at you must have been through! I thought you had some kind of
a yacht. I had no idea it would be like this." And as she spoke, Moran
came suddenly upon the group from behind the foresail, and paused in
abrupt surprise, her thumbs in her belt.

She still wore men's clothes and was booted to the knee. The heavy blue
woolen shirt was open at the throat, the sleeves rolled half-way up
her large white arms. In her belt she carried her haftless Scandinavian
dirk. She was hatless as ever, and her heavy, fragrant cables of
rye-hued hair fell over her shoulders and breast to far below her belt.

Miss Herrick started sharply, and Moran turned an inquiring glance upon
Wilbur. Wilbur took his resolution in both hands.

"Miss Herrick," he said, "this is Moran--Moran Sternersen."

Moran took a step forward, holding out her hand. Josie, all bewildered,
put her tight-gloved fingers into the calloused palm, looking up
nervously into Moran's face.

"I'm sure," she said feebly, almost breathlessly, "I--I'm sure I'm very
pleased to meet Miss Sternersen."

It was long before the picture left Wilbur's imagination. Josie Herrick,
petite, gowned in white, crisp from her maid's grooming; and Moran,
sea-rover and daughter of a hundred Vikings, towering above her, booted
and belted, gravely clasping Josie's hand in her own huge fist.

XIII. MORAN STERNERSEN

San Francisco once more! For two days the "Bertha Millner" had been
beating up the coast, fighting her way against northerly winds, butting
into head seas.

The warmth, the stillness, the placid, drowsing quiet of Magdalena
Bay, steaming under the golden eye of a tropic heaven, the white, baked
beach, the bay-heads, striated with the mirage in the morning, the
coruscating sunset, the enchanted mystery of the purple night, with
its sheen of stars and riding moon, were now replaced by the hale and
vigorous snorting of the Trades, the roll of breakers to landward, and
the unremitting gallop of the unnumbered multitudes of gray-green seas,
careering silently past the schooner, their crests occasionally hissing
into brusque eruptions of white froth, or smