+Yellow Handkerchief was the one I feared, and that he knew it and
+made use of it, subsequent events will show.  He was sitting a few
+feet away from me, on what then happened to be the weather side of
+the junk.  I could scarcely see the outlines of his form, but I
+soon became convinced that he was slowly, very slowly, edging
+closer to me.  I watched him carefully.  Steering with my left
+hand, I slipped my right into my pocket and got hold of the
+revolver.
+
+I saw him shift along for a couple of inches, and I was just about
+to order him back--the words were trembling on the tip of my
+tongue--when I was struck with great force by a heavy figure that
+had leaped through the air upon me from the lee side.  It was one
+of the crew.  He pinioned my right arm so that I could not withdraw
+my hand from my pocket, and at the same time clapped his other hand
+over my mouth.  Of course, I could have struggled away from him and
+freed my hand or gotten my mouth clear so that I might cry an
+alarm, but in a trice Yellow Handkerchief was on top of me.
+
+I struggled around to no purpose in the bottom of the junk, while
+my legs and arms were tied and my mouth securely bound in what I
+afterward found to be a cotton shirt.  Then I was left lying in the
+bottom.  Yellow Handkerchief took the tiller, issuing his orders in
+whispers; and from our position at the time, and from the
+alteration of the sail, which I could dimly make out above me as a
+blot against the stars, I knew the junk was being headed into the
+mouth of a small slough which emptied at that point into San Rafael
+Creek.
+
+In a couple of minutes we ran softly alongside the bank, and the
+sail was silently lowered.  The Chinese kept very quiet.  Yellow
+Handkerchief sat down in the bottom alongside of me, and I could
+feel him straining to repress his raspy, hacking cough.  Possibly
+seven or eight minutes later I heard Charley's voice as the
+Reindeer went past the mouth of the slough.
+
+"I can't tell you how relieved I am," I could plainly hear him
+saying to Neil, "that the lad has finished with the fish patrol
+without accident."
+
+Here Neil said something which I could not catch, and then
+Charley's voice went on:
+
+"The youngster takes naturally to the water, and if, when he
+finishes high school, he takes a course in navigation and goes deep
+sea, I see no reason why he shouldn't rise to be master of the
+finest and biggest ship afloat."
+
+It was all very flattering to me, but lying there, bound and gagged
+by my own prisoners, with the voices growing faint and fainter as
+the Reindeer slipped on through the darkness toward San Rafael, I
+must say I was not in quite the proper situation to enjoy my
+smiling future.  With the Reindeer went my last hope.  What was to
+happen next I could not imagine, for the Chinese were a different
+race from mine, and from what I knew I was confident that fair play
+was no part of their make-up.
+
+After waiting a few minutes longer, the crew hoisted the lateen
+sail, and Yellow Handkerchief steered down toward the mouth of San
+Rafael Creek.  The tide was getting lower, and he had difficulty in
+escaping the mud-banks.  I was hoping he would run aground, but he
+succeeded in making the Bay without accident.
+
+As we passed out of the creek a noisy discussion arose, which I
+knew related to me.  Yellow Handkerchief was vehement, but the
+other four as vehemently opposed him.  It was very evident that he
+advocated doing away with me and that they were afraid of the
+consequences.  I was familiar enough with the Chinese character to
+know that fear alone restrained them.  But what plan they offered
+in place of Yellow Handkerchief's murderous one, I could not make
+out.
+
+My feelings, as my fate hung in the balance, may be guessed.  The
+discussion developed into a quarrel, in the midst of which Yellow
+Handkerchief unshipped the heavy tiller and sprang toward me.  But
+his four companions threw themselves between, and a clumsy struggle
+took place for possession of the tiller.  In the end Yellow
+Handkerchief was overcome, and sullenly returned to the steering,
+while they soundly berated him for his rashness.
