wly crawled up the slant of the deck. We battened down the
engine-room hatch, and the sea rose to it and over it and climbed
perilously near to the cabin companion-way and skylight. We were all
sick with fever, but we turned out in the blazing tropic sun and toiled
madly for several hours. We carried our heaviest lines ashore from our
mast-heads and heaved with our heaviest purchase until everything
crackled including ourselves. We would spell off and lie down like dead
men, then get up and heave and crackle again. And in the end, our lower
rail five feet under water and the wavelets lapping the companion-way
combing, the sturdy little craft shivered and shook herself and pointed
her masts once more to the zenith.

There is never lack of exercise in small-boat sailing, and the hard work
is not only part of the fun of it, but it beats the doctors. San
Francisco Bay is no mill pond. It is a large and draughty and variegated
piece of water. I remember, one winter evening, trying to enter the
mouth of the Sacramento. There was a freshet on the river, the flood
tide from the bay had been beaten back into a strong ebb, and the lusty
west wind died down with the sun. It was just sunset, and with a fair to
middling breeze, dead aft, we stood still in the rapid current. We were
squarely in the mouth of the river; but there was no anchorage and we
drifted backward, faster and faster, and dropped anchor outside as the
last breath of wind left us. The night came on, beautiful and warm and
starry. My one companion cooked supper, while on deck I put everything
in shape Bristol fashion. When we turned in at nine o'clock the weather-
promise was excellent. (If I had carried a barometer I'd have known
better.) By two in the morning our shrouds were thrumming in a piping
breeze, and I got up and gave her more scope on her hawser. Inside
another hour there was no doubt that we were in for a southeaster.

It is not nice to leave a warm bed and get out of a bad anchorage in a
black blowy night, but we arose to the occasion, put in two reefs, and
started to heave up. The winch was old, and the strain of the jumping
head sea was too much for it. With the winch out of commission, it was
impossible to heave up by hand. We knew, because we tried it and
slaughtered our hands. Now a sailor hates to lose an anchor. It is a
matter of pride. Of course, we could have buoyed ours and slipped it.
Instead, however, I gave her still