We were all jubilant. Charley was handling the wheel as though he
were steering the winning yacht home in a race. The two sailors
who made up the crew of the Mary Rebecca, were grinning and joking.
Ole Ericsen was rubbing his huge hands in child-like glee.

"Ay tank you fish patrol fallers never ban so lucky as when you
sail with Ole Ericsen," he was saying, when a rifle cracked sharply
astern, and a bullet gouged along the newly painted cabin, glanced
on a nail, and sang shrilly onward into space.

This was too much for Ole Ericsen. At sight of his beloved
paintwork thus defaced, he jumped up and shook his fist at the
fishermen; but a second bullet smashed into the cabin not six
inches from his head, and he dropped down to the deck under cover
of the rail.

All the fishermen had rifles, and they now opened a general
fusillade. We were all driven to cover--even Charley, who was
compelled to desert the wheel. Had it not been for the heavy drag
of the nets, we would inevitably have broached to at the mercy of
the enraged fishermen. But the nets, fastened to the bottom of the
Mary Rebecca well aft, held her stern into the wind, and she
continued to plough on, though somewhat erratically.

Charley, lying on the deck, could just manage to reach the lower
spokes of the wheel; but while he could steer after a fashion, it
was very awkward. Ole Ericsen bethought himself of a large piece
of sheet steel in the empty hold.

It was in fact a plate from the side of the New Jersey, a steamer