illing the sluggish brutes, and turned shoreward to relieve the
monotony of the succeeding days. He and Moran were left a good deal to
their own devices. Charlie was the master of the men now. "Mate," said
Moran to Wilbur one day, after a dinner of turtle steaks and fish, eaten
in the open air on the quarterdeck; "mate, this is slow work, and the
schooner smells terribly foul. We'll have the dory out and go ashore. We
can tumble a cask into her and get some water. The butt's three-quarters
empty. Let's see how it feels to be in Mexico."

"Mexico?" said Wilbur. "That's so--Lower California is Mexico. I'd
forgotten that!"

They went ashore and spent the afternoon in filling the water-cask from
the fresh-water stream and in gathering abalones, which Moran declared
were delicious eating, from the rocks left bare by the tide. But
nothing could have exceeded the loneliness of that shore and backland,
palpitating under the flogging of a tropical sun. Low hills of sand,
covered with brush, stretched back from the shore. On the eastern
horizon, leagues distant, blue masses of mountain striated with mirages
swam in the scorching air.

The sand was like fire to the touch. Far out in the bay the schooner
hung motionless under bare sticks, resting apparently upon her inverted
shadow only. And that was all--the flat, heat-ridden land, the sheen of
the open Pacific, and the lonely schooner.

"Quiet enough," said Wilbur, in a low voice, wondering if there was such
a place as San Francisco, with its paved streets and cable cars, and if
people who had been his friends there had ever had any real existence.

"Do you like it?" asked Moran quickly, facing him, her thumbs in her
belt.

"It's good fun--how about you?"

"It's no different than the only life I've known. I suppose you think
it s a queer kind of life for a girl. I've lived by doing things, not
by thinking things, or reading about what other people have done or
thought; and I guess it's what you do that counts, rather than what you
think or read about. Where's that pinch-bar? We'll get a couple more
abalones for supper, and then put off."

That was the only talk of moment they had during the afternoon. All the
rest of their conversation had been of those things that immediately
occupied their attention.

They regained the schooner toward five o'clock, to find the Chinamen
perplexed and mystified. No explanation was forthcoming, and Charlie
gave them supper in preoccupie