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Title: Tales of the Fish Patrol
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<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
<p>Transcribed from the 1914 edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
<h1>Tales of the Fish Patrol</h1>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
<h2>WHITE AND YELLOW</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>When I was a youngster of sixteen, a good sloop-sailor and all-round
bay-waterman, my sloop, the <i>Reindeer</i>, 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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>After coffee, three of the men withdrew to the other boat, a Columbia
River salmon boat, leaving three of us in the <i>Reindeer</i>.
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Then we separated. I put the <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“It’s all up. They’re warning the others,”
said George, the remaining patrolman, as he stood beside me in the cockpit.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i> alongside
long enough for George to spring aboard.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i>,
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 <i>Reindeer</i>, 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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer’s</i>
bowsprit, like a monstrous hand, reached over and ripped out the junk’s
chunky mast and towering sail.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer’s</i>
bow and began to shove the entangled boats apart. Pausing long
enough to let go the jib halyards, and just as the <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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
<i>Reindeer</i>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“You’ll have to help us out,” said Le Grant.</p>
<p>I looked over my prisoners, who had crowded into the cabin and on
top of it. “I can take three,” I answered.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>To make matters serious, during all the excitement of boarding the
junks the <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>“Yes,” I said. “Bime by, allee same dlown,
velly quick, you no bail now. Sabbe?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“You’d better get out your gun and make them bail,”
I said to George.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“What do we care?” George said weakly.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i>
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 <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“And I, for another, don’t care to give in to a handful
of dirty Chinamen to escape drowning,” I answered hotly.</p>
<p>“You’ll sink the <i>Reindeer</i> under us all at this
rate,” he whined. “And what good that’ll do
I can’t see.”</p>
<p>“Every man to his taste,” I retorted.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“It’s sink or float together,” I said. “And
if you’ll give me your revolver, I’ll have the <i>Reindeer</i>
bailed out in a jiffy.”</p>
<p>“They’re too many for us,” he whimpered.
“We can’t fight them all.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Now keep your distance,” I commanded, “and don’t
you come closer!”</p>
<p>“Wha’ fo’?” he demanded indignantly.
“I t’ink-um talkee talkee heap good.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>He grinned in a sickly fashion. “Yep, I sabbe velly much.
I honest Chinaman.”</p>
<p>“All right,” I answered. “You sabbe talkee
talkee, then you bail water plenty plenty. After that we talkee
talkee.”</p>
<p>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—”</p>
<p>“Stand back!” I shouted, for I had noticed his hand disappear
beneath his blouse and his body prepare for a spring.</p>
<p>Disconcerted, he went back into the cabin, to hold a council, apparently,
from the way the jabbering broke forth. The <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“I think not,” I answered shortly.</p>
<p>“I command you,” he said in a bullying tone.</p>
<p>“I was commanded to bring these prisoners into San Rafael,”
was my reply.</p>
<p>Our voices were raised, and the sound of the altercation brought
the Chinese out of the cabin.</p>
<p>“Now will you head for the beach?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Fifteen minutes passed, the <i>Reindeer</i> 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 <i>Reindeer</i>,
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>The wind freshened a bit, and the <i>Reindeer</i> 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 <i>Reindeer</i> righted very slowly, and when she was on an even
keel was so much awash that I doubted if she could be saved.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>THE KING OF THE GREEKS</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i>, 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.</p>
<p>“I’ve come down to fish sturgeon a couple of months,”
he said to Carmintel.</p>
<p>His eyes flashed with challenge as he spoke, and we noticed the patrolman’s
eyes drop before him.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“But why was he not hanged for murder?” I demanded.
“Surely the United States is powerful enough to bring such a man
to justice.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“But what are you going to do about his fishing for sturgeon?
