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The King of the Greeks

By Jack London

ALEC had never been captured by the fish patrol. It was his boast that no man could take him alive, and it was certainly true that of the many men who had tried to take him dead none had succeeded. Further, no man violated the fish laws more systematically and deliberately than Big Alec.
     He was called "Big Alec" because of his gigantic stature. His height was six feet three inches, and he was correspondingly broad-shouldered and deep-chested. He had splendid muscles and was as hard as steel, and there were innumerable stories in circulation among the fisherfolk concerning his prodigious strength.
     He was as bold and domineering as he was strong, and because of this he was widely known by another name, that of "The King of the Greeks." The fishing population was largely Greek, and they looked up to him and obeyed him as their chief. And as their chief, he fought their fights for them, saw that they were protected, saved them from the law when they fell into its clutches, and made them stand by one another and himself in time of trouble.
     In the old days the fish patrol had attempted his capture many disastrous times, and had finally given in over, so that when the word was out that he was coming to Benicia, I was most anxious to see him. But I did not have to look for him. In his usual bold way, the first thing he did on arriving was to hunt us up. Charley Le Grant and I were under a patrolman named Carmintel at the time, and the three of us were on the Reindeer, preparing for a trip, when Big Alec stepped aboard. Carmintel evidently knew him, for they shook hands in recognition. Big Alec took no notice of Charley or me.
     "I've come down to fish sturgeon a couple of months," he said to Carmintel.
     His eyes flashed with challenge as he spoke, and we noticed the patrolman's eyes drop.
     "That's all right, Alec," Carmintel said, in a low voice. "I'll not bother you. Come on into the cabin and we'll talk things over."
     When they had gone inside and shut the doors, Charley winked with slow deliberation at me. But I was only a youngster, new to men and the ways of some men, so I did not understand. Nor did Charley explain, although I felt there was something wrong about the business.
     "What are you going to do about his fishing for sturgeon?" I asked. "He's bound to fish with a 'Chinese line.'"
     Charley shrugged his shoulders. "We'll see what we shall see," he said, enigmatically.
     Now a "Chinese line" is a cunning device invented by the people whose name it bears. By a simple system of floats, weights and anchors, thousands of hooks, each on a separate leader, are suspended at a distance of from six inches to a foot above the bottom. The remarkable thing about such a line is the hook. It is barbless, and in place of the barb the hook is filed long and tapering to a point as sharp as that of a needle. These hooks are only several inches apart, and when a few thousand of them are suspended just above the bottom, like a fringe, for a couple of hundred fathoms, they present a formidable obstacle to the fish that travel along the bottom.
     Such a fish is the sturgeon, which goes rooting along like a pig, and indeed is often called "pig-fish." Pricked by the first hook it touches, the sturgeon gives a startled leap and comes in contact with half a dozen more hooks. Then it thrashes about 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. 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, and Charley and I kept a sharp watch on him. He towed his ark round 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, Clarley 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 although a good two miles away, I yet 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.
     A fleeting expression of annoyance passed over the patrolman's face, and then he said, "Yes?" in an absent way, and that was all.
     Charley bit his lip with suppressed anger, and turned on his heel.
     "Are you game, my lad?" he said to me, later on in the evening, just as we had finished washing down the Reindeer's decks and were preparing to turn in.
     A lump came up in my throat, and I could only nod my head.
     "Well, then," and Charley's eyes glittered in a determined way, "we've got to capture Big Alec between us, you and I, and we've got to do it in spite of Carmintel."
     It was no easy task. In order to convict a man of illegal fishing, it was necessary to catch him in the act, with all the evidence of the crime about him—the hooks, the lines, the fish, and the man himself. This meant that we must take Big Alec on the open water, where he could see us coming and prepare for us one of the warm receptions for which he was noted.
     "There's no getting around it," said Charley, one morning. "If we can only get alongside it's an even toss, and there's nothing left for us but to try and get alongside. Come on, lad!"
     We were in the Columbia River salmon-boat, the one we had used against the Chinese shrimp-catchers, as I have related in a previous experience. Slack water had come, and as we dropped round the end of the Solano wharf we saw Big Alec at work running his line and removing the fish.
     "Change places," Charley commanded, "and steer just astern of him as if you were going into the shipyard."
     I took the tiller, and Charley sat down on a thwart amidships, placing his revolver handily beside him.
     "If he begins to shoot," he cautioned, "get down in the bottom and steer from there, so that nothing more than your hand will be exposed."
     I nodded, and we kept silent after that, the boat slipping gently through the water and Big Alec growing nearer and nearer. We could see him quite plainly, gaffing the sturgeon and throwing them into the boat, while his companion ran the line and cleared the hooks as he dropped them back into the water. Nevertheless, we were five hundred yards away when the big fisherman hailed us.
     "Here! You! What do you want?" he shouted.
     "Keep a-going," Charley whispered, "just as if you didn't hear him."
     The next few moments were anxious ones. The fisherman was studying us sharply, while we were gliding up on him every second.
