By now the last of the fog had vanished, and Charley's estimate of our
position was confirmed by the sight of McNear's Landing a short
half-mile away, following: along the west shore, we rounded Point Pedro
in plain view of the Chinese shrimp villages, and a great to-do was
raised when they saw one of their junks towing behind the familiar fish
patrol sloop.

The wind, coming off the land, was rather puffy and uncertain, and it
would have been more to our advantage had it been stronger. San Rafael
Creek, up which we had to go to reach the town and turn over our
prisoners to the authorities, ran through wide-stretching marshes, and
was difficult to navigate on a falling tide, while at low tide it was
impossible to navigate at all. So, with the tide already half-ebbed, it
was necessary for us to make time. This the heavy junk prevented,
lumbering along behind and holding the _Reindeer_ back by just so much
dead weight.

"Tell those coolies to get up that sail," Charley finally called to me.
"We don't want to hang up on the mud flats for the rest of the night."

I repeated the order to Yellow Handkerchief, who mumbled it huskily to
his men. He was suffering from a bad cold, which doubled him up in
convulsive coughing spells and made his eyes heavy and bloodshot. This
made him more evil-looking than ever, and when he glared viciously at
me I remembered with a shiver the close shave I had had with him at the
time of his previous arrest.

His crew sullenly tailed on to the halyards, and the strange, outlandish
sail, lateen in rig and dyed a warm brown, rose in the air. We were
sailing on the wind, and when Yellow Handkerchief flattened down the