d tenaciously to the tack. Within fifty yards of the Presidio came
the command again:

"Stand by for stays."

Once more, her bows dancing, her cordage rattling, her sails flapping
noisily, the schooner came about. Anxiously Wilbur observed the bowsprit
as it circled like a hand on a dial, watching where now it would point.
It wavered, fluctuated, rose, fell, then settled easily, pointing toward
Lime Point. Wilbur felt a sudden coldness at his heart.

"This isn't going to be so much fun," he muttered between his teeth. The
schooner was not bound up the bay for Alviso nor to Vallejo for grain.
The track toward Lime Point could mean but one thing. The wind was
freshening from the nor'west, the ebb tide rushing out to meet the ocean
like a mill-race, at every moment the Golden Gate opened out wider, and
within two minutes after the time of the last tack the "Bertha Millner"
heeled to a great gust that had come booming in between the heads,
straight from the open Pacific.

"Stand by for stays."

As before, one of the Chinese hands stood by the sail rope of the jib.

"Draw y'r jib."

The jib filled. The schooner came about on the port tack; Lime Point
fell away over the stern rail. The huge ground swells began to come
in, and as she rose and bowed to the first of these it was precisely as
though the "Bertha Millner" were making her courtesy to the great gray
ocean, now for the first time in full sight on her starboard quarter.

The schooner was beating out to sea through the Middle Channel. Once
clear of the Golden Gate, she stood over toward the Cliff House, then on
the next tack cleared Point Bonita. The sea began building up in deadly
earnest--they were about to cross the bar. Everything was battened down,
the scuppers were awash, and the hawse-holes spouted like fountains
after every plunge. Once the Captain ordered all men aloft, just in time
to escape a gigantic dull green roller that broke like a Niagara over
the schooner's bows, smothering the decks knee-deep in a twinkling.

The wind blew violent and cold, the spray was flying like icy
small-shot. Without intermission the "Bertha Millner" rolled and plunged
and heaved and sank. Wilbur was drenched to the skin and sore in every
joint, from being shunted from rail to mast and from mast to rail again.
The cordage sang like harp-strings, the schooner's forefoot crushed
down into the heaving water with a hissing like that of steam, blocks
rattled, the Captain be