He’s bound to fish with a ‘Chinese line.’”</p>
<p>Charley shrugged his shoulders. “We’ll see what
we will see,” he said enigmatically.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Big Alec has a Chinese line out in the bight off Turner’s
Shipyard,” Charley Le Grant said that afternoon to Carmintel.</p>
<p>A fleeting expression of annoyance passed over the patrolman’s
face, and then he said, “Yes?” in an absent way, and that
was all.</p>
<p>Charley bit his lip with suppressed anger and turned on his heel.</p>
<p>“Are you game, my lad?” he said to me later on in the
evening, just as we finished washing down the <i>Reindeer’s</i>
decks and were preparing to turn in.</p>
<p>A lump came up in my throat, and I could only nod my head.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“It’s a hard proposition, but we can do it,” he
added after a pause.</p>
<p>“Of course we can,” I supplemented enthusiastically.</p>
<p>And then he said, “Of course we can,” and we shook hands
on it and went to bed.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Change places,” Charley commanded, “and steer
just astern of him as though you’re going into the shipyard.”</p>
<p>I took the tiller, and Charley sat down on a thwart amidships, placing
his revolver handily beside him.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Here! You! What do you want?” he shouted.</p>
<p>“Keep going,” Charley whispered, “just as though
you didn’t hear him.”</p>
<p>The next few moments were very anxious ones. The fisherman
was studying us sharply, while we were gliding up on him every second.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>He brought a rifle to his shoulder and trained it on me.</p>
<p>“Now will you keep off?” he demanded.</p>
<p>I could hear Charley groan with disappointment. “Keep
off,” he whispered; “it’s all up for this time.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“You’d better leave Big Alec alone,” Carmintel
said, rather sourly, to Charley that night.</p>
<p>“So he’s been complaining to you, has he?”
Charley said significantly.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Charley answered softly; “I’ve heard
that it pays better to leave him alone.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Do you mean to say—” Carmintel began, in a bullying
tone.</p>
<p>But Charley cut him off shortly. “I mean to say nothing,”
he said. “You heard what I said, and if the cap fits, why—”</p>
<p>He shrugged his shoulders, and Carmintel glowered at him, speechless.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“We’ve got it,” Charley cried. “Come
on and lend a hand to get it in.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“That’s remarkably like a bullet, lad,” he said
reflectively. “And it’s a long shot Big Alec’s
making.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“I guess we’d better get out of this,” Charley
remarked coolly. “What do you think, lad?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>Charley looked at me. The <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>“All right, captain,” Charley said to the disconsolate
yachtsman, who smiled in sickly fashion at the title.</p>
<p>“I’m only the owner,” he explained.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>We thundered on past the fishermen, and nothing had happened.
Charley grinned at the disappointment he saw in my face, and then shouted:</p>
<p>“Stand by the main-sheet to jibe!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“That fixes his rifle,” I heard Charley mutter, as he
sprang upon the deck to look for Big Alec somewhere astern.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“More gaskets!” Charley shouted, and I made haste to
supply them.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>A RAID ON THE OYSTER PIRATES</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<i>Reindeer</i> 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 <i>Reindeer’s</i> rigging, overhauled the ballast, scraped
down, and put the sloop into thorough shape.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“A good catch, I guess,” Charley said, pointing to the
heaps of oysters, assorted in three sizes, which lay upon their decks.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“That boat must have at least two hundred dollars’ worth
aboard,” I calculated. “I wonder how long it took
to get the load?”</p>
<p>“Three or four days,” Charley answered. “Not
bad wages for two men—twenty-five dollars a day apiece.”</p>
<p>The boat we were discussing, the <i>Ghost</i>, 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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Ghost</i>. He appeared
angry, and the longer he looked the angrier he grew.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>The tall man and the short man on the <i>Ghost</i> looked up.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“Those are my oysters—that’s what I said.
You’ve stolen them from my beds.”</p>
<p>“Yer mighty wise, ain’t ye?” was the Centipede’s
sneering reply. “S’pose you can tell your oysters
wherever you see ’em?”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“I know they’re mine; I’d stake my life on it!”
Mr. Taft snorted.</p>
<p>“Prove it,” challenged the tall man, who we afterward
learned was known as “The Porpoise” because of his wonderful
swimming abilities.</p>
<p>Mr. Taft shrugged his shoulders helplessly. Of course he could
not prove the oysters to be his, no matter how certain he might be.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>A roar of laughter went up from the different boats, for the rest
of the pirates had been listening to the discussion.</p>
<p>“There’s more money in oysters,” the Porpoise remarked
dryly.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Come on! Lively!” Charley whispered, when we passed
from the view of the oyster fleet.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“Le Grant,” Charley answered.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“Now we’ll see Neil,” Charley said, when he had
seen Mr. Taft upon his train to San Francisco.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“Good luck be with you, boys,” he said at parting, two
days later. “Remember, they are dangerous men, so be careful.”</p>
<p>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, <i>Coal Tar</i> <i>Maggie</i>
was printed in great white letters the whole length of either side.</p>
<p>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 <i>Coal
Tar Maggie</i> 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.</p>
<p>“Wot is it?” some one called.</p>
<p>“Name it ’n’ ye kin have it!” called another.</p>
<p>“I swan naow, ef it ain’t the old Ark itself!”
