Our two years having expired in foreign service, the detachment was ordered to Olongapo to join the homeward-bound battalion. Shortly after this we bade adieu to Moroland and swung out of the bay of Prang Prang en route to the Island of Luzon.
X.
A Midnight Phantasy in California
The Vision—The Capture—“Frisco” and Its Favorite Haunts.
Having had considerable experience with copper thieves in the navy yards of Washington, D. C., New York, and Cavite, Philippine Islands, I was not overly surprised when, about midnight late in the autumn of 1903, while serving in the capacity of patrol at the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, as I chanced along the waterfront, to see the shadow of an apparent river pirate, presumably collecting copper bars from a large pile of this valuable metal. The man evidently, it appeared to me, had a boat in which he was storing the bars to be rowed across the channel to Valejo, the old Spanish gambling town and gold-miners’ retreat of the old days.
Without the least exaggeration, I must acknowledge to having been during my
career in some very uncomfortable predicaments while grovelling through the vicissitudes of life’s various phases, and a strong resolution, which I have always held sacred, has been, never to take a life without giving the person a chance for his own; therefore, self-defence or being in action with the enemy could be my only palliation. This night, however, presented cause for exception to this rule. The corner of a large steam-engineering building hid from view the man whose shadow played in grotesque evolutions on the pier, and it was impossible to see him without uncovering myself to his gaze, but there lurked the shadow of every move cast vividly before my keen-set eyes.
As I quietly knelt in seclusion surrounded by the densest gloom, meditating as to how I might take the object alive, positively realizing that he was well armed, from my previous experience with river thieves, I saw the shadow portray a man drawing a gun and examining it closely, the shadow indicating that he was either trying the trigger or testing the T block of an automatic pistol.
It dawned on me that my duty bade me to halt this man, and, if in any way he attempted to evade me, to kill him.