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
TALES OF THE FISH PATROL
58
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.
TALES OF THE FISH PATROL
59
“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
TALES OF THE FISH PATROL
60
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.”
TALES OF THE FISH PATROL
61
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