THE SIEGE OF THE "LANCASHIRE QUEEN"
Possibly our most exasperating experience on the fish patrol was
when Charley Le Grant and I laid a two weeks' siege to a big four-
masted English ship. Before we had finished with the affair, it
became a pretty mathematical problem, and it was by the merest
chance that we came into possession of the instrument that brought
it to a successful termination.
After our raid on the oyster pirates we had returned to Oakland,
where two more weeks passed before Neil Partington's wife was out
of danger and on the highroad to recovery. So it was after an
absence of a month, all told, that we turned the Reindeer's nose
toward Benicia. When the cat's away the mice will play, and in
these four weeks the fishermen had become very bold in violating
the law. When we passed Point Pedro we noticed many signs of
activity among the shrimp-catchers, and, well into San Pablo Bay,
we observed a widely scattered fleet of Upper Bay fishing-boats
hastily pulling in their nets and getting up sail.
This was suspicious enough to warrant investigation, and the first
and only boat we succeeded in boarding proved to have an illegal
net. The law permitted no smaller mesh for catching shad than one
that measured seven and one-half inches inside the knots, while the
mesh of this particular net measured only three inches. It was a
flagrant breach of the rules, and the two fishermen were forthwith
put under arrest. Neil Partington took one of them with him to
help manage the Reindeer, while Charley and I went on ahead with
the other in the captured boat.
But the shad fleet had headed over toward the Petaluma shore in
wild flight, and for the rest of the run through San Pablo Bay we
saw no more fishermen at all. Our prisoner, a bronzed and bearded
Greek, sat sullenly on his net while we sailed his craft. It was a
new Columbia River salmon boat, evidently on its first trip, and it
handled splendidly. Even when Charley praised it, our prisoner
refused to speak or to notice us, and we soon gave him up as a most
unsociable fellow.
We ran up the Carquinez Straits and edged into the bight at
Turner's Shipyard for smoother water. Here were lying several
English steel sailing ships, waiting for the wheat harvest; and
here, most unexpectedly, in the precise place where we had captured
Big Alec, we came upon two Italians in a skiff that was loaded with
a complete "Chinese" sturgeon line. The surprise was mutual, and
we were on top of them before either they or we were aware.
Charley had barely time to luff into the wind and run up to them.
I ran forward and tossed them a line with orders to make it fast.
One of the Italians took a turn with it over a cleat, while I
hastened to lower our big spritsail. This accomplished, the salmon
boat dropped astern, dragging heavily on the skiff.
Charley came forward to board the prize, but when I proceeded to
haul alongside by means of the line, the Italians cast it off. We
at once began drifting to leeward, while they got out two pairs of
oars and rowed their light craft directly into the wind. This
manoeuvre for the moment disconcerted us, for in our large and
heavily loaded boat we could not hope to catch them with the oars.
But our prisoner came unexpectedly to our aid. His black eyes were
flashing eagerly, and his face was flushed with suppressed
excitement, as he dropped the centre-board, sprang forward with a
single leap, and put up the sail.
"I've always heard that Greeks don't like Italians," Charley
laughed, as he ran aft to the tiller.
And never in my experience have I seen a man so anxious for the
capture of another as was our prisoner in the chase that followed.
His eyes fairly snapped, and his nostrils quivered and dilated in a
most extraordinary way. Charley steered while he tended the sheet;
and though Charley was as quick and alert as a cat, the Greek could
hardly control his impatience.
The Italians were cut off from the shore, which was fully a mile
away at its nearest point. Did they attempt to make it, we could
haul after them with the wind abeam, and overtake them before they
had covered an eighth of the distance. But they were too wise to
attempt it, contenting themselves with rowing lustily to windward
along the starboard side of a big ship, the Lancashire Queen. But
beyond the ship lay an open stretch of fully two miles to the shore
in that direction. This, also, they dared not attempt, for we were
bound to catch them before they could cover it. So, when they
reached the bow of the Lancashire Queen, nothing remained but to
pass around and row down her port side toward the stern, which
meant rowing to leeward and giving us the advantage.