+
+Not long after, the sail was run down and the junk slowly urged
+forward by means of the sweeps.  I felt it ground gently on the
+soft mud.  Three of the Chinese--they all wore long sea-boots--got
+over the side, and the other two passed me across the rail.  With
+Yellow Handkerchief at my legs and his two companions at my
+shoulders, they began to flounder along through the mud.  After
+some time their feet struck firmer footing, and I knew they were
+carrying me up some beach.  The location of this beach was not
+doubtful in my mind.  It could be none other than one of the Marin
+Islands, a group of rocky islets which lay off the Marin County
+shore.
+
+When they reached the firm sand that marked high tide, I was
+dropped, and none too gently.  Yellow Handkerchief kicked me
+spitefully in the ribs, and then the trio floundered back through
+the mud to the junk.  A moment later I heard the sail go up and
+slat in the wind as they drew in the sheet.  Then silence fell, and
+I was left to my own devices for getting free.
+
+I remembered having seen tricksters writhe and squirm out of ropes
+with which they were bound, but though I writhed and squirmed like
+a good fellow, the knots remained as hard as ever, and there was no
+appreciable slack.  In the course of my squirming, however, I
+rolled over upon a heap of clam-shells--the remains, evidently, of
+some yachting party's clam-bake.  This gave me an idea.  My hands
+were tied behind my back; and, clutching a shell in them, I rolled
+over and over, up the beach, till I came to the rocks I knew to be
+there.
+
+Rolling around and searching, I finally discovered a narrow
+crevice, into which I shoved the shell.  The edge of it was sharp,
+and across the sharp edge I proceeded to saw the rope that bound my
+wrists.  The edge of the shell was also brittle, and I broke it by
+bearing too heavily upon it.  Then I rolled back to the heap and
+returned with as many shells as I could carry in both hands.  I
+broke many shells, cut my hands a number of times, and got cramps
+in my legs from my strained position and my exertions.
+
+While I was suffering from the cramps, and resting, I heard a
+familiar halloo drift across the water.  It was Charley, searching
+for me.  The gag in my mouth prevented me from replying, and I
+could only lie there, helplessly fuming, while he rowed past the
+island and his voice slowly lost itself in the distance.
+
+I returned to the sawing process, and at the end of half an hour
+succeeded in severing the rope.  The rest was easy.  My hands once
+free, it was a matter of minutes to loosen my legs and to take the
+gag out of my mouth.  I ran around the island to make sure it WAS
+an island and not by any chance a portion of the mainland.  An
+island it certainly was, one of the Marin group, fringed with a
+sandy beach and surrounded by a sea of mud.  Nothing remained but
+to wait till daylight and to keep warm; for it was a cold, raw
+night for California, with just enough wind to pierce the skin and
+cause one to shiver.
+
+To keep up the circulation, I ran around the island a dozen times
+or so, and clambered across its rocky backbone as many times more--
+all of which was of greater service to me, as I afterward
+discovered, than merely to warm me up.  In the midst of this
+exercise I wondered if I had lost anything out of my pockets while
+rolling over and over in the sand.  A search showed the absence of
+my revolver and pocket-knife.  The first Yellow Handkerchief had
+taken; but the knife had been lost in the sand.
+
+I was hunting for it when the sound of rowlocks came to my ears.
+At first, of course, I thought of Charley; but on second thought I
+knew Charley would be calling out as he rowed along.  A sudden
+premonition of danger seized me.  The Marin Islands are lonely
+places; chance visitors in the dead of night are hardly to be
+expected.  What if it were Yellow Handkerchief?  The sound made by
+the rowlocks grew more distinct.  I crouched in the sand and
+listened intently.  The boat, which I judged a small skiff from the
+quick stroke of the oars, was landing in the mud about fifty yards
+up the beach.  I heard a raspy, hacking cough, and my heart stood
+still.  It was Yellow Handkerchief.  Not to be robbed of his
+revenge by his more cautious companions, he had stolen away from
+the village and come back alone.
+
+I did some swift thinking.  I was unarmed and helpless on a tiny
+islet, and a yellow barbarian, whom I had reason to fear, was
+coming after me.  Any place was safer than the island, and I turned
+instinctively to the water, or rather to the mud.  As he began to
+flounder ashore through the mud, I started to flounder out into it,
+going over the same course which the Chinese had taken in landing
+me and in returning to the junk.
