128 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 25 , 1907. 
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1 Ml gfMEf TOMMMT 
A Cruise in a Converted Canoe.—V. 
For some time the fishermen going out of 
Deals Island had been worrying over a thief 
who came to their pounds in'the night and stole 
the shad. The night before we left Hoopersville 
Captain Jim-Ed Todd had anchored about twenty 
yards off one of his pounds down Holland Strait 
way, and in the middle of the night had dis¬ 
covered a canoe in the pound, and a man drop¬ 
ping fish from the net. The thief, seeing the 
sloop, shoved over the net bolt rope, hoisted 
sail and got away. Shouting in impotent wrath, 
Captain Jim-Ed saw the thief fade from yiew in 
the gloom. Other victims had caught sight of 
the lone canoeman, but had been unable to cope 
with him, for he was a superb sailor, a descend¬ 
ant, perhaps, of those old pirates who developed 
the boats whose speed made Baltimore famous 
a hundred years ago. 
Rusk and I were quite certain we had seen 
the man at the steamboat wharf at Middle 
Hooper’s Island that morning. This man had a 
long, low canoe, painted black, with a light 
streak along the footlog. It had new snowy 
white sails, and the ropes did not creak in the 1 
blocks as he hoisted them. He was a tall, 
rather slender man, with a thick black mustache 
and moved with cat-like grace, wasting not a 
motion or a turn as he got his boat under way, 
backing it from the dock with a sheet set aback, 
and turning half around, he caught the wind the 
other way and darted out over the water with 
what was the most graceful and handiest boat 
maneuvering I had ever seen. 
“We're going to pull out right away,” Rusk 
said to him. “We’ll go down a piece with you.” 
“I’m in a hurry,” the man said. “Eve got a 
long ways to go. I came in to sell my fish, and 
I san’t wait.” 
Five minutes later we were after him, but he 
vanished from the face of the waters so suddenly 
that we remarked it. at the time. 
For days the Deals islanders had been keep¬ 
ing track .of who was coming and going? Not 
a canoe was absent from its customary berth 
without their knowing why, and when the pos¬ 
sibility of the thief being a Deals islander was 
suggested they said it couldn’t be, for every boat 
and every man was accounted for. 
“It’s somebody from up the creeks or rivers 
or Fishing Bay; they’re the handiest with their 
canoes of anybody, an’ some’ll steal gum boots 
off a man’s feet when he’s asleep.” 
As night came on, the Harry Anderson armed 
for patrol duty. A .50 caliber carbine was taken 
aboard, while the small boys and some of the 
larger ones looked on and begged the carrier to 
shoot it just once. A plenty of them knew shot¬ 
guns, but the rifles have grown scarce since the 
law forbidding oyster boats carrying them for 
the purpose of fighting the oyster police went 
into effect 'when Captain Howard sank two. or 
three oystermen to enforce it. 
We sailed away in the dusk; Tilden Webster, 
Charles Gibson, Willie O’Brien, Tom Anderson 
and myself. A slight breeze was blowing, just 
enough to fill the sails as we bore away toward 
the nets out in Tangier Sound. With us sailed 
the Eddie Collier, bound down to other nets. 
_ What a night that was! Overhead the wind 
sighed through the rigging. Our wake was a 
long line of dying fire. Now and then a wave 
broke into smoky flame, a thrilling sight in the 
night. In the distance were shore and channel 
lights. We here down upon the yellow gleam of 
the pound lanterns, and saw that every pole, and 
the lengths of the net webbing, resisting the cross 
current of the tide, set the surface agleam. We 
could see the nests for hundreds of yards, by the 
glow they caused. It was a cold, blue flame like 
some pale poison, sight of which made one 
shudder. 
“There's a light out. I saw that light go out 
a second,” the steersman exclaimed, “jus’ like 
somebody passing it.” . 
We beiat up to that pound. It seemed a long 
way off, and Rusk’s night glasses merely cleared 
the air a bit, till suddenly the big black poles 
loomed up under the bows, and it was hard 
down and come about to keep from going 
through the hedging. At the pound we saw that 
it was a stake intervening which had caused the 
light to disappear. 
Our imaginations assisted our eyes a good deal 
as we beat back and forth along the pale lines 
of cold, rippling fire. We did see one bugeye 
passing along, only to dbappear suddenly, swal¬ 
lowed by the gloom. From time to time far 
back in the recesses of the night, a white gleam, 
a motion of dark on dark, a fading ghost of a 
sail would set the steersman whispering, and out 
A WICOMICO RIVER CANOE. 
would go our light—hidden by battened windows 
from a distant view—and we would clamber up 
and seek to pierce the veil of mystery which had 
drawn across the thing seen or unseen. Now 
and then we saw some distant craft, making its 
way honestly along, with the lights showing, but 
it was not of them we wished to know. 
