He saw fit to laugh and sneer at us, before all the fishermen" 60

"The Centipede and the Porpoise doubled up on the cabin
in paroxysms of laughter" 86

"I suddenly arose and threw the grappling iron" 116

"The consternation we spread among the fishermen was tremendous" 158

"There, in the stern, sat Demetrios Contos" 204

"I went aft and took charge of the prize" 218

TALES OF THE FISH PATROL

I

WHITE AND YELLOW

[Illustration: Map]

San Francisco Bay is so large that often its storms are more disastrous
to ocean-going craft than is the ocean itself in its violent moments.
The waters of the bay contain all manner of fish, wherefore its surface
is ploughed by the keels of all manner of fishing boats manned by all
manner of fishermen. To protect the fish from this motley floating
population many wise laws have been passed, and there is a fish patrol
to see that these laws are enforced. Exciting times are the lot of the
fish patrol: in its history more than one dead patrolman has marked
defeat, and more often dead fishermen across their illegal nets have
marked success.

Wildest among the fisher-folk may be accounted the Chinese
shrimp-catchers. It is the habit of the shrimp to crawl along the
bottom in vast armies till it reaches fresh water, when it turns about
and crawls back again to the salt. And where the tide ebbs and flows,
the Chinese sink great bag-nets to the bottom, with gaping mouths, into
which the shrimp crawls and from which it is transferred to the
boiling-pot. This in itself would not be bad, were it not for the small
mesh of the nets, so small that the tiniest fishes, little new-hatched
things not a quarter of an inch long, cannot pass through. The beautiful
beaches of Points Pedro and Pablo, where are the shrimp-catchers
villages, are made fearful by the stench from myriads of decaying fish,
and against this wasteful destruction it has ever been the duty of the
fish patrol to act.

When I was a youngster of sixteen, a good sloop-sailor and all-round
bay-waterman, my sloop, the _Reindeer_, was chartered by the Fish
Commission, and I became for the time being a deputy patrolman. After a
deal of work among the Greek fishermen of the Upper Bay and rivers,
where knives flashed at the beginning of trouble and men permitted
themselves to be made prisoners only aft