POSSIBLY our most exasperating experience on the fish patrol was when
Charley Le Grant and I laid a two weeks’ siege to a big four-masted
English ship. Before we had finished with the affair, it became a pretty
mathematical problem, and it was by the merest chance that we came into
possession of the instrument that brought it to a successful termination.
After our raid on the oyster pirates we had returned to Oakland, where
two more weeks passed before Neil Partington’s wife was out of danger and
on the highroad to recovery. So it was after an absence of a month, all
told, that we turned the _Reindeer’s_ nose toward Benicia. When the
cat’s away the mice will play, and in these four weeks the fishermen had
become very bold in violating the law. When we passed Point Pedro we
noticed many signs of activity among the shrimp-catchers, and, well into
San Pablo Bay, we observed a widely scattered fleet of Upper Bay
fishing-boats hastily pulling in their nets and getting up sail.
This was suspicious enough to warrant investigation, and the first and
only boat we succeeded in boarding proved to have an illegal net. The
law permitted no smaller mesh for catching shad than one that measured
seven and one-half inches inside the knots, while the mesh of this
particular net measured only three inches. It was a flagrant breach of
the rules, and the two fishermen were forthwith put under arrest. Neil
Partington took one of them with him to help manage the _Reindeer_, while
Charley and I went on ahead with the other in the captured boat.
But the shad fleet had headed over toward the Petaluma shore in wild
flight, and for the rest of the run through San Pablo Bay we saw no more
fishermen at all. Our prisoner, a bronzed and bearded Greek, sat
sullenly on his net while we sailed his craft. It was a new Columbia
River salmon boat, evidently on its first trip, and it handled
splendidly. Even when Charley praised it, our prisoner refused to speak
or to notice us, and we soon gave him up as a most unsociable fellow.
We ran up the Carquinez Straits and edged into the bight at Turner’s
Shipyard for smoother water. Here were lying several English steel
sailing ships, waiting for the wheat harvest; and here, most
unexpectedly, in the precise place where we had captured Big Alec, we
came upon two Italians in a skiff that was loaded with a complete
“Chinese” sturgeon line. The surprise was mutual, and we were on top of
them before either they or we were aware. Charley had barely time to
luff into the wind and run up to them. I ran forward and tossed them a
line with orders to make it fast. One of the Italians took a turn with
it over a cleat, while I hastened to lower our big spritsail. This
accomplished, the salmon boat dropped astern, dragging heavily on the
skiff.
Charley came forward to board the prize, but when I proceeded to haul
alongside by means of the line, the Italians cast it off. We at once
began drifting to leeward, while they got out two pairs of oars and rowed
their light craft directly into the wind. This manœuvre 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 windward. 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 windward, 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 daylight.
The fishermen made no attempt to escape that night, though the ship sent
out a boat for scouting purposes to find if the coast were clear.
By the next day we saw that a steady siege was in order, and we perfected
our plans with an eye to our own comfort. A dock, known as the Solano
Wharf, which ran out from the Benicia shore, helped us in this. It
happened that the _Lancashire Queen_, the shore at Turner’s Shipyard, and
the Solano Wharf were the corners of a big equilateral triangle. From
ship to shore, the side of the triangle along which the Italians had to
escape, was a distance equal to that from the Solano Wharf to the shore,
the side of the triangle along which we had to travel to get to the shore
before the Italians. But as we could sail much faster than they could
row, we could permit them to travel about half their side of the triangle
before we darted out along our side. If we allowed them to get more than
half-way, they were certain to beat us to shore; while if we started
before they were half-way, they were equally certain to beat us back to
the ship.
We found that an imaginary line, drawn from the end of the wharf to a
windmill farther along the shore, cut precisely in half the line of the
triangle along which the Italians must escape to reach the land. This
line made it easy for us to determine how far to let them run away before
we bestirred ourselves in pursuit. Day after day we would watch them
through our glasses as they rowed leisurely along toward the half-way
point; and as they drew close into line with the windmill, we would leap
into the boat and get up sail. At sight of our preparation, they would
turn and row slowly back to the _Lancashire Queen_, secure in the
knowledge that we could not overtake them.
To guard against calms—when our salmon boat would be useless—we also had
in readiness a light rowing skiff equipped with spoon-oars. But at such
times, when the wind failed us, we were forced to row out from the wharf
as soon as they rowed from the ship. In the night-time, on the other
hand, we were compelled to patrol the immediate vicinity of the ship;
which we did, Charley and I standing four-hour watches turn and turn
about. The Italians, however, preferred the daytime in which to escape,
and so our long night vigils were without result.
“What makes me mad,” said Charley, “is our being kept from our honest
beds while those rascally lawbreakers are sleeping soundly every night.
But much good may it do them,” he threatened. “I’ll keep them on that
ship till the captain charges them board, as sure as a sturgeon’s not a
catfish!”
It was a tantalizing problem that confronted us. As long as we were
vigilant, they could not escape; and as long as they were careful, we
would be unable to catch them. Charley cudgelled his brains continually,
but for once his imagination failed him. It was a problem apparently
without other solution than that of patience. It was a waiting game, and
whichever waited the longer was bound to win. To add to our irritation,
friends of the Italians established a code of signals with them from the
shore, so that we never dared relax the siege for a moment. And besides
this, there were always one or two suspicious-looking fishermen hanging
around the Solano Wharf and keeping watch on our actions. We could do
nothing but “grin and bear it,” as Charley said, while it took up all our
time and prevented us from doing other work.
The days went by, and there was no change in the situation. Not that no
attempts were made to change it. One night friends from the shore came
out in a skiff and attempted to confuse us while the two Italians
escaped. That they did not succeed was due to the lack of a little oil
on the ship’s davits. For we were drawn back from the pursuit of the
strange boat by the creaking of the davits, and arrived at the
_Lancashire Queen_ just as the Italians were lowering their skiff.
Another night, fully half a dozen skiffs rowed around us in the darkness,
but we held on like a leech to the side of the ship and frustrated their
plan till they grew angry and showered us with abuse. Charley laughed to
himself in the bottom of the boat.
“It’s a good sign, lad,” he said to me. “When men begin to abuse, make
sure they’re losing patience; and shortly after they lose patience, they
lose their heads. Mark my words, if we only hold out, they’ll get
careless some fine day, and then we’ll get them.”
But they did not grow careless, and Charley confessed that this was one
of the times when all signs failed. Their patience seemed equal to ours,
and the second week of the siege dragged monotonously along. Then
Charley’s lagging imagination quickened sufficiently to suggest a ruse.
Peter Boyelen, a new patrolman and one unknown to the fisher-folk,
happened to arrive in Benicia and we took him into our plan. We were as
secret as possible about it, but in some unfathomable way the friends
ashore got word to the beleaguered Italians to keep their eyes open.
On the night we were to put our ruse into effect, Charley and I took up
our usual station in our rowing skiff alongside the _Lancashire Queen_.
After it was thoroughly dark, Peter Boyelen came out in a crazy duck
boat, the kind you can pick up and carry away under one arm. When we
heard him coming along, paddling noisily, we slipped away a short
distance into the darkness, and rested on our oars. Opposite the
gangway, having jovially hailed the anchor-watch of the _Lancashire
Queen_ and asked the direction of the _Scottish Chiefs_, another wheat
ship, he awkwardly capsized himself. The man who was standing the
anchor-watch ran down the gangway and hauled him out of the water. This
was what he wanted, to get aboard the ship; and the next thing he
expected was to be taken on deck and then below to warm up and dry out.
But the captain inhospitably kept him perched on the lowest gangway 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.”