at least, upon the house, and stared at the foggy
heaven, or over the rail at the wavering reflection of the lamps, like a
man that was quite done with hope and would have welcomed the asylum of
the grave. And all at once, as I thus stood, the _City of Pekin_ flashed
into my mind, racing her thirteen knots for Honolulu, with the hated
Trent--perhaps with the mysterious Goddedaal--on board; and with the
thought the blood leaped and careered through all my body. It seemed no
chase at all; it seemed we had no chance, as we laid there bound to iron
pillars, and fooling away the precious moments over tins of beans. "Let
them get there first!" I thought. "Let them! We can't be long behind."
And from that moment I date myself a man of a rounded experience:
nothing had lacked but this--that I should entertain and welcome the
grim thought of bloodshed.

It was long before the toil remitted in the cabin, and it was worth my
while to get to bed; long after that before sleep favoured me; and
scarce a moment later (or so it seemed) when I was recalled to
consciousness by bawling men and the jar of straining hawsers.

The schooner was cast off before I got on deck. In the misty obscurity
of the first dawn I saw the tug heading us with glowing fires and
blowing smoke, and heard her beat the roughened waters of the bay.
Beside us, on her flock of hills, the lighted city towered up and stood
swollen in the raw fog. It was strange to see her burn on thus
wastefully, with half-quenched luminaries, when the dawn was already
grown strong enough to show me, and to suffer me to recognise, a
solitary figure standing by the piles.

Or was it really the eye, and not rather the heart, that identified the
shadow in the dusk, among the shoreside lamps? I know not. It was Jim,
at least; Jim, come for a last look; and we had but time to wave a
valedictory gesture and exchange a wordless 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
dilettante nature; and as we swept under cloudy Tamalpais and through
the roaring narrows of the bay, the Yankee blood san