while his feet were off the bottom and they were
supporting him.

"Now, lads," Charley said briskly, "we have got you, and you can't get
away. If you cut up rough, we'll have to leave you alone and the water
will finish you. But if you're good, we'll take you aboard, one man
at a time, and you'll all be saved. What do you say?"

"Ay," they chorused hoarsely between their chattering teeth.

"Then one man at a time, and the short men first."

The Centipede was the first to be pulled aboard, and he came
willingly, though he objected when the constable put the handcuffs on
him. Barchi was next hauled in, quite meek and resigned from his
soaking. When we had ten in our boat we drew back, and the second
Whitehall was loaded. The third Whitehall received nine prisoners
only--a catch of twenty-nine in all.

"You didn't get the Porpoise," the Centipede said exultantly, as
though his escape materially diminished our success.

Charley laughed. "But we saw him just the same, a-snorting for shore
like a puffing pig."

It was a mild and shivering band of pirates that we marched up the
beach to the oyster house. In answer to Charley's knock, the door was
flung open, and a pleasant wave of warm air rushed out upon us.

"You can dry your clothes here, lads, and get some hot coffee,"
Charley announced, as they filed in.

And there, sitting ruefully by the fire, with a steaming mug in his
hand, was the Porpoise. With one accord Nicholas and I looked at
Charley. He laughed gleefully.

"That comes of imagination," he said. "When you see a thing, you've
got to see it all around, or what's the good of seeing it at all? I
saw the beach, so I left a couple of constables behind to keep an eye
on it. That's all."

IV

THE SIEGE OF THE "LANCASHIRE QUEEN"

Possibly our most exasperating experience on the fish patrol was when
Charley Le Grant and I laid a two weeks' siege to a big four-masted
English ship. Before we had finished with the affair, it became a
pretty mathematical problem, and it was by the merest chance that we
came into possession of the instrument that brought it to a successful
termination.

After our raid on the oyster pirates we had returned to Oakland, where
two more weeks passed before Neil Partington's wife was out of danger
and on the highroad to recovery. So it was after an absence of a
month, all told, that we turned the _Reindeer's_ nose toward Benicia.
When the cat's away the mice will play, and