Short Stories
and I was following every movement of the skiff. There were
two men in it, and though it was a good mile away, I 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 patrol-
man'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 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. Will you lend a hand?"
"It's a hard proposition, but we can do it," he added after a
pause.
"Of course we can," I supplemented enthusiastically.
And then he said, "Of course we can," and we shook hands
on it and went to bed.
But it was no easy task we had set ourselves. In order to con-
vict a man of illegal fishing, it was necessary to catch him in the
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