reef in,
and you can just bet that 's a sign she 's howlin'!"

The _Reindeer_ came foaming toward them, breasting the storm like some
magnificent sea-animal. Red Nelson waved to them as he passed astern,
and fifteen minutes later, when they were breaking out the one anchor
that remained to them, he passed well to windward on the other tack.

French Pete followed her admiringly, though he said ominously: "Some
day, pouf! he go just like dat, I tell you, sure."

A moment later the _Dazzler's_ reefed jib was flung out, and she was
straining and struggling in the thick of the fight. It was slow work,
and hard and dangerous, clawing off that lee shore, and Joe found
himself marveling often that so small a craft could possibly endure
a minute in such elemental fury. But little by little she worked off
the shore and out of the ground-swell into the deeper waters of the bay,
where the main-sheet was slacked away a bit, and she ran for shelter
behind the rock wall of the Alameda Mole a few miles away. Here they
found the _Reindeer_ calmly at anchor; and here, during the next several
hours, straggled in the remainder of the fleet, with the exception of the
_Ghost_, which had evidently gone ashore to keep the _Go Ask Her_ company.

By afternoon the wind had dropped away with surprising suddenness, and the
weather had turned almost summer-like.

"It does n't look right," 'Frisco Kid said in the evening, after French
Pete had rowed over in the skiff to visit Nelson.

"What does n't look right?" Joe asked.

"Why, the weather. It went down too sudden. It did n't have a chance
to blow itself out, and it ain't going to quit till does blow itself
out. It 's likely to puff up and howl at any moment, if I know anything
about it."

"Where will we go from here?" Joe asked. "Back to the oyster-beds?"

'Frisco Kid shook his head. "I can't say what French Pete 'll do. He 's
been fooled on the iron, and fooled on the oysters, and he 's that
disgusted he 's liable to do 'most anything desperate. I would n't be
surprised to see him go off with Nelson towards Redwood City, where that
big thing is that I was tellin' you about. It 's somewhere over there."

"Well, I won't have anything to do with it," Joe announced decisively.

"Of course not," 'Frisco Kid answered. "And with Nelson and his two men
an' French Pete, I don't think there 'll be any need for you anyway."

CHAPTER XVI

'FRISCO KID'S DITTY-BOX

After the conversati