We in the salmon boat, sailing close on the wind, tacked about and
crossed the ship's bow. Then Charley put up the tiller and headed
down the port side of the ship, the Greek letting out the sheet and
grinning with delight. The Italians were already half-way down the
ship's length; but the stiff breeze at our back drove us after them
far faster than they could row. Closer and closer we came, and I,
lying down forward, was just reaching out to grasp the skiff, when
it ducked under the great stern of the Lancashire Queen.
The chase was virtually where it had begun. The Italians were
rowing up the starboard side of the ship, and we were hauled close
on the wind and slowly edging out from the ship as we worked to
windward. Then they darted around her bow and began the row down
her port side, and we tacked about, crossed her bow, and went
plunging down the wind hot after them. And again, just as I was
reaching for the skiff, it ducked under the ship's stern and out of
danger. And so it went, around and around, the skiff each time
just barely ducking into safety.
By this time the ship's crew had become aware of what was taking
place, and we could see their heads in a long row as they looked at
us over the bulwarks. Each time we missed the skiff at the stern,
they set up a wild cheer and dashed across to the other side of the
Lancashire Queen to see the chase to wind-ward. They showered us
and the Italians with jokes and advice, and made our Greek so angry
that at least once on each circuit he raised his fist and shook it
at them in a rage. They came to look for this, and at each display
greeted it with uproarious mirth.
"Wot a circus!" cried one.
"Tork about yer marine hippodromes,--if this ain't one, I'd like to
know!" affirmed another.
"Six-days-go-as-yer-please," announced a third. "Who says the
dagoes won't win?"
On the next tack to windward the Greek offered to change places
with Charley.
"Let-a me sail-a de boat," he demanded. "I fix-a them, I catch-a
them, sure."
This was a stroke at Charley's professional pride, for pride
himself he did upon his boat-sailing abilities; but he yielded the
tiller to the prisoner and took his place at the sheet. Three
times again we made the circuit, and the Greek found that he could
get no more speed out of the salmon boat than Charley had.
"Better give it up," one of the sailors advised from above.
The Greek scowled ferociously and shook his fist in his customary
fashion. In the meanwhile my mind had not been idle, and I had
finally evolved an idea.
"Keep going, Charley, one time more," I said.
And as we laid out on the next tack to wind-ward, I bent a piece of
line to a small grappling hook I had seen lying in the bail-hole.
The end of the line I made fast to the ring-bolt in the bow, and
with the hook out of sight I waited for the next opportunity to use
it. Once more they made their leeward pull down the port side of
the Lancashire Queen, and once more we churned down after them
before the wind. Nearer and nearer we drew, and I was making
believe to reach for them as before. The stern of the skiff was
not six feet away, and they were laughing at me derisively as they
ducked under the ship's stern. At that instant I suddenly arose
and threw the grappling iron. It caught fairly and squarely on the
rail of the skiff, which was jerked backward out of safety as the
rope tautened and the salmon boat ploughed on.
A groan went up from the row of sailors above, which quickly
changed to a cheer as one of the Italians whipped out a long
sheath-knife and cut the rope. But we had drawn them out of
safety, and Charley, from his place in the stern-sheets, reached
over and clutched the stern of the skiff. The whole thing happened
in a second of time, for the first Italian was cutting the rope and
Charley was clutching the skiff when the second Italian dealt him a
rap over the head with an oar, Charley released his hold and
collapsed, stunned, into the bottom of the salmon boat, and the
Italians bent to their oars and escaped back under the ship's
stern.
The Greek took both tiller and sheet and continued the chase around
the Lancashire Queen, while I attended to Charley, on whose head a
nasty lump was rapidly rising. Our sailor audience was wild with
delight, and to a man encouraged the fleeing Italians. Charley sat
up, with one hand on his head, and gazed about him sheepishly.
"It will never do to let them escape now," he said, at the same
time drawing his revolver.