     "You keep off if you know what's good for you!" he called out, suddenly, as if he had made up his mind as to who and what we were. "If you don't I'll fix you!"
     He brought a rifle to his shoulder and trained it on me.
     "Now will you keep off?" he demanded.
     I could hear Charley groan with disappointment. "Keep off," he whispered. "It's all up for this time."
     I put up the tiller and eased the sheet, and the salmon-boat ran off five of six points. Big Alec watched us till we were out of range, when he returned to his work.
     "You'd better leave Big Alec alone," Carmintel said rather sourly to Charley that night.
     "So he's been complaining to you, has he?" Charley said, significantly.
     Carmintel flushed painfully. "You'd better leave him alone, I tell you," he repeated. "He's a dangerous man, and it won't pay to fool with him."
     "Yes," Charley answered, softly, "I've heard that it pays better to leave him alone."
     This was a direct thrust at Carmintel, and we could see by the expression of his face that it sank home. For it was common knowledge that Big Alec was as willing to bribe as to fight, and that of late years more than one patrolman had handled the fisherman's money.
     "Do you mean to say ——" Carmintel began, in a bullying tone.
     But Charley cut him off shortly. "I mean to say nothing," he said. "You heard what I said, and if the cap fits, why ——"
     He shrugged his shoulders, and Carmintel glowered at him speechlessly.
     "What we want is imagination," Charley said to me one day, when we had attempted to creep up on Big Alec in the gray of dawn, and had been shot at for our trouble.
     And thereafter, and for many days, I cudgeled my brains trying to imagine some possible way by which two men, on an open stretch of water, could capture another who knew how to use a rifle, and was never to be found without one. Regularly, every slack water, without slyness, boldly and openly in the broad day, Big Alec was to be seen running his line. And what made it particularly exasperating was the fact that every fisherman from Benicia to Vallejo knew that he was successfully defying us.
     Carmintel also bothered us, for he kept us busy among the shad-fishers, of San Pablo, so that we had little time to spare on the King of the Greeks. But as Charley's wife and children lived at Benicia, we had made it our headquarters, and always returned to it.
     "I'll tell you what we can do," I said, after several fruitless weeks. "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 his 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 was not a bad idea. We watched our chance, and the next low-water slack, after Big Alec had removed the catch and returned ashore, we went out in the salmon-boat. We had the bearings of the line from shore-marks, and we knew we should 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 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 startled us.
     We looked about, but saw nothing, and returned to our work. An instant later there was a similar sharp thud, and the gunwale splintered between Charley's body and mine.
     "That's remarkably like a bullet, lad," he said, reflectively. "And it's a long shot Big Alec's making."
     "He's using smokeless powder," he concluded, after an examination of the mile-distant shore. "That's why we can't see where he is."
     I looked at the shore, but could see no sign of Big Alec, who was undoubtedly hidden in some rocky nook with us at his mercy. A third bullet struck the water, glanced, passes singing over our heads, and struck the water again beyond.
     "I guess we'd better get out of this," Charley remarked, coolly. "What do you think, lad?"
     I thought so, too, and said we did not want the line anyway. Whereupon we cast off and hoisted the spritsail. The bullets ceased at once, and we sailed away, unpleasantly aware that Big Alec was laughing at our discomfiture.
     More than that, the next day on the fishing wharf, where we were inspecting the nets, he saw fit to laugh and sneer at us, and this before all the fishermen. Charley's face went black with anger; but he controlled himself well, only promising Big Alec that in the end he would surely land him behind the bars.
     The King of the Greeks made his boast that no fish patrol had ever taken him or ever could take him, and the fishermen cheered him and said it was true.
     They grew excited, and it looked like trouble for a while; but Big Alec asserted his kingship and quelled them.
     Carmintel also laughed at Charley, and dropped sarcastic remarks, and made it as hard as he could for him. But Charley refused to be angered, although he told me in confidence that he would capture Big Alec if it took all the rest of his life.
     "I don't know how I'll do it," he said, "but do it I will, as sure as I am Charley Le Grant. The idea will come to me at the right and proper time, never fear."
     And at the right time it came, and most unexpectedly.
     Fully a month had passed, and we were constantly up and down the river, and down and up the bay, with no spare moments to devote to the particular fisherman who ran a Chinese line in the bight of Turner's shipyard. We had called in at Selby's smelter one afternoon while on patrol work, when all unknown to us our opportunity happened along.
     It appeared in the guise of a helpless yacht loaded with seasick people, so we could hardly be expected to recognize it as the opportunity. It was a large sloop-yacht, and it was helpless, inasmuch as the trade-wind was blowing half a gale and there were no capable sailors aboard.
     From the wharf at Selby's we watched with careless interest the lubberly manœuver of bringing the yacht to anchor, and the equally lubberly manœuver of sending the small boat ashore.
     A very miserable-looking man in draggled duck, after nearly swamping the boat in heavy seas, passed us the painter and climbed out. He staggered about as if the wharf were rolling, and told us his troubles, which were the troubles of the yacht.