mimicked the Centipede from the deck of the <i>Ghost.</i></p>
<p>“Hey! Ahoy there, clipper ship!” another wag shouted.
“Wot’s yer port?”</p>
<p>We took no notice of the joking, but acted, after the manner of greenhorns,
as though the <i>Coal Tar Maggie</i> required our undivided attention.
I rounded her well to windward of the <i>Ghost</i>, 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.</p>
<p>But the chain remained tangled, and amid all kinds of mocking advice
we drifted down upon and fouled the <i>Ghost</i>, 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 <i>Coal Tar Maggie</i> to swing in a circle six hundred feet
in diameter, in which circle she would be able to foul at least half
the fleet.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Coal Tar Maggie’s</i> 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.</p>
<p>“Where’d you swipe the old tub?” asked a squat
and hairy man, with cruel eyes and Mexican features.</p>
<p>“Didn’t swipe it,” Nicholas answered, meeting them
on their own ground and encouraging the idea that we had stolen the
<i>Coal Tar Maggie</i>. “And if we did, what of it?”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“What d’ye want ’em for?” demanded the Porpoise.</p>
<p>“Oh, to give away to our friends, of course,” Nicholas
retorted. “That’s what you do with yours, I suppose.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Didn’t I see you on the dock in Oakland the other day?”
the Centipede asked suddenly of me.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“Sure,” I said. “Soon as we sell some oysters
we’ll outfit in style.”</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“Sure,” I said.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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 <i>Ghost</i>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Wish we had a little steam launch,” I panted.</p>
<p>“I’d just as soon the moon stayed hidden,” Nicholas
panted back.</p>
<p>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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Coal Tar Maggie</i>. One o’clock came, and two
o’clock, and the pirates were clustering on the highest shoal,
waist-deep in water.</p>
<p>“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 . . .”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“It’s the Porpoise,” Nicholas said. “It
would take broad daylight for us to catch him.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“Ay,” they chorused hoarsely between their chattering
teeth.</p>
<p>“Then one man at a time, and the short men first.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“You didn’t get the Porpoise,” the Centipede said
exultantly, as though his escape materially diminished our success.</p>
<p>Charley laughed. “But we saw him just the same, a-snorting
for shore like a puffing pig.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“You can dry your clothes here, lads, and get some hot coffee,”
Charley announced, as they filed in.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>THE SIEGE OF THE “LANCASHIRE QUEEN”</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer’s</i>
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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i>,
while Charley and I went on ahead with the other in the captured boat.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“I’ve always heard that Greeks don’t like Italians,”
Charley laughed, as he ran aft to the tiller.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Lancashire Queen</i>. 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 <i>Lancashire Queen</i>, 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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Lancashire Queen.</i></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<i>Lancashire Queen</i> 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.</p>
<p>“Wot a circus!” cried one.</p>
<p>“Tork about yer marine hippodromes,—if this ain’t
one, I’d like to know!” affirmed another.</p>
<p>“Six-days-go-as-yer-please,” announced a third.
“Who says the dagoes won’t win?”</p>
<p>On the next tack to windward the Greek offered to change places with
Charley.</p>
<p>“Let-a me sail-a de boat,” he demanded. “I
fix-a them, I catch-a them, sure.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Better give it up,” one of the sailors advised from
above.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Keep going, Charley, one time more,” I said.</p>
<p>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 <i>Lancashire
Queen</i>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The Greek took both tiller and sheet and continued the chase around
the <i>Lancashire</i> <i>Queen</i>, 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.</p>
<p>“It will never do to let them escape now,” he said, at
the same time drawing his revolver.</p>
<p>On our next circuit, he threatened the Italians with the weapon;
but they rowed on stolidly, keeping splendid stroke and utterly disregarding
him.</p>
<p>“If you don’t stop, I’ll shoot,” Charley
said menacingly.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“We’ll run them down, then!” Charley exclaimed.