On our next circuit, he threatened the Italians with the weapon;
but they rowed on stolidly, keeping splendid stroke and utterly
disregarding him.
"If you don't stop, I'll shoot," Charley said menacingly.
But this had no effect, nor were they to be frightened into
surrendering even when he fired several shots dangerously close to
them. It was too much to expect him to shoot unarmed men, and this
they knew as well as we did; so they continued to pull doggedly
round and round the ship.
"We'll run them down, then!" Charley exclaimed. "We'll wear them
out and wind them!"
So the chase continued. Twenty times more we ran them around the
Lancashire Queen, and at last we could see that even their iron
muscles were giving out. They were nearly exhausted, and it was
only a matter of a few more circuits, when the game took on a new
feature. On the row to windward they always gained on us, so that
they were half-way down the ship's side on the row to leeward when
we were passing the bow. But this last time, as we passed the bow,
we saw them escaping up the ship's gangway, which had been suddenly
lowered. It was an organized move on the part of the sailors,
evidently countenanced by the captain; for by the time we arrived
where the gangway had been, it was being hoisted up, and the skiff,
slung in the ship's davits, was likewise flying aloft out of reach.
The parley that followed with the captain was short and snappy. He
absolutely forbade us to board the Lancashire Queen, and as
absolutely refused to give up the two men. By this time Charley
was as enraged as the Greek. Not only had he been foiled in a long
and ridiculous chase, but he had been knocked senseless into the
bottom of his boat by the men who had escaped him.
"Knock off my head with little apples," he declared emphatically,
striking the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, "if those
two men ever escape me! I'll stay here to get them if it takes the
rest of my natural life, and if I don't get them, then I promise
you I'll live unnaturally long or until I do get them, or my name's
not Charley Le Grant!"
And then began the siege of the Lancashire Queen, a siege memorable
in the annals of both fishermen and fish patrol. When the Reindeer
came along, after a fruitless pursuit of the shad fleet, Charley
instructed Neil Partington to send out his own salmon boat, with
blankets, provisions, and a fisherman's charcoal stove. By sunset
this exchange of boats was made, and we said good-by to our Greek,
who perforce had to go into Benicia and be locked up for his own
violation of the law. After supper, Charley and I kept alternate
four-hour watches till day-light. The fishermen made no attempt to
escape that night, though the ship sent out a boat for scouting
purposes to find if the coast were clear.
By the next day we saw that a steady siege was in order, and we
perfected our plans with an eye to our own comfort. A dock, known
as the Solano Wharf, which ran out from the Benicia shore, helped
us in this. It happened that the Lancashire Queen, the shore at
Turner's Shipyard, and the Solano Wharf were the corners of a big
equilateral triangle. From ship to shore, the side of the triangle
along which the Italians had to escape, was a distance equal to
that from the Solano Wharf to the shore, the side of the triangle
along which we had to travel to get to the shore before the
Italians. But as we could sail much faster than they could row, we
could permit them to travel about half their side of the triangle
before we darted out along our side. If we allowed them to get
more than half-way, they were certain to beat us to shore; while if
we started before they were half-way, they were equally certain to
beat us back to the ship.
We found that an imaginary line, drawn from the end of the wharf to
a windmill farther along the shore, cut precisely in half the line
of the triangle along which the Italians must escape to reach the
land. This line made it easy for us to determine how far to let
them run away before we bestirred ourselves in pursuit. Day after
day we would watch them through our glasses as they rowed leisurely
along toward the half-way point; and as they drew close into line
with the windmill, we would leap into the boat and get up sail. At
sight of our preparation, they would turn and row slowly back to
the Lancashire Queen, secure in the knowledge that we could not
overtake them.
To guard against calms--when our salmon boat would be useless--we
also had in readiness a light rowing skiff equipped with spoon-
oars. But at such times, when the wind failed us, we were forced
to row out from the wharf as soon as they rowed from the ship. In
the night-time, on the other hand, we were compelled to patrol the
immediate vicinity of the ship; which we did, Charley and I
standing four-hour watches turn and turn about. The Italians,
however, preferred the daytime in which to escape, and so our long
night vigils were without result.
