ts were made to change it. One night friends from the shore
came out in a skiff and attempted to confuse us while the two Italians
escaped. That they did not succeed was due to the lack of a little oil
on the ship's davits. For we were drawn back from the pursuit of the
strange boat by the creaking of the davits, and arrived at the
_Lancashire Queen_ just as the Italians were lowering their skiff.
Another night, fully half a dozen skiffs rowed around us in the
darkness, but we held on like a leech to the side of the ship and
frustrated their plan till they grew angry and showered us with abuse.
Charley laughed to himself in the bottom of the boat.

"It's a good sign, lad," he said to me. "When men begin to abuse, make
sure they're losing patience; and shortly after they lose patience,
they lose their heads. Mark my words, if we only hold out, they'll get
careless some fine day, and then we'll get them."

But they did not grow careless, and Charley confessed that this was
one of the times when all signs failed. Their patience seemed equal to
ours, and the second week of the siege dragged monotonously along.
Then Charley's lagging imagination quickened sufficiently to suggest
a ruse. Peter Boyelen, a new patrolman and one unknown to the
fisher-folk, happened to arrive in Benicia, and we took him into our
plan. We were as secret as possible about it, but in some unfathomable
way the friends ashore got word to the beleaguered Italians to keep
their eyes open.

On the night we were to put our ruse into effect, Charley and I took
up our usual station in our rowing skiff alongside the _Lancashire
Queen_. After it was thoroughly dark, Peter Boyelen came out in a
crazy duck boat, the kind you can pick up and carry away under one
arm. When we heard him coming along, paddling noisily, we slipped away
a short distance into the darkness and rested on our oars. Opposite
the gangway, having jovially hailed the anchor-watch of the
_Lancashire Queen_ and asked the direction of the _Scottish Chiefs_,
another wheat ship, he awkwardly capsized himself. The man who was
standing the anchor-watch ran down the gangway and hauled him out of
the water. This was what he wanted, to get aboard the ship; and the
next thing he expected was to be taken on deck and then below to warm
up and dry out. But the captain inhospitably kept him perched on the
lowest gangway step, shivering miserably and with his feet dangling in
the water, till we, out of v