ay. I shot
a glance forward to Nickey. He had the anchor up-and-down and was
straining at it. "Break her out," I whispered to him, and turned and
shouted back to the constable. The result was that he and I were
talking at the same time, our spoken thoughts colliding in mid-air and
making gibberish.

The constable grew more imperative, and perforce I had to listen.
Nickey was heaving on the anchor till I thought he'd burst a
blood-vessel. When the constable got done with his threats and
warnings, I asked him who he was. The time he lost in telling me
enabled Nickey to break out the anchor. I was doing some quick
calculating. At the feet of the constable a ladder ran down the dock
to the water, and to the ladder was moored a skiff. The oars were in
it. But it was padlocked. I gambled everything on that padlock. I
felt the breeze on my cheek, saw the surge of the tide, looked at the
remaining gaskets that confined the sail, ran my eyes up the halyards
to the blocks and knew that all was clear, and then threw off all
dissimulation.

"In with her!" I shouted to Nickey, and sprang to the gaskets, casting
them loose and thanking my stars that Whiskey Bob had tied them in
square-knots instead of "grannies."

The constable had slid down the ladder and was fumbling with a key at
the padlock. The anchor came aboard and the last gasket was loosed at
the same instant that the constable freed the skiff and jumped to the
oars.

"Peak-halyards!" I commanded my crew, at the same time swinging on to
the throat-halyards. Up came the sail on the run. I belayed and ran
aft to the tiller.

"Stretch her!" I shouted to Nickey at the peak. The constable was just
reaching for our stern. A puff of wind caught us, and we shot away. It
was great. If I'd had a black flag, I know I'd have run it up in
triumph. The constable stood up in the skiff, and paled the glory of
the day with the vividness of his language. Also, he wailed for a gun.
You see, that was another gamble we had taken.

Anyway, we weren't stealing the boat. It wasn't the constable's. We
were merely stealing his fees, which was his particular form of graft.
And we weren't stealing the fees for ourselves, either; we were
stealing them for my friend, Dinny McCrea.

Benicia was made in a few minutes, and a few minutes later my blankets
were aboard. I shifted the boat down to the far end of Steamboat
Wharf, from which point of vantage we could see anybody coming after
us. There