As the night wore along, the change of the 
tide was watched for eagerly. Excitement and 
anxious watching lasted for two or three hours, 
and then the four divided into two watches, two 
retiring to the bunks, and the other two going 
on deck, one to the tiller, the other to help scan 
the water. I alternated between the cabin and 
the deck during the first watch. One of the two 
soon nodded, as he sat on the cabin, then nodded 
again and again, bringing himself to with a 
severe jerk. At last he came up. 
“I’ll lie down an hour, then you call me.” he 
said. Soon he was sound asleep. Then I sat 
on the deck, or wandered back and forth, dodg¬ 
ing the boom as we came about. The wind in¬ 
creased, and when the tide began to ebb, I too, 
grew sleepy and went down into the cabin. I 
dozed away on the locker, stretched at full length 
I went fast asleep at last. Suddenly there was 
a crash, followed by a loud yell from the deck. 
All hands jumped for the deck. We had run 
into a brace stake at one of the.pounds, wdiich 
made a noise like a smashup, and the steersman 
had yelled, because he did not know just what 
had happened. We drank a cup of coffee, ate 
a biscuit and returned to our sleep, till the watch 
changed. 
The night seemed to* grow heavier as the hours 
passed. The darkest hour was about the time 
the watch changed, or a little later. Then the • 
waves rocked away murky black, breaking into 
chilling fiery crests. 
The tiller creaked, the noise of the sail ebbed 
and flowed like the sigh of wind among the 
leaves, the blocks strained and rattled as the 
lines drew on the sheaves. Especially when we 
came about there was a crashing which must 
have been audible far across the water. Some¬ 
how it seemed to me that hunting a canoe with 
a slower and unhandier boat was not the way 
to get the thief. I suggested to the men that 
two or three men could go out in a canoe and 
beat the pirate at his own game, hiding in the 
pounds, or coasting back and forth from net 
to net as we were doing. 
“No,” they said, “it wouldn’t do; of course 
he’d be caught, likely enough, but probably some¬ 
body would get killed that way.” 
Other excuses were offered. A storm might 
come up; it would be uncomfortable lying out 
there in an open canoe; the thief might not be 
caught anyhow. After all, we were not so much 
on a man hunt, .as on a man scaring expedition. 
Perhaps we succeeded. 
When the tide changed to ebb, and the wind 
stirred up a rougher sea, it was remarked that 
"They're not apt to fish on a strong tide like 
thft; if they had any stealing to- do to-night, 
it’s been done.” Anchor was dropped and there¬ 
after we had only to wait for day to come. The 
cook for the morning stirred up biscuit, cooked 
some mackerel and corn bread and brewed strong 
coffee. There was. a pause, and one of the men 
asked grace. Then we fell to, eating rapidly,' 
for there was the fishing to do, and that w r e had 
saved the fish was yet to be proved. 
I got into a suit of oilskins, gum boots and 
hat for “The scales fly some’at when we’re fish¬ 
ing.” It was over the side into the fish boat, 
and sculling up to the pound. The funnel lines 
were slacked off and the bottom fastens shaken 
loose. Then the boat was run over the pound 
bolt rope and the big twine bottom hoisted up, 
beginning at one corner, and working toward the 
'diagonally opposite one. Soon we saw- the dark 
forms of the fish darting back and forth, con¬ 
gesting at last into a flopping, shining mass 
from- which scales and water flew in all direc¬ 
tions while the shad were dipped out and counted 
•as they were dropped on the bottom of the boat. 
Having made the haul, the boat was taken out¬ 
side and the pound hauled back to place, on the 
tide side first, then on the opposite side. The 
funnels were fixed in place, and'an extra look 
taken at th'e knots to see what kind they were, 
to give proof in case the thief should come that 
way again. 
Three nets were hauled, and i?4 shad taken; 
not a bad day. None had been disturbed by the 
thief, but down toward Hooper’s Island, on the 
bay side, nets belonging to other fishermen had 
been hauled. A salmon was hung on a nail by 
the deck office, having been caught in one of the 
nets of an outside fisherman; a few are taken 
every year. A few other kinds of fish were 
there, too, including a little sturgeon and tiny 
flat fish. 
Rusk had had enough of Deals Island, and 
nothing loath, we cleared away, dropped dowH 
alongside the fish fertilizer boat and started to 
