o be the weather side of the junk. I
could scarcely see the outlines of his form, but I soon became convinced
that he was slowly, very slowly, edging closer to me. I watched him
carefully. Steering with my left hand, I slipped my right into my pocket
and got hold of the revolver.

I saw him shift along for a couple of inches, and I was just about to
order him back--the words were trembling on the tip of my tongue--when
I was struck with great force by a heavy figure that had leaped through
the air upon me from the lee side. It was one of the crew. He pinioned
my right arm so that I could not withdraw my hand from my pocket, and at
the same time clapped his other hand over my mouth. Of course, I could
have struggled away from him and freed my hand or gotten my mouth clear
so that I might cry an alarm, but in a trice Yellow Handkerchief was on
top of me.

I struggled around to no purpose in the bottom of the junk, while my
legs and arms were tied and my mouth securely bound in what I afterward
found to be a cotton shirt. Then I was left lying in the bottom. Yellow
Handkerchief took the tiller, issuing his orders in whispers; and from
our position at the time, and from the alteration of the sail, which I
could dimly make out above me as a blot against the stars, I knew the
junk was being headed into the mouth of a small slough which emptied at
that point into San Rafael Creek.

In a couple of minutes we ran softly alongside the bank, and the sail
was silently lowered. The Chinese kept very quiet. Yellow Handkerchief
sat down in the bottom alongside of me, and I could feel him straining
to repress his raspy, hacking cough. Possibly seven or eight minutes
later I heard Charley's voice as the _Reindeer_ went past the mouth of
the slough.

"I can't tell you how relieved I am," I could plainly hear him saying to
Neil, "that the lad has finished with the fish patrol without accident."

Here Neil said something which I could not catch, and then Charley's
voice went on:

"The youngster takes naturally to the water, and if when he finishes
high school he takes a course in navigation and goes deep sea, I see no
reason why he shouldn't rise to be master of the finest and biggest ship
afloat."

It was all very flattering to me, but lying there, bound and gagged by
my own prisoners, with the voices growing faint and fainter as the
_Reindeer_ slipped on through the darkness toward San Rafael, I must say
I was not in quite the p