d alongside the skiff. It had been torn from the
line, a section of which was dragging to it. He hauled in forty or
fifty feet with a young sturgeon still fast in a tangle of barbless
hooks, slashed that much of the line free with his knife, and tossed it
into the cockpit beside the prisoners.

"And there's the evidence, Exhibit A, for the people," Charley
continued. "Look it over carefully so that you may identify it in the
court-room with the time and place of capture."

And then, in triumph, with no more veering and yawing, we sailed into
Benicia, the King of the Greeks bound hard and fast in the cockpit, and
for the first time in his life a prisoner of the fish patrol.

III

A RAID ON THE OYSTER
PIRATES

Of the fish patrolmen under whom we served at various times, Charley Le
Grant and I were agreed, I think, that Neil Partington was the best. He
was neither dishonest nor cowardly; and while he demanded strict
obedience when we were under his orders, at the same time our relations
were those of easy comradeship, and he permitted us a freedom to which
we were ordinarily unaccustomed, as the present story will show.

Neil's family lived in Oakland, which is on the Lower Bay, not more
than six miles across the water from San Francisco. One day, while
scouting among the Chinese shrimp-catchers of Point Pedro, he received
word that his wife was very ill; and within the hour the _Reindeer_ was
bowling along for Oakland, with a stiff northwest breeze astern. We ran
up the Oakland Estuary and came to anchor, and in the days that
followed, while Neil was ashore, we tightened up the _Reindeer's_
rigging, overhauled the ballast, scraped down, and put the sloop into
thorough shape.

This done, time hung heavy on our hands. Neil's wife was dangerously
ill, and the outlook was a week's lie-over, awaiting the crisis. Charley
and I roamed the docks, wondering what we should do, and so came upon
the oyster fleet lying at the Oakland City Wharf. In the main they were
trim, natty boats, made for speed and bad weather, and we sat down on
the stringer-piece of the dock to study them.

"A good catch, I guess," Charley said, pointing to the heaps of oysters,
assorted in three sizes, which lay upon their decks.

Pedlers were backing their wagons to the edge of the
wharf, and from the bargaining and chaffering that went on, I managed to
learn the selling price of the oysters.

"That boat must have at least two hundred do