the line, a section of which was dragging to it. He hauled in
forty or fifty feet with a young sturgeon still fast in a tangle of
barbless hooks, slashed that much of the line free with his knife,
and tossed it into the cockpit beside the prisoners.

"And there's the evidence, Exhibit A, for the people," Charley
continued. "Look it over carefully so that you may identify it in
the court-room with the time and place of capture."

And then, in triumph, with no more veering and yawing, we sailed
into Benicia, the King of the Greeks bound hard and fast in the
cockpit, and for the first time in his life a prisoner of the fish
patrol.



A RAID ON THE OYSTER PIRATES



Of the fish patrolmen under whom we served at various times,
Charley Le Grant and I were agreed, I think, that Neil Partington
was the best. He was neither dishonest nor cowardly; and while he
demanded strict obedience when we were under his orders, at the
same time our relations were those of easy comradeship, and he
permitted us a freedom to which we were ordinarily unaccustomed, as
the present story will show.

Neil's family lived in Oakland, which is on the Lower Bay, not more
than six miles across the water from San Francisco. One day, while