"What makes me mad," said Charley, "is our being kept from our
honest beds while those rascally lawbreakers are sleeping soundly
every night. But much good may it do them," he threatened. "I'll
keep them on that ship till the captain charges them board, as sure
as a sturgeon's not a catfish!"
It was a tantalizing problem that confronted us. As long as we
were vigilant, they could not escape; and as long as they were
careful, we would be unable to catch them. Charley cudgelled his
brains continually, but for once his imagination failed him. It
was a problem apparently without other solution than that of
patience. It was a waiting game, and whichever waited the longer
was bound to win. To add to our irritation, friends of the
Italians established a code of signals with them from the shore, so
that we never dared relax the siege for a moment. And besides
this, there were always one or two suspicious-looking fishermen
hanging around the Solano Wharf and keeping watch on our actions.
We could do nothing but "grin and bear it," as Charley said, while
it took up all our time and prevented us from doing other work.
The days went by, and there was no change in the situation. Not
that no attempts 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 gang-way step,
shivering miserably and with his feet dangling in the water, till
we, out of very pity, rowed in from the darkness and took him off.
The jokes and gibes of the awakened crew sounded anything but sweet
in our ears, and even the two Italians climbed up on the rail and
laughed down at us long and maliciously.
"That's all right," Charley said in a low voice, which I only could
hear. "I'm mighty glad it's not us that's laughing first. We'll
save our laugh to the end, eh, lad?"
He clapped a hand on my shoulder as he finished, but it seemed to
me that there was more determination than hope in his voice.
It would have been possible for us to secure the aid of United
States marshals and board the English ship, backed by Government
authority. But the instructions of the Fish Commission were to the
effect that the patrolmen should avoid complications, and this one,
did we call on the higher powers, might well end in a pretty
international tangle.
The second week of the siege drew to its close, and there was no
sign of change in the situation. On the morning of the fourteenth
day the change came, and it came in a guise as unexpected and
startling to us as it was to the men we were striving to capture.
Charley and I, after our customary night vigil by the side of the
Lancashire Queen, rowed into the Solana Wharf.
"Hello!" cried Charley, in surprise. "In the name of reason and
common sense, what is that? Of all unmannerly craft did you ever
see the like?"
Well might he exclaim, for there, tied up to the dock, lay the
strangest looking launch I had ever seen. Not that it could be
called a launch, either, but it seemed to resemble a launch more
than any other kind of boat. It was seventy feet long, but so
narrow was it, and so bare of superstructure, that it appeared much
smaller than it really was. It was built wholly of steel, and was
painted black. Three smokestacks, a good distance apart and raking
well aft, arose in single file amidships; while the bow, long and
lean and sharp as a knife, plainly advertised that the boat was
made for speed. Passing under the stern, we read Streak, painted
in small white letters.
Charley and I were consumed with curiosity. In a few minutes we
were on board and talking with an engineer who was watching the
sunrise from the deck. He was quite willing to satisfy our
curiosity, and in a few minutes we learned that the Streak had come
in after dark from San Francisco; that this was what might be
called the trial trip; and that she was the property of Silas Tate,
a young mining millionaire of California, whose fad was high-speed
yachts. There was some talk about turbine engines, direct
application of steam, and the absence of pistons, rods, and
cranks,--all of which was beyond me, for I was familiar only with
sailing craft; but I did understand the last words of the engineer.
"Four thousand horse-power and forty-five miles an hour, though you
wouldn't think it," he concluded proudly.
"Say it again, man! Say it again!" Charley exclaimed in an excited
voice.
"Four thousand horse-power and forty-five miles an hour," the
engineer repeated, grinning good-naturedly.
"Where's the owner?" was Charley's next question. "Is there any
way I can speak to him?"
The engineer shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. He's asleep,
you see."