“We’ll wear them out and wind them!”</p>
<p>So the chase continued. Twenty times more we ran them around
the <i>Lancashire Queen</i>, 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.</p>
<p>The parley that followed with the captain was short and snappy.
He absolutely forbade us to board the <i>Lancashire Queen</i>, 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.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>And then began the siege of the <i>Lancashire</i> <i>Queen</i>, a
siege memorable in the annals of both fishermen and fish patrol.
When the <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Lancashire Queen</i>, 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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Lancashire Queen</i>,
secure in the knowledge that we could not overtake them.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Lancashire</i> <i>Queen</i> 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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Lancashire</i>
<i>Queen</i>. 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
<i>Lancashire Queen</i> and asked the direction of the <i>Scottish Chiefs</i>,
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.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Charley and I, after our customary night vigil by the side of the
<i>Lancashire Queen</i>, rowed into the Solana Wharf.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>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 <i>Streak</i>, painted in small white
letters.</p>
<p>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 <i>Streak</i> 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.</p>
<p>“Four thousand horse-power and forty-five miles an hour, though
you wouldn’t think it,” he concluded proudly.</p>
<p>“Say it again, man! Say it again!” Charley exclaimed
in an excited voice.</p>
<p>“Four thousand horse-power and forty-five miles an hour,”
the engineer repeated, grinning good-naturedly.</p>
<p>“Where’s the owner?” was Charley’s next question.
“Is there any way I can speak to him?”</p>
<p>The engineer shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not.
He’s asleep, you see.”</p>
<p>At that moment a young man in blue uniform came on deck farther aft
and stood regarding the sunrise.</p>
<p>“There he is, that’s him, that’s Mr. Tate,”
said the engineer.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Come on lad,” he said. “On to the dock with
you. We’ve got them!”</p>
<p>It was our good fortune to leave the <i>Streak</i> 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 <i>Streak</i> and over our own boat, where we could comfortably
watch the <i>Lancashire Queen</i>. 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:</p>
<p>“Forty-five miles an hour . . . nothing can save them . . .
they are ours!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Lancashire</i>
<i>Queen</i>, which left them hardly more than a quarter of a mile to
gain the shore, did Charley slap me on the shoulder and cry:</p>
<p>“They’re ours! They’re ours!”</p>
<p>We ran the few steps to the side of the <i>Streak</i> and jumped
aboard. Stern and bow lines were cast off in a jiffy. The
<i>Streak</i> 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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Streak</i> 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 <i>streaked</i> it,”
was the way Charley told it afterward, and I think his description comes
nearer than any I can give.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>But Charley was true to his hobby. “Imagination?”
he demanded, pointing to the <i>Streak</i>. “Look at that!
just look at it! If the invention of that isn’t imagination,
I should like to know what is.”</p>
<p>“Of course,” he added, “it’s the other fellow’s
imagination, but it did the work all the same.”</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHARLEY’S COUP</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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,</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“It’s curious,” Charley muttered. “Can
it be they don’t recognize us?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“That’s funny,” was Charley’s remark.
“But we can confiscate the net, at any rate.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Just you wait; the idea’ll come all right,” Charley
promised.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Apache</i> 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 <i>Apache</i> 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.</p>
<p>Charley nudged me with his elbow. I grasped his thought on
the instant, but objected:</p>
<p>“We can’t charter a steamboat.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>And over we went to the shipyard, where Charley led the way to the
<i>Mary Rebecca</i>, 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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Ole Ericsen verified Charley’s conjecture that the <i>Mary
Rebecca</i>, 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.</p>
<p>“Just a hook, one good-sized hook,” Charley pleaded.</p>
<p>“No, Ay tank not,” said Ole Ericsen. “Der
<i>Mary Rebecca</i> yust hang up on efery mud-bank with that hook.
Ay don’t want to lose der <i>Mary</i> <i>Rebecca</i>. She’s
all Ay got.”</p>
<p>“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 <i>Mary Rebecca</i> will be all right again.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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 <i>Mary</i> <i>Rebecca</i> slides into der water
to-night.”</p>
<p>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 <i>Mary Rebecca</i>. 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.</p>
<p>In the late afternoon the <i>Mary Rebecca</i> 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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Mary Rebecca</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Mary Rebecca</i> 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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Mary Rebecca</i>
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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Mary Rebecca</i>, were grinning and joking.
