The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-04-25

The keen brown hawks of the Amer
lean Pacific are ready to pounce with
two-fold impudence this year on the seal
and whale preserves of the Russ in the
Okhotsk and the Japan seas, and even in
the Gulf of Tartary itself. For they who
laugh each year at Russia when she is
free to move against them will not fail
to take advantage of her stress.
There isn't much that is secret about
these buccaneers of the twentieth cen
fury. They don't rush into print, but in
the Asiatic ports Y okohama, Nagasaki,
Hakodate, men talk as a matter of course
of the poaching fleet" just as the folk
in New Bedford and Gloucester speak
of the fishing fleet.
But Kipling is wrong when he says
in his ballad that the sealer that is
caught must ''lie for rotting contra
band on Vladivostok slip" for the Rus
sian naval men and civil governors are
of too economical turn of mind to
waste swift, beautiful American
schooner that way.
: Vladivostok is full of captured Amer
lean poachers; but they are busy work
ing. The prizes taken by the Russ in
the Russ american warfare of the Sibe-
rian coast are bought and chartered by
the Russian traders and fishermen.
RUSSIAN PRIZE MONEY.
The Russian sailors do not aim to
sink poacher who has sealskins on
board, because the officers get share OF
the prize money accruing from the sale
of the. seized pelts, and from the charter
price that the vessel brings in Vladivos-
tok. Consequently they will exhaust every
inch of speed in the cruiser before they
resort to the expedient of sinking the
poaci1er with shot
The poachers know that, as they know
pretty nearly everything else about their
chosen grounds, from the ways of the
fog to the exact armament and speed of
every Russ ship that patrols the Siberian
coast
So there are pretty races every season
between sails and steam. between egg
shell wooden craft of New England and
Oregon and steel-clad warshipsffrom the
Neva yards; and if you will sit in the
sailor taverns of Yokohama or Maya
saki, you will hear OF them as told by
the chief actors.
When they are caught they go to the
unknown prisons of Siberia When they
escape thty tit INTO me log and presently
lie up against another island of the misty
cold seas and load on more of the seals
that are sacred to the white car and
protected by tremendous international
agreements.
The Russ never can catch enough
poachers TO scare the rest. The brown
New England and Oregon sailor men
will tell you that they can sail around
him every time. And even when ne
takes TO shooting they rarely heave to;
for there Is a message on the Okhotsk
sea, and IT runs that few Russian gun.
ners can hit a schooner that is n1aneuv-
cred by an American skipper.
Tough men are they, and they know
each year as they swarm out to the for
hidden grounds that capture means
loss OF everything, including their liber-
ty For they are not men who can we'll |
appeal to their home government to help |
them
A REAL WAR.
So it is verv real war, with bitter |
end for the poacher if his skill is lacking
in sudden emergency. There are fights
that would make books of stirring sto-
rles when the seaiers, henlmed in, resort |
to the land and make last run for it, |
willing, IN the final act, even to use their