ey 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 s