+
+Yellow Handkerchief, believing me to be lying tightly bound,
+exercised no care, but came ashore noisily.  This helped me, for,
+under the shield of his noise and making no more myself than
+necessary, I managed to cover fifty feet by the time he had made
+the beach.  Here I lay down in the mud.  It was cold and clammy,
+and made me shiver, but I did not care to stand up and run the risk
+of being discovered by his sharp eyes.
+
+He walked down the beach straight to where he had left me lying,
+and I had a fleeting feeling of regret at not being able to see his
+surprise when he did not find me.  But it was a very fleeting
+regret, for my teeth were chattering with the cold.
+
+What his movements were after that I had largely to deduce from the
+facts of the situation, for I could scarcely see him in the dim
+starlight.  But I was sure that the first thing he did was to make
+the circuit of the beach to learn if landings had been made by
+other boats.  This he would have known at once by the tracks
+through the mud.
+
+Convinced that no boat had removed me from the island, he next
+started to find out what had become of me.  Beginning at the pile
+of clamshells, he lighted matches to trace my tracks in the sand.
+At such times I could see his villanous face plainly, and, when the
+sulphur from the matches irritated his lungs, between the raspy
+cough that followed and the clammy mud in which I was lying, I
+confess I shivered harder than ever.
+
+The multiplicity of my footprints puzzled him.  Then the idea that
+I might be out in the mud must have struck him, for he waded out a
+few yards in my direction, and, stooping, with his eyes searched
+the dim surface long and carefully.  He could not have been more
+than fifteen feet from me, and had he lighted a match he would
+surely have discovered me.
+
+He returned to the beach and clambered about, over the rocky
+backbone, again hunting for me with lighted matches, The closeness
+of the shave impelled me to further flight.  Not daring to wade
+upright, on account of the noise made by floundering and by the
+suck of the mud, I remained lying down in the mud and propelled
+myself over its surface by means of my hands.  Still keeping the
+trail made by the Chinese in going from and to the junk, I held on
+until I reached the water.  Into this I waded to a depth of three
+feet, and then I turned off to the side on a line parallel with the
+beach.
+
+The thought came to me of going toward Yellow Handkerchief's skiff
+and escaping in it, but at that very moment he returned to the
+beach, and, as though fearing the very thing I had in mind, he
+slushed out through the mud to assure himself that the skiff was
+safe.  This turned me in the opposite direction.  Half swimming,
+half wading, with my head just out of water and avoiding splashing,
+I succeeded in putting about a hundred feet between myself and the
+spot where the Chinese had begun to wade ashore from the junk.  I
+drew myself out on the mud and remained lying flat.
+
+Again Yellow Handkerchief returned to the beach and made a search
+of the island, and again he returned to the heap of clam-shells.  I
+knew what was running in his mind as well as he did himself.  No
+one could leave or land without making tracks in the mud.  The only
+tracks to be seen were those leading from his skiff and from where
+the junk had been.  I was not on the island.  I must have left it
+by one or the other of those two tracks.  He had just been over the
+one to his skiff, and was certain I had not left that way.
+Therefore I could have left the island only by going over the
+tracks of the junk landing.  This he proceeded to verify by wading
+out over them himself, lighting matches as he came along.
+
+When he arrived at the point where I had first lain, I knew, by the
+matches he burned and the time he took, that he had discovered the
+marks left by my body.  These he followed straight to the water and
+into it, but in three feet of water he could no longer see them.
+On the other hand, as the tide was still falling, he could easily
+make out the impression made by the junk's bow, and could have
+likewise made out the impression of any other boat if it had landed
+at that particular spot.  But there was no such mark; and I knew
+that he was absolutely convinced that I was hiding somewhere in the
+mud.
+
+But to hunt on a dark night for a boy in a sea of mud would be like
+hunting for a needle in a haystack, and he did not attempt it.
+Instead he went back to the beach and prowled around for some time.
+I was hoping he would give me up and go, for by this time I was
+suffering severely from the cold.  At last he waded out to his
+skiff and rowed away.  What if this departure of Yellow
+Handkerchief's were a sham?  What if he had done it merely to
+entice me ashore?
