f 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 when I
started to get up sail overwhelmed me with all sorts of jocular
advice. They even offered extravagant bets to one another that I would
surely catch Demetrios, and two of them, styling themselves the
committee of judges, gravely asked permission to come along with me to
see how I did it.

But I was in no hurry. I waited to give Charley all the time I could,
and I pretended dissatisfaction with the stretch of the sail and
slightly shifted the small tackle by which the huge sprit forces up
the peak. It was not until I was sure that Charley had reached Dan
Maloney's and was on the little mare's back, that I cast off from the
wharf and gave the big sail to the wind. A stout puff filled it and
suddenly pressed the lee gunwale down till a couple of buckets of
water came inboard. A little thing like this will happen to the best
small-boat sailors, and yet, though I instantly let go the sheet and
righted, I was cheered sarcastically, as though I had been guilty of a
very awkward blunder.

When Demetrios saw only one person in the fish patrol boat, and that
one a boy, he proceeded to play with me. Making a short tack out, with
me not thirty feet behind, he returned, with his sheet a little free,
to Steamboat Wharf. And there he made short tacks, and turned and
twisted and ducked around, to the great delight of his sympathetic
audience. I was right behind him all the time, and I dared to do
whatever he did, even when he squared away before the wind and jibed
his big sail over--a most dangerous trick with such a sail in such a
wind.

He depended upon the brisk sea breeze and the strong ebb tide, which
together kicked up a nasty sea, to bring me to grief. But I was on my
mettle, and never in all my life did I sail a boat better than on that
day. I was keyed up to concert pitch, my brain was working smoothly
and quickly, my hands never fumbled once, and it seemed that I almost
divined the thousand little things which a small-boat sailor must be
taking into consideration every second.

It was Demetrios who came to grief instead. Something went wrong with
his centre-board, so that it jammed in the case and would not go all
the way down. In a moment's breathing space, which he had gained from
me by a clever trick,