the eastern sky-line. Its fiery rays dispelled the clinging
vapors, and there, before our eyes, like a picture, lay the shrimp
fleet, spread out in a great half-moon, the tips of the crescent
fully three miles apart, and each junk moored fast to the buoy of a
shrimp-net. But there was no stir, no sign of life.

The situation dawned upon us. While waiting for slack water, in
which to lift their heavy nets from the bed of the bay, the Chinese
had all gone to sleep below. We were elated, and our plan of
battle was swiftly formed.

"Throw each of your two men on to a junk," whispered Le Grant to me
from the salmon boat. "And you make fast to a third yourself.
We'll do the same, and there's no reason in the world why we
shouldn't capture six junks at the least."

Then we separated. I put the Reindeer about on the other tack, ran
up under the lee of a junk, shivered the mainsail into the wind and
lost headway, and forged past the stern of the junk so slowly and
so near that one of the patrolmen stepped lightly aboard. Then I
kept off, filled the mainsail, and bore away for a second junk.

Up to this time there had been no noise, but from the first junk
captured by the salmon boat an uproar now broke forth. There was
shrill Oriental yelling, a pistol shot, and more yelling.

"It's all up. They're warning the others," said George, the
remaining patrolman, as he stood beside me in the cockpit.

By this time we were in the thick of the fleet, and the alarm was