Ole Ericsen was rubbing his huge hands in child-like glee.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Mary Rebecca</i> well
aft, held her stern into the wind, and she continued to plough on, though
somewhat erratically.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>It was in fact a plate from the side of the <i>New</i> <i>Jersey</i>,
a steamer which had recently been wrecked outside the Golden Gate, and
in the salving of which the <i>Mary Rebecca</i> had taken part.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>So we raced along, behind us a howling, screaming bedlam of wrathful
Greeks, Collinsville ahead, and bullets spat-spatting all around us.</p>
<p>“Ole,” Charley said in a faint voice, “I don’t
know what we’re going to do.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“But we can’t stop,” Charley groaned. “I
never thought of it, but we can’t stop.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Every man Jack of them has a gun,” one of the sailors
remarked cheerfully.</p>
<p>“Yes, and a knife, too,” the other sailor added.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>A bullet glanced on the stern and sang off to starboard like a spiteful
bee. “There’s nothing to do but plump the <i>Mary
Rebecca</i> ashore and run for it,” was the verdict of the first
cheerful sailor.</p>
<p>“And leaf der <i>Mary Rebecca</i>?” Ole demanded, with
unspeakable horror in his voice.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>We were right in at Collinsville then, and went foaming by within
biscuit-toss of the wharf.</p>
<p>“I only hope the wind holds out,” Charley said, stealing
a glance at our prisoners.</p>
<p>“What of der wind?” Ole demanded disconsolately.
“Der river will not hold out, and then . . . and then . . .”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Mary Rebecca</i>
was pressed down on her port side as if she were about to capsize.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Charley smiled at their efforts, and said, “Give her the topsail,
Ole.”</p>
<p>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 <i>Mary
Rebecca</i> lay over and sprang ahead faster than ever.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Have to give her the staysail,” Charley said.</p>
<p>Ole Ericsen looked at the straining <i>Mary</i> <i>Rebecca</i> and
shook his head. “It will take der masts out of her,”
he said.</p>
<p>“And we’ll be taken out of her if you don’t,”
Charley replied.</p>
<p>Ole shot an anxious glance at his masts, another at the boat load
of armed Greeks, and consented.</p>
<p>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 <i>Mary
Rebecca</i> 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.</p>
<p>“That settles them!” Charley remarked, though he was
anxiously studying the behavior of the <i>Mary Rebecca</i>, which was
being driven under far more canvas than she was rightly able to carry.</p>
<p>“Next stop is Antioch!” announced the cheerful sailor,
after the manner of a railway conductor. “And next comes
Merryweather!”</p>
<p>“Come here, quick,” Charley said to me.</p>
<p>I crawled across the deck and stood upright beside him in the shelter
of the sheet steel.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>And this is what I wrote:</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>“Now make it good and fast to that marlin-spike, and stand
by to toss it ashore.”</p>
<p>I did as he directed. By then we were close to Antioch.
The wind was shouting through our rigging, the <i>Mary Rebecca</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>We took in topsail and staysail, dropped the main peak, and as we
got abreast of the principal wharf jibed the mainsail. The <i>Mary
Rebecca</i> 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.</p>
<p>Ole Ericsen heaved a great sigh. “Ay never tank Ay see
my wife never again,” he confessed.</p>
<p>“Why, we were never in any danger,” said Charley.</p>
<p>Ole looked at him incredulously.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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 <i>Mary</i> <i>Rebecca</i> and her captain.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>DEMETRIOS CONTOS</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Mary</i> <i>Rebecca</i>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>could</i> catch
fish, true; but a catch of any size would have torn it to pieces.</p>
<p>Charley shook his head and said:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Charley’s voice took on an aggrieved tone, and he continued
for some minutes to inveigh against the brazenness of Demetrios Contos.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Come on, lad,” he called to me; and we lost no time
jumping into our salmon boat and getting up sail.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Whew!” Charley exclaimed. “Either that boat
is a daisy, or we’ve got a five-gallon coal-oil can fast to our
keel!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Slack away the sheet,” Charley commanded; and as our
boat fell off before the wind, Demetrios’s mocking laugh floated
down to us.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>This time it was my imagination that came to the rescue.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>Charley considered it a moment and slapped his knee.</p>
<p>“A good idea! You’re beginning to use that head
of yours. A credit to your teacher, I must say.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>On Thursday Charley registered an objection to my plan.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Well,” he grunted, “what’s the matter?
