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.