good indeed," I continued proudly. "You stroll carelessly
up-town, but when you're once out of sight you leg it for all you're
worth for Dan Maloney's. Take the little mare of his, and strike out
on the county road for Vallejo. The road's in fine condition, and you
can make it in quicker time than Demetrios can beat all the way down
against the wind."

"And I'll arrange right away for the mare, first thing in the
morning," Charley said, accepting the modified plan without
hesitation.

"But, I say," he said, a little later, this time waking _me_ out of a
sound sleep.

I could hear him chuckling in the dark.

"I say, lad, isn't it rather a novelty for the fish patrol to be
taking to horseback?"

"Imagination," I answered. "It's what you're always preaching--'keep
thinking one thought ahead of the other fellow, and you're bound to
win out.'"

"He! he!" he chuckled. "And if one thought ahead, including a mare,
doesn't take the other fellow's breath away this time, I'm not your
humble servant, Charley Le Grant."

"But can you manage the boat alone?" he asked, on Friday. "Remember,
we've a ripping big sail on her."

I argued my proficiency so well that he did not refer to the matter
again till Saturday, when he suggested removing one whole cloth from
the after leech. I guess it was the disappointment written on my face
that made him desist; for I, also, had a pride in my boat-sailing
abilities, and I was almost wild to get out alone with the big sail
and go tearing down the Carquinez Straits in the wake of the flying
Greek.

As usual, Sunday and Demetrios Contos arrived together. It had become
the regular thing for the fishermen to assemble on Steamboat Wharf to
greet his arrival and to laugh at our discomfiture. He lowered sail a
couple of hundred yards out and set his customary fifty feet of rotten
net.

"I suppose this nonsense will keep up as long as his old net holds
out," Charley grumbled, with intention, in the hearing of several of
the Greeks.

"Den I give-a heem my old-a net-a," one of them spoke up, promptly and
maliciously.

"I don't care," Charley answered. "I've got some old net myself he can
have--if he'll come around and ask for it."

They all laughed at this, for they could afford to be sweet-tempered
with a man so badly outwitted as Charley was.

"Well, so long, lad," Charley called to me a moment later. "I think
I'll go up-town to Maloney's."

"Let me take the boat out?" I asked.

"I