" The situation was fast becoming unbearable,
and we knew that we should have to deliver a stunning stroke at the
Greeks in order to regain the old-time respect in which we had
stood.
Then one morning the idea came. We were down on Steamboat Wharf,
where the river steamers made their landings, and where we found a
group of amused long-shoremen and loafers listening to the hard-
luck tale of a sleepy-eyed young fellow in long sea-boots. He was
a sort of amateur fisherman, he said, fishing for the local market
of Berkeley. Now Berkeley was on the Lower Bay, thirty miles away.
On the previous night, he said, he had set his net and dozed off to
sleep in the bottom of the boat.
The next he knew it was morning, and he opened his eyes to find his
boat rubbing softly against the piles of Steamboat Wharf at
Benicia. Also he saw the river steamer Apache lying ahead of him,
and a couple of deck-hands disentangling the shreds of his net from
the paddle-wheel. In short, after he had gone to sleep, his
fisherman's riding light had gone out, and the Apache had run over
his net.
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