VII
YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF
"I'm not wanting to dictate to you, lad," Charley said; "but I'm very
much against your making a last raid. You've gone safely through rough
times with rough men, and it would be a shame to have something happen
to you at the very end."
"But how can I get out of making a last raid?" I demanded, with the
cocksureness of youth. "There always has to be a last, you know, to
anything."
Charley crossed his legs, leaned back, and considered the problem.
"Very true. But why not call the capture of Demetrios Contos the last?
You're back from it safe and sound and hearty, for all your good
wetting, and--and--" His voice broke and he could not speak for a
moment. "And I could never forgive myself if anything happened to you
now."
I laughed at Charley's fears while I gave in to the claims of his
affection, and agreed to consider the last raid already performed. We
had been together for two years, and now I was leaving the fish patrol
in order to go back and finish my education. I had earned and saved
money to put me through three years at the high school, and though the
beginning of the term was several months away, I intended doing a lot
of studying for the entrance examinations.
My belongings were packed snugly in a sea-chest, and I was all ready
to buy my ticket and ride down on the train to Oakland, when Neil
Partington arrived in Benicia. The _Reindeer_ was needed immediately
for work far down on the Lower Bay, and Neil said he intended to run
straight for Oakland. As that was his home and as I was to live with
his family while going to school, he saw no reason, he said, why I
should not put my chest aboard and come along.
So the chest went aboard, and in the middle of the afternoon we
hoisted the _Reindeer's_ big mainsail and cast off. It was tantalizing
fall weather. The sea-breeze, which had blown steadily all summer, was
gone, and in its place were capricious winds and murky skies which
made the time of arriving anywhere extremely problematical. We started
on the first of the ebb, and as we slipped down the Carquinez Straits,
I looked my last for some time upon Benicia and the bight at Turner's
Shipyard, where we had besieged the _Lancashire Queen_, and had
captured Big Alec, the King of the Greeks. And at the mouth of the
Straits I looked with not a little interest upon the spot where a few
days before I should have drowned but for the good that was in the
nature of Demetrios
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