“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 boat-sailing abilities, and I
was almost wild to get out alone with the big sail and go tearing down
the Carquinez Straits in the wake of the flying Greek.
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 sweet-tempered 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 manœuvring. 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 outmanœuvring 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 race-horse. I could
hardly contain myself with the joy of it. The huge sail, the howling
wind, the driving seas, the plunging boat—I, a pygmy, a mere speck in the
midst of it, was mastering the elemental strife, flying through it and
over it, triumphant and victorious.
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.