some minutes to inveigh against the brazenness of Demetrios Contos.

In the meantime, the man in question was lolling in the stern of
his boat and watching the net floats. When a large fish is meshed
in a gill-net, the floats by their agitation advertise the fact.
And they evidently advertised it to Demetrios, for he pulled in
about a dozen feet of net, and held aloft for a moment, before he
flung it into the bottom of the boat, a big, glistening salmon. It
was greeted by the audience on the wharf with round after round of
cheers. This was more than Charley could stand.

"Come on, lad," he called to me; and we lost no time jumping into
our salmon boat and getting up sail.

The crowd shouted warning to Demetrios, and as we darted out from
the wharf we saw him slash his worthless net clear with a long
knife. His sail was all ready to go up, and a moment later it
fluttered in the sunshine. He ran aft, drew in the sheet, and
filled on the long tack toward the Contra Costa Hills.

By this time we were not more than thirty feet astern. Charley was
jubilant. He knew our boat was fast, and he knew, further, that in
fine sailing few men were his equals. He was confident that we
should surely catch Demetrios, and I shared his confidence. But
somehow we did not seem to gain.

It was a pretty sailing breeze. We were gliding sleekly through
the water, but Demetrios was slowly sliding away from us. And not
only was he going faster, but he was eating into the wind a
fraction of a point closer than we. This was sharply impressed