House afire?”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“So far, so good,” Charley commented, while I paused
to catch breath.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“And I’ll arrange right away for the mare, first thing
in the morning,” Charley said, accepting the modified plan without
hesitation.</p>
<p>“But, I say,” he said, a little later, this time waking
<i>me</i> out of a sound sleep.</p>
<p>I could hear him chuckling in the dark.</p>
<p>“I say, lad, isn’t it rather a novelty for the fish patrol
to be taking to horseback?”</p>
<p>“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.’”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“But can you manage the boat alone?” he asked, on Friday.
“Remember, we’ve a ripping big sail on her.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“Den I give-a heem my old-a net-a,” one of them spoke
up, promptly and maliciously,</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>They all laughed at this, for they could afford to be sweet-tempered
with a man so badly outwitted as Charley was.</p>
<p>“Well, so long, lad,” Charley called to me a moment later.
“I think I’ll go up-town to Maloney’s.”</p>
<p>“Let me take the boat out?” I asked.</p>
<p>“If you want to,” was his answer, as he turned on his
heel and walked slowly away.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“You all-a right?” he asked.</p>
<p>I managed to shape a “yes” on my lips, though I could
not yet speak.</p>
<p>“You sail-a de boat verr-a good-a,” he said. “So
good-a as a man.”</p>
<p>A compliment from Demetrios Contos was a compliment indeed, and I
keenly appreciated it, though I could only nod my head in acknowledgment.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“He saved my life, Charley,” I protested; “and
I don’t think he ought to be arrested.”</p>
<p>A puzzled expression came into Charley’s face, which cleared
immediately after, in a way it had when he made up his mind.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“But he saved my life,” I persisted, unable to make any
other argument.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The moisture rushed into my eyes as I seized his hand. “I
want to pay—” I began.</p>
<p>“To pay your half?” he interrupted. “I certainly
shall expect you to pay it.”</p>
<p>In the meantime Demetrios had been informed by his lawyer that his
fee likewise had been paid by Charley.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>So the chest went aboard, and in the middle of the afternoon we hoisted
the <i>Reindeer’s</i> 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 <i>Lancashire Queen</i>,
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.</p>
<p>A great wall of fog advanced across San Pablo Bay to meet us, and
in a few minutes the <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>Charley looked at his watch, “Six o’clock, and three
hours more of ebb,” he remarked casually.</p>
<p>“But where do you say we are?” Neil insisted.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>“You might be a little more definite by a few miles, anyway,”
Neil grumbled, showing by his tone that he disagreed.</p>
<p>“All right, then,” Charley said, conclusively, “not
less than a quarter of a mile, not more than a half.”</p>
<p>The wind freshened with a couple of little puffs, and the fog thinned
perceptibly.</p>
<p>“McNear’s is right off there,” Charley said, pointing
directly into the fog on our weather beam.</p>
<p>The three of us were peering intently in that direction, when the
<i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i>, as he had nearly sunk it now by violating the rules
of navigation.</p>
<p>“What d’ye mean, you yellow-faced heathen, lying here
in a fairway without a horn a-going?” Charley cried hotly.</p>
<p>“Mean?” Neil calmly answered. “Just take
a look—that’s what he means.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>So saying, Charley and Neil returned to the <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i> back by just
so much dead weight.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i> 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 <i>Reindeer</i> and to windward. The tow-line had now tautened,
at right angles to the two boats, and the predicament was laughable.</p>
<p>“Cast off!” I shouted.</p>
<p>Charley hesitated.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Reindeer</i>
went past the mouth of the slough.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Here Neil said something which I could not catch, and then Charley’s
voice went on:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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
<i>Reindeer</i> 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 <i>Reindeer</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>was</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>As in a dream, I saw the familiar mainsail of the <i>Reindeer</i>
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 <i>Reindeer’s</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<i>Harvester</i>. 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.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TALES OF THE FISH PATROL ***</p>
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