knew thoroughly well the ins and outs of oyster piracy.
At this point I may as well explain that we of the fish patrol were
free lances in a way. While Neil Partington, who was a patrolman
proper, received a regular salary, Charley and I, being merely
deputies, received only what we earned – that is to say, a certain
percentage of the fines imposed on convicted violators of the fish
laws. Also, any rewards that chanced our way were ours. We
offered to share with Partington whatever we should get from Mr.
Taft, but the patrolman would not hear of it. He was only too
happy, he said, to do a good turn for us, who had done so many for
him.
We held a long council of war, and mapped out the following line of
action. Our faces were unfamiliar on the Lower Bay, but as the
Reindeer was well known as a fish-patrol sloop, the Greek boy,
whose name was Nicholas, and I were to sail some innocent-looking
craft down to Asparagus Island and join the oyster pirates’ fleet.
Here, according to Nicholas’s description of the beds and the
manner of raiding, it was possible for us to catch the pirates in
the act of stealing oysters, and at the same time to get them in
our power. Charley was to be on the shore, with Mr. Taft’s
watchmen and a posse of constables, to help us at the right time.
“I know just the boat,” Neil said, at the conclusion of the
discussion, “a crazy old sloop that’s lying over at Tiburon. You
and Nicholas can go over by the ferry, charter it for a song, and
sail direct for the beds.”
“Good luck be with you, boys,” he said at parting, two days later.
“Remember, they are dangerous men, so be careful.”
Nicholas and I succeeded in chartering the sloop very cheaply; and
between laughs, while getting up sail, we agreed that she was even
crazier and older than she had been described. She was a big,
flat-bottomed, square-sterned craft, sloop-rigged, with a sprung
mast, slack rigging, dilapidated sails, and rotten running-gear,
clumsy to handle and uncertain in bringing about, and she smelled
vilely of coal tar, with which strange stuff she had been smeared
from stem to stern and from cabin-roof to centreboard. And to cap
it all, Coal Tar Maggie was printed in great white letters the
whole length of either side.
TALES OF THE FISH PATROL
26
It was an uneventful though laughable run from Tiburon to Asparagus
Island, where we arrived in the afternoon of the following day.
The oyster pirates, a fleet of a dozen sloops, were lying at anchor
on what was known as the “Deserted Beds.” The Coal Tar Maggie came
sloshing into their midst with a light breeze astern, and they
crowded on deck to see us. Nicholas and I had caught the spirit of
the crazy craft, and we handled her in most lubberly fashion.
“Wot is it?” some one called.
“Name it ‘n’ ye kin have it!” called another.
“I swan naow, ef it ain’t the old Ark itself!” mimicked the
Centipede from the deck of the Ghost.
“Hey! Ahoy there, clipper ship!” another wag shouted. “Wot’s yer
port?”
We took no notice of the joking, but acted, after the manner of
greenhorns, as though the Coal Tar Maggie required our undivided
attention. I rounded her well to windward of the Ghost, and
Nicholas ran for’ard to drop the anchor. To all appearances it was
a bungle, the way the chain tangled and kept the anchor from
reaching the bottom. And to all appearances Nicholas and I were
terribly excited as we strove to clear it. At any rate, we quite
deceived the pirates, who took huge delight in our predicament.
But the chain remained tangled, and amid all kinds of mocking
advice we drifted down upon and fouled the Ghost, whose bowsprit
poked square through our mainsail and ripped a hole in it as big as
a barn door. The Centipede and the Porpoise doubled up on the
cabin in paroxysms of laughter, and left us to get clear as best we
could. This, with much unseaman-like performance, we succeeded in
doing, and likewise in clearing the anchor-chain, of which we let
out about three hundred feet. With only ten feet of water under
us, this would permit the Coal Tar Maggie to swing in a circle six
hundred feet in diameter, in which circle she would be able to foul
at least half the fleet.
The oyster pirates lay snugly together at short hawsers, the
weather being fine, and they protested loudly at our ignorance in
putting out such an unwarranted length of anchor-chain. And not
only did they protest, for they made us heave it in again, all but
thirty feet.
Having sufficiently impressed them with our general lubberliness,
TALES OF THE FISH PATROL
27
Nicholas and I went below to congratulate ourselves and to cook
supper. Hardly had we finished the meal and washed the dishes,
when a skiff ground against the Coal Tar Maggie’s side, and heavy
feet trampled on deck. Then the Centipede’s brutal face appeared
in the companionway, and he descended into the cabin, followed by
the Porpoise. Before they could seat themselves on a bunk, another
skiff came alongside, and another, and another, till the whole
fleet was represented by the gathering in the cabin.
“Where’d you swipe the old tub?” asked a squat and hairy man, with
cruel eyes and Mexican features.
“Didn’t swipe it,” Nicholas answered, meeting them on their own
ground and encouraging the idea that we had stolen the Coal Tar
Maggie. “And if we did, what of it?”
“Well, I don’t admire your taste, that’s all,” sneered he of the
Mexican features. “I’d rot on the beach first before I’d take a
tub that couldn’t get out of its own way.”
“How were we to know till we tried her?” Nicholas asked, so
innocently as to cause a laugh. “And how do you get the oysters?”
he hurried on. “We want a load of them; that’s what we came for, a
load of oysters.”
“What d’ye want ’em for?” demanded the Porpoise.
“Oh, to give away to our friends, of course,” Nicholas retorted.
“That’s what you do with yours, I suppose.”
This started another laugh, and as our visitors grew more genial we
could see that they had not the slightest suspicion of our identity
or purpose.
“Didn’t I see you on the dock in Oakland the other day?” the
Centipede asked suddenly of me.
“Yep,” I answered boldly, taking the bull by the horns. “I was
watching you fellows and figuring out whether we’d go oystering or
not. It’s a pretty good business, I calculate, and so we’re going
in for it. That is,” I hastened to add, “if you fellows don’t
mind.”
“I’ll tell you one thing, which ain’t two things,” he replied, “and
that is you’ll have to hump yerself an’ get a better boat. We
won’t stand to be disgraced by any such box as this. Understand?”
TALES OF THE FISH PATROL
28
“Sure,” I said. “Soon as we sell some oysters we’ll outfit in
style.”
“And if you show yerself square an’ the right sort,” he went on,
“why, you kin run with us. But if you don’t” (here his voice
became stern and menacing), “why, it’ll be the sickest day of yer
life. Understand?”
“Sure,” I said.
After that and more warning and advice of similar nature, the
conversation became general, and we learned that the beds were to
be raided that very night. As they got into their boats, after an
hour’s stay, we were invited to join them in the raid with the
assurance of “the more the merrier.”
“Did you notice that short, Mexican-looking chap?” Nicholas asked,
when they had departed to their various sloops. “He’s Barchi, of
the Sporting Life Gang, and the fellow that came with him is
Skilling. They’re both out now on five thousand dollars’ bail.”
I had heard of the Sporting Life Gang before, a crowd of hoodlums
and criminals that terrorized the lower quarters of Oakland, and
two-thirds of which were usually to be found in state’s prison for
crimes that ranged from perjury and ballot-box stuffing to murder.
“They are not regular oyster pirates,” Nicholas continued.
“They’ve just come down for the lark and to make a few dollars.
But we’ll have to watch out for them.”
We sat in the cockpit and discussed the details of our plan till
eleven o’clock had passed, when we heard the rattle of an oar in a
boat from the direction of the Ghost. We hauled up our own skiff,
tossed in a few sacks, and rowed over. There we found all the
skiffs assembling, it being the intention to raid the beds in a
body.
To my surprise, I found barely a foot of water where we had dropped