Short Stories
wheel and steered for it.
"These two men are old offenders," he explained to the an-
gry 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 subpoenaed as 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 prison-
ers.
"And there's the evidence, Exhibit A, for the people," Char-
ley 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.
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