At that moment a young man in blue uniform came on deck farther aft
and stood regarding the sunrise.
"There he is, that's him, that's Mr. Tate," said the engineer.
Charley walked aft and spoke to him, and while he talked earnestly
the young man listened with an amused expression on his face. He
must have inquired about the depth of water close in to the shore
at Turner's Shipyard, for I could see Charley making gestures and
explaining. A few minutes later he came back in high glee.
"Come on lad," he said. "On to the dock with you. We've got
them!"
It was our good fortune to leave the Streak when we did, for a
little later one of the spy fishermen appeared. Charley and I took
up our accustomed places, on the stringer-piece, a little ahead of
the Streak and over our own boat, where we could comfortably watch
the Lancashire Queen. Nothing occurred till about nine o'clock,
when we saw the two Italians leave the ship and pull along their
side of the triangle toward the shore. Charley looked as
unconcerned as could be, but before they had covered a quarter of
the distance, he whispered to me:
"Forty-five miles an hour . . . nothing can save them . . . they
are ours!"
Slowly the two men rowed along till they were nearly in line with
the windmill. This was the point where we always jumped into our
salmon boat and got up the sail, and the two men, evidently
expecting it, seemed surprised when we gave no sign.
When they were directly in line with the windmill, as near to the
shore as to the ship, and nearer the shore than we had ever allowed
them before, they grew suspicious. We followed them through the
glasses, and saw them standing up in the skiff and trying to find
out what we were doing. The spy fisherman, sitting beside us on
the stringer-piece was likewise puzzled. He could not understand
our inactivity. The men in the skiff rowed nearer the shore, but
stood up again and scanned it, as if they thought we might be in
hiding there. But a man came out on the beach and waved a
handkerchief to indicate that the coast was clear. That settled
them. They bent to the oars to make a dash for it. Still Charley
waited. Not until they had covered three-quarters of the distance
from the Lancashire Queen, which left them hardly more than a
quarter of a mile to gain the shore, did Charley slap me on the
shoulder and cry:
"They're ours! They're ours!"
We ran the few steps to the side of the Streak and jumped aboard.
Stern and bow lines were cast off in a jiffy. The Streak shot
ahead and away from the wharf. The spy fisherman we had left
behind on the stringer-piece pulled out a revolver and fired five
shots into the air in rapid succession. The men in the skiff gave
instant heed to the warning, for we could see them pulling away
like mad.
But if they pulled like mad, I wonder how our progress can be
described? We fairly flew. So frightful was the speed with which
we displaced the water, that a wave rose up on either side our bow
and foamed aft in a series of three stiff, up-standing waves, while
astern a great crested billow pursued us hungrily, as though at
each moment it would fall aboard and destroy us. The Streak was
pulsing and vibrating and roaring like a thing alive. The wind of
our progress was like a gale--a forty-five-mile gale. We could not
face it and draw breath without choking and strangling. It blew
the smoke straight back from the mouths of the smoke-stacks at a
direct right angle to the perpendicular. In fact, we were
travelling as fast as an express train. "We just STREAKED it," was
the way Charley told it afterward, and I think his description
comes nearer than any I can give.
As for the Italians in the skiff--hardly had we started, it seemed
to me, when we were on top of them. Naturally, we had to slow down
long before we got to them; but even then we shot past like a
whirlwind and were compelled to circle back between them and the
shore. They had rowed steadily, rising from the thwarts at every
stroke, up to the moment we passed them, when they recognized
Charley and me. That took the last bit of fight out of them. They
hauled in their oars, and sullenly submitted to arrest.
"Well, Charley," Neil Partington said, as we discussed it on the
wharf afterward, "I fail to see where your boasted imagination came
into play this time."
But Charley was true to his hobby. "Imagination?" he demanded,
pointing to the Streak. "Look at that! just look at it! If the
invention of that isn't imagination, I should like to know what
is."
"Of course," he added, "it's the other fellow's imagination, but it
did the work all the same."
