wildly, until it receives hook after hook in its soft flesh; and
the hooks, straining from many different angles, hold the luckless
fish fast until it is drowned. Because no sturgeon can pass
through a Chinese line, the device is called a trap in the fish
laws; and because it bids fair to exterminate the sturgeon, it is
branded by the fish laws as illegal. And such a line, we were
confident, Big Alec intended setting, in open and flagrant
violation of the law.

Several days passed after the visit of Big Alec, during which
Charley and I kept a sharp watch on him. He towed his ark around
the Solano Wharf and into the big bight at Turner's Shipyard. The
bight we knew to be good ground for sturgeon, and there we felt
sure the King of the Greeks intended to begin operations. The tide
circled like a mill-race in and out of this bight, and made it
possible to raise, lower, or set a Chinese line only at slack
water. So between the tides Charley and I made it a point for one
or the other of us to keep a lookout from the Solano Wharf.

On the fourth day I was lying in the sun behind the stringer-piece
of the wharf, when I saw a skiff leave the distant shore and pull
out into the bight. In an instant the glasses were at my eyes and
I was following every movement of the skiff. There were two men in
it, and though it was a good mile away, I made out one of them to
be Big Alec; and ere the skiff returned to shore I made out enough
more to know that the Greek had set his line.

"Big Alec has a Chinese line out in the bight off Turner's
Shipyard," Charley Le Grant said that afternoon to Carmintel.