     The only rough-weather sailor aboard, the man on whom they all depended, had been called back to San Francisco by a telegram, and they had attempted to continue the cruise alone. The high wind and big seas of San Pablo Bay had been too much for them, all hands were sick, nobody knew anything or could do anything; and so they had run in to the smelter to desert the yacht or get somebody to bring it to Benicia. In short, did we know of any sailors who would bring the yacht in to Benicia?
     Charley looked at me. The Reindeer was lying in a snug place. We had nothing on hand in the way of patrol work till midnight. With the wind then blowing we could sail the yacht in to Benicia in a couple of hours, have several more hours ashore, and come back to the smelter on the evening train.
     "All right, captain," Charley said to the disconsolate yachtsman, who smiled in sickly fashion at the title.
     "I'm only the owner," he explained.
     We rowed him aboard in much better style than he had come ashore, and saw for ourselves the helplessness of the passengers.
     There were a dozen men and women, and all of them much too sick even to appear grateful at our coming. The yacht was rolling savagely, broadside on, and no sooner had the owner's feet touched the deck than he collapsed and joined the others.
     Not one was able to bear a hand, so Charley and I between us cleared the badly tangled running-gear, got up sail and hoisted anchor.
     It was a rough trip, although a swift one. The Karquines Straits were a welter of foam and smother, and we came through them wildly before the wind, the big mainsail alternately dipping and flinging its boom skyward as we tore along.
     But the people did not mind. They did not mind anything. Two or three, including the owner, sprawled in the cockpit, shuddering when the yacht lifted and raced, or sank dizzily into the trough, and between whiles regarded the shore with yearning eyes. The rest were huddled on the cabin floor among the cushions. Now and again some one groaned, but for the most part they were as limp and uncaring as so many dead persons.
     As the bight at Turner's shipyard opened out, Charley edged into it to get the smoother water.
     Benicia was in view, and we were bowling along over comparatively easy water, when a speck of a boat danced up ahead of us directly in our course.
     It was low-water slack. Charley and I looked at each other. No word was spoken, but at once the yacht began a most astonishing performance, veering and yawing as if the greenest of amateurs were at the wheel.
     It was a sight for sailormen to see. To all appearances a runaway yacht was careering madly over the bight, now and again yielding a little bit to control in a desperate effort to make Benicia.
     The owner forgot his seasickness long enough to look anxious. The speck of a boat grew larger and larger, till we could see Big Alec and his partner, with a turn of the sturgeon line around a cleat, resting from their labor to laugh at us.
     Charley pulled his southwester over his eyes, and I followed his example, although I could not guess the idea he evidently had in mind and intended to carry into execution.
     We came foaming down abreast of the skiff, so close that we could hear above the wind the voices of Big Alec and his mate, as they shouted at us with scorn that professional watermen feel for amateurs, especially when amateurs are making fools of themselves.
     We thundered on past the fishermen, and nothing had happened. Charley grinned at the disappointment he saw in my face, and then shouted:
     "Stand by the main-sheet to jibe!"
     He put the wheel hard over, and the yacht whirled round obediently. The main-sheet slackened and dipped, then shot over our heads after the boom, and tautened with a crash on the traveler. The yacht heeled over almost on her beam-ends, and a great wail went up from the seasick passengers as they swept across the cabin floor in a tangled mass and piled into a heap in the starboard bunks.
     But there was no time for them. The yacht, completing the manœuver, headed into the wind with slatting canvas and righted to an even keel. We were still plunging ahead, and directly in our path was the skiff. I saw Big Alec dive swiftly overboard and his mate leap for our bowsprit.
     Then came the crash as we struck the boat, and a series of grinding bumps as it passed under our bottom.
     "That fixes his rifle!" I heard Charley mutter, as he sprang upon deck to look for Big Alec somewhere astern.
     The wind and sea quickly stopped our forward movement, and we began to drift backward over the spot where the skiff had been. Big Alec's black head and swarthy face popped up within arm's reach; and all unsuspecting and very angry with what he took to be the clumsiness of amateur sailors, he was hauled aboard. Also, he was out of breath, for he had dived deep and stayed down long to escape our keel.
     The next instant, to the perplexity and consternation of the owner, Charley was on top of Big Alec in the cockpit, and I was helping bind him with gaskets.
     The owner was dancing excitedly about and demanding an explanation, but by that time Big Alec's partner had crawled aft from the bowsprit and was peering apprehensively over the rail into the cockpit. Charley's arm shot round his neck, and the man landed on his back beside Big Alec.
     "More gaskets!" Charley shouted, and I made hast to supply them.
     The wrecked skiff was rolling sluggishly a short distance to windward, and I trimmed the sheets while Charley took the wheel and steered for it.
     "These two men are old offenders," he explained to the angry owner, "and they are most persistent violators of the fish and game laws. You have seen them caught in the act, and you may expect to be subpœnaed as a witness for the state when the trial comes off."
     As he spoke he rounded alongside the skiff. It had been torn from 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." Then, in triumph, with no more veering and yawing, we sailed in to 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.

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