A thousand deaths by Jack London

the Lower Bay, taking Nicholas with him, and Charley and I were

left to our own resources. This meant that the Sunday fishing

would be left to itself, too, until such time as Charley’s idea

happened along. I puzzled my head a good deal to find out some way

of checkmating the Greeks, as also did Charley, and we broached a

thousand expedients which on discussion proved worthless.

The fishermen, on the other hand, were in high feather, and their

boasts went up and down the river to add to our discomfiture.

Among all classes of them we became aware of a growing

insubordination. We were beaten, and they were losing respect for

us. With the loss of respect, contempt began to arise. Charley

began to be spoken of as the “olda woman,” and I received my rating

as the “pee-wee kid.” The situation was fast becoming unbearable,

and we knew that we should have to deliver a stunning stroke at the

Greeks in order to regain the old-time respect in which we had

stood.

Then one morning the idea came. We were down on Steamboat Wharf,

where the river steamers made their landings, and where we found a

group of amused long-shoremen and loafers listening to the hard-

luck tale of a sleepy-eyed young fellow in long sea-boots. He was

a sort of amateur fisherman, he said, fishing for the local market

of Berkeley. Now Berkeley was on the Lower Bay, thirty miles away.

On the previous night, he said, he had set his net and dozed off to

sleep in the bottom of the boat.

The next he knew it was morning, and he opened his eyes to find his

boat rubbing softly against the piles of Steamboat Wharf at

Benicia. Also he saw the river steamer Apache lying ahead of him,

and a couple of deck-hands disentangling the shreds of his net from

the paddle-wheel. In short, after he had gone to sleep, his

TALES OF THE FISH PATROL

47

fisherman’s riding light had gone out, and the Apache had run over

his net. Though torn pretty well to pieces, the net in some way

still remained foul, and he had had a thirty-mile tow out of his

course.

Charley nudged me with his elbow. I grasped his thought on the

instant, but objected:

“We can’t charter a steamboat.”

“Don’t intend to,” he rejoined. “But let’s run over to Turner’s

Shipyard. I’ve something in my mind there that may be of use to

us.”

And over we went to the shipyard, where Charley led the way to the

Mary Rebecca, lying hauled out on the ways, where she was being

cleaned and overhauled. She was a scow-schooner we both knew well,

carrying a cargo of one hundred and forty tons and a spread of

canvas greater than other schooner on the bay.

“How d’ye do, Ole,” Charley greeted a big blue-shirted Swede who

was greasing the jaws of the main gaff with a piece of pork rind.

Ole grunted, puffed away at his pipe, and went on greasing. The

captain of a bay schooner is supposed to work with his hands just

as well as the men.

Ole Ericsen verified Charley’s conjecture that the Mary Rebecca, as

soon as launched, would run up the San Joaquin River nearly to

Stockton for a load of wheat. Then Charley made his proposition,

and Ole Ericsen shook his head.

“Just a hook, one good-sized hook,” Charley pleaded.

“No, Ay tank not,” said Ole Ericsen. “Der Mary Rebecca yust hang

up on efery mud-bank with that hook. Ay don’t want to lose der

Mary Rebecca. She’s all Ay got.”

“No, no,” Charley hurried to explain. “We can put the end of the

hook through the bottom from the outside, and fasten it on the

inside with a nut. After it’s done its work, why, all we have to

do is to go down into the hold, unscrew the nut, and out drops the

hook. Then drive a wooden peg into the hole, and the Mary Rebecca

will be all right again.”

Ole Ericsen was obstinate for a long time; but in the end, after we

TALES OF THE FISH PATROL

48

had had dinner with him, he was brought round to consent.

“Ay do it, by Yupiter!” he said, striking one huge fist into the

palm of the other hand. “But yust hurry you up wid der hook. Der

Mary Rebecca slides into der water to-night.”

It was Saturday, and Charley had need to hurry. We headed for the

shipyard blacksmith shop, where, under Charley’s directions, a most

generously curved book of heavy steel was made. Back we hastened

to the Mary Rebecca. Aft of the great centre-board case, through

what was properly her keel, a hole was bored. The end of the hook

was inserted from the outside, and Charley, on the inside, screwed

the nut on tightly. As it stood complete, the hook projected over

a foot beneath the bottom of the schooner. Its curve was something

like the curve of a sickle, but deeper.

In the late afternoon the Mary Rebecca was launched, and

preparations were finished for the start up-river next morning.

Charley and Ole intently studied the evening sky for signs of wind,

for without a good breeze our project was doomed to failure. They

agreed that there were all the signs of a stiff westerly wind – not

the ordinary afternoon sea-breeze, but a half-gale, which even then

was springing up.

Next morning found their predictions verified. The sun was shining

brightly, but something more than a half-gale was shrieking up the

Carquinez Straits, and the Mary Rebecca got under way with two

reefs in her mainsail and one in her foresail. We found it quite

rough in the Straits and in Suisun Bay; but as the water grew more

land-locked it became calm, though without let-up in the wind.

Off Ship Island Light the reefs were shaken out, and at Charley’s

suggestion a big fisherman’s staysail was made all ready for

hoisting, and the maintopsail, bunched into a cap at the masthead,

was overhauled so that it could be set on an instant’s notice.

We were tearing along, wing-and-wing, before the wind, foresail to

starboard and mainsail to port, as we came upon the salmon fleet.

There they were, boats and nets, as on that first Sunday when they

had bested us, strung out evenly over the river as far as we could

see. A narrow space on the right-hand side of the channel was left

clear for steamboats, but the rest of the river was covered with

the wide-stretching nets. The narrow space was our logical course,

but Charley, at the wheel, steered the Mary Rebecca straight for

the nets. This did not cause any alarm among the fishermen,

because up-river sailing craft are always provided with “shoes” on

TALES OF THE FISH PATROL

49

the ends of their keels, which permit them to slip over the nets

without fouling them.

“Now she takes it!” Charley cried, as we dashed across the middle

of a line of floats which marked a net. At one end of this line

was a small barrel buoy, at the other the two fishermen in their

boat. Buoy and boat at once began to draw together, and the

fishermen to cry out, as they were jerked after us. A couple of

minutes later we hooked a second net, and then a third, and in this

fashion we tore straight up through the centre of the fleet.

The consternation we spread among the fishermen was tremendous. As

fast as we hooked a net the two ends of it, buoy and boat, came

together as they dragged out astern; and so many buoys and boats,

coming together at such breakneck speed, kept the fishermen on the

jump to avoid smashing into one another. Also, they shouted at us

like mad to heave to into the wind, for they took it as some

drunken prank on the part of scow-sailors, little dreaming that we

were the fish patrol.

The drag of a single net is very heavy, and Charley and Ole Ericsen

decided that even in such a wind ten nets were all the Mary Rebecca

could take along with her. So when we had hooked ten nets, with

ten boats containing twenty men streaming along behind us, we

veered to the left out of the fleet and headed toward Collinsville.

We were all jubilant. Charley was handling the wheel as though he

were steering the winning yacht home in a race. The two sailors

who made up the crew of the Mary Rebecca, were grinning and joking.

Ole Ericsen was rubbing his huge hands in child-like glee.

“Ay tank you fish patrol fallers never ban so lucky as when you

sail with Ole Ericsen,” he was saying, when a rifle cracked sharply

astern, and a bullet gouged along the newly painted cabin, glanced

on a nail, and sang shrilly onward into space.