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 county 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 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 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 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.
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.
[Illustration: "There, in the stern, sat Demetrios Contos."]
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.
VII
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.