BIG ALEC had never been captured by the fish patrol. It was his boast
that no man could take him alive, and it was his history that of the many
men who had tried to take him dead none had succeeded. It was also
history that at least two patrolmen who had tried to take him dead had
died themselves. Further, no man violated the fish laws more
systematically and deliberately than Big Alec.
He was called “Big Alec” because of his gigantic stature. His height was
six feet three inches, and he was correspondingly broad-shouldered and
deep-chested. He was splendidly muscled and hard as steel, and there
were innumerable stories in circulation among the fisher-folk concerning
his prodigious strength. He was as bold and dominant of spirit as he was
strong of body, and because of this he was widely known by another name,
that of “The King of the Greeks.” The fishing population was largely
composed of Greeks, and they looked up to him and obeyed him as their
chief. And as their chief, he fought their fights for them, saw that
they were protected, saved them from the law when they fell into its
clutches, and made them stand by one another and himself in time of
trouble.
In the old days, the fish patrol had attempted his capture many
disastrous times and had finally given it over, so that when the word was
out that he was coming to Benicia, I was most anxious to see him. But I
did not have to hunt him up. In his usual bold way, the first thing he
did on arriving was to hunt us up. Charley Le Grant and I at the time
were under a patrolman 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
manœuvre performed of bringing the yacht to anchor, and the equally
lubberly manœuvre 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 manœuvre, 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 subpœnaed 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.