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 main-topsail, 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
steam-boats, 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 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.