Tales of the Fish Patrol by Jack London

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