+
+The more I thought of it the more certain I became that he had made
+a little too much noise with his oars as he rowed away.  So I
+remained, lying in the mud and shivering.  I shivered till the
+muscles of the small of my back ached and pained me as badly as the
+cold, and I had need of all my self-control to force myself to
+remain in my miserable situation.
+
+It was well that I did, however, for, possibly an hour later, I
+thought I could make out something moving on the beach.  I watched
+intently, but my ears were rewarded first, by a raspy cough I knew
+only too well.  Yellow Handkerchief had sneaked back, landed on the
+other side of the island, and crept around to surprise me if I had
+returned.
+
+After that, though hours passed without sign of him, I was afraid
+to return to the island at all.  On the other hand, I was almost
+equally afraid that I should die of the exposure I was undergoing.
+I had never dreamed one could suffer so.  I grew so cold and numb,
+finally, that I ceased to shiver.  But my muscles and bones began
+to ache in a way that was agony.  The tide had long since begun to
+rise, and, foot by foot, it drove me in toward the beach.  High
+water came at three o'clock, and at three o'clock I drew myself up
+on the beach, more dead than alive, and too helpless to have
+offered any resistance had Yellow Handkerchief swooped down upon
+me.
+
+But no Yellow Handkerchief appeared.  He had given me up and gone
+back to Point Pedro.  Nevertheless, I was in a deplorable, not to
+say dangerous, condition.  I could not stand upon my feet, much
+less walk.  My clammy, muddy garments clung to me like sheets of
+ice.  I thought I should never get them off.  So numb and lifeless
+were my fingers, and so weak was I, that it seemed to take an hour
+to get off my shoes.  I had not the strength to break the porpoise-
+hide laces, and the knots defied me.  I repeatedly beat my hands
+upon the rocks to get some sort of life into them.  Sometimes I
+felt sure I was going to die.
+
+But in the end,--after several centuries, it seemed to me,--I got
+off the last of my clothes.  The water was now close at hand, and I
+crawled painfully into it and washed the mud from my naked body.
+Still, I could not get on my feet and walk and I was afraid to lie
+still.  Nothing remained but to crawl weakly, like a snail, and at
+the cost of constant pain, up and down the sand.  I kept this up as
+long as possible, but as the east paled with the coming of dawn I
+began to succumb.  The sky grew rosy-red, and the golden rim of the
+sun, showing above the horizon, found me lying helpless and
+motionless among the clam-shells.
+
+As in a dream, I saw the familiar mainsail of the Reindeer as she
+slipped out of San Rafael Creek on a light puff of morning air.
+This dream was very much broken.  There are intervals I can never
+recollect on looking back over it.  Three things, however, I
+distinctly remember:  the first sight of the Reindeer's mainsail;
+her lying at anchor a few hundred feet away and a small boat
+leaving her side; and the cabin stove roaring red-hot, myself
+swathed all over with blankets, except on the chest and shoulders,
+which Charley was pounding and mauling unmercifully, and my mouth
+and throat burning with the coffee which Neil Partington was
+pouring down a trifle too hot.
+
+But burn or no burn, I tell you it felt good.  By the time we
+arrived in Oakland I was as limber and strong as ever,--though
+Charlie and Neil Partington were afraid I was going to have
+pneumonia, and Mrs. Partington, for my first six months of school,
+kept an anxious eye upon me to discover the first symptoms of
+consumption.
+
+Time flies.  It seems but yesterday that I was a lad of sixteen on
+the fish patrol.  Yet I know that I arrived this very morning from
+China, with a quick passage to my credit, and master of the
+barkentine Harvester.  And I know that to-morrow morning I shall
+run over to Oakland to see Neil Partington and his wife and family,
+and later on up to Benicia to see Charley Le Grant and talk over
+old times.  No; I shall not go to Benicia, now that I think about
+it.  I expect to be a highly interested party to a wedding, shortly
+to take place.  Her name is Alice Partington, and, since Charley
+has promised to be best man, he will have to come down to Oakland
+instead.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TALES OF THE FISH PATROL ***
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