ound twice again before she
could cast off. Both pilots were in the lofty pilot-house, down from the
breast-board of which a light line ran forward to the bell's tongue, but
neither pilot touched the line or the helm. For the captain's use
another cord from the bell hung over the hurricane deck's front and down
to the boiler deck rail, but neither up there on the boiler deck nor
anywhere near the bell on the roof above it was any captain to be seen.

At the front angle of the roof's larboard rail a youth, quite alone,
leaned against one of the tall derrick posts to get its shade. He was
too short, square, and unanimated to draw much attention, although with
a faint unconscious frown between widely parted brows his quiet eyes
fell intently upon every detail of the lively scene below.

The whole great landing lay beneath his glance, a vivid exposition of
the vast, half-tamed valley's bounty, spoils, and promise; of its motley
human life, scarcely yet to be called society, so lately and rudely
transplanted from overseas; so bareboned, so valiantly preserved, so
young yet already so titanic; so self-reliant, opinionated, and uncouth;
so strenuous and materialistic in mind; so inflammable in emotions; so
grotesque in its virtues; so violent in its excesses; so complacently
oblivious of all the higher values of wealth; so giddied with the new
wine of liberty and crude abundance; so open of speech, of heart, of
home, and so blithely disdainful of a hundred risks of life, health, and
property. And all this the young observer's glance took in with maybe
more realization of it than might be looked for in one not yet
twenty-one. Yet his fuller attention was for matters nearer and of much
narrower compass.

He saw the last bit of small freight come aboard and the last belated
bill-lading clerk and ejected peddler go ashore. He noted by each
mooring-post the black longshoreman waiting to cast off a hawser. He
remarked each newcomer who idly joined the onlooking throng. Especially
he observed each cab or carriage that hurried up to the wharf's front.
He studied each of the alighting occupants as they yielded their effects
to the antic, white-jacketed mulatto cabin-boys, behind whom they
crossed the ponderous unrailed stage and vanished on their up-stairs way
to the boiler deck, the cabin, and their staterooms. Had his mild
scrutinizings been a paid service, they could hardly have been more
thorough.

By and by two or three things