Greeks. But Charley's wife and children lived at Benicia, and we
had made the place our headquarters, so that we always returned to
it.

"I'll tell you what we can do," I said, after several fruitless
weeks had passed; "we can wait some slack water till Big Alec has
run his line and gone ashore with the fish, and then we can go out
and capture the line. It will put him to time and expense to make
another, and then we'll figure to capture that too. If we can't
capture him, we can discourage him, you see."

Charley saw, and said it wasn't a bad idea. We watched our chance,
and the next low-water slack, after Big Alec had removed the fish
from the line and returned ashore, we went out in the salmon boat.
We had the bearings of the line from shore marks, and we knew we
would have no difficulty in locating it. The first of the flood
tide was setting in, when we ran below where we thought the line
was stretched and dropped over a fishing-boat anchor. Keeping a
short rope to the anchor, so that it barely touched the bottom, we
dragged it slowly along until it stuck and the boat fetched up hard
and fast.

"We've got it," Charley cried. "Come on and lend a hand to get it
in."

Together we hove up the rope till the anchor I came in sight with
the sturgeon line caught across one of the flukes. Scores of the
murderous-looking hooks flashed into sight as we cleared the
anchor, and we had just started to run along the line to the end
where we could begin to lift it, when a sharp thud in the boat