iven me up and gone back to
Point Pedro. Nevertheless, I was in a deplorable, not to say a
dangerous, condition. I could not stand upon my feet, much less walk. My
clammy, muddy garments clung to me like sheets of ice. I thought I
should never get them off. So numb and lifeless were my fingers, and so
weak was I that it seemed to take an hour to get off my shoes. I had not
the strength to break the porpoise-hide laces, and the knots defied me.
I repeatedly beat my hands upon the rocks to get some sort of life into
them. Sometimes I felt sure I was going to die.

But in the end,--after several centuries, it seemed to me,--I got off
the last of my clothes. The water was now close at hand, and I crawled
painfully into it and washed the mud from my naked body. Still, I could
not get on my feet and walk and I was afraid to lie still. Nothing
remained but to crawl weakly, like a snail, and at the cost of constant
pain, up and down the sand. I kept this up as long as possible, but as
the east paled with the coming of dawn I began to succumb. The sky grew
rosy-red, and the golden rim of the sun, showing above the horizon,
found me lying helpless and motionless among the clam-shells.

As in a dream, I saw the familiar mainsail of the _Reindeer_ as she
slipped out of San Rafael Creek on a light puff of morning air. This
dream was very much broken. There are intervals I can never recollect on
looking back over it. Three things, however, I distinctly remember: the
first sight of the _Reindeer's_ mainsail; her lying at anchor a few
hundred feet away and a small boat leaving her side; and the cabin stove
roaring red-hot, myself swathed all over with blankets, except on the
chest and shoulders, which Charley was pounding and mauling
unmercifully, and my mouth and throat burning with the coffee which Neil
Partington was pouring down a trifle too hot.

But burn or no burn, I tell you it felt good. By the time we arrived in
Oakland I was as limber and strong as ever,--though Charley and Neil
Partington were afraid I was going to have pneumonia, and Mrs.
Partington, for my first six months of school, kept an anxious eye upon
me to discover the first symptoms of consumption.

Time flies. It seems but yesterday that I was a lad of sixteen on the
fish patrol. Yet I know that I arrived this very morning from China,
with a quick passage to my credit, and master of the barkentine
_Harvester_. And I know that to-morrow morning I shall run ove