less cry. This was our second
parting, and our capacities were now reversed. It was mine to play the
Argonaut, to speed affairs, to plan and to accomplish--if need were, at
the price of life; it was his to sit at home, to study the calendar, and
to wait. I knew besides another thing that gave me joy. I knew that my
friend had succeeded in my education; that the romance of business,
if our fantastic purchase merited the name, had at last stirred my
dilletante nature; and, as we swept under cloudy Tamalpais and through
the roaring narrows of the bay, the Yankee blood sang in my veins with
suspense and exultation.

Outside the heads, as if to meet my desire, we found it blowing fresh
from the northeast. No time had been lost. The sun was not yet up before
the tug cast off the hawser, gave us a salute of three whistles, and
turned homeward toward the coast, which now began to gleam along its
margin with the earliest rays of day. There was no other ship in view
when the Norah Creina, lying over under all plain sail, began her long
and lonely voyage to the wreck.

CHAPTER XII. THE "NORAH CREINA."

I love to recall the glad monotony of a Pacific voyage, when the trades
are not stinted, and the ship, day after day, goes free. The mountain
scenery of trade-wind clouds, watched (and in my case painted) under
every vicissitude of light--blotting stars, withering in the moon's
glory, barring the scarlet eve, lying across the dawn collapsed into the
unfeatured morning bank, or at noon raising their snowy summits between
the blue roof of heaven and the blue floor of sea; the small, busy,
and deliberate world of the schooner, with its unfamiliar scenes, the
spearing of dolphin from the bowsprit end, the holy war on sharks,
the cook making bread on the main hatch; reefing down before a violent
squall, with the men hanging out on the foot-ropes; the squall itself,
the catch at the heart, the opened sluices of the sky; and the relief,
the renewed loveliness of life, when all is over, the sun forth again,
and our out-fought enemy only a blot upon the leeward sea. I love to
recall, and would that I could reproduce that life, the unforgettable,
the unrememberable. The memory, which shows so wise a backwardness
in registering pain, is besides an imperfect recorder of extended
pleasures; and a long-continued well-being escapes (as it were, by its
mass) our petty methods of commemoration. On a part of our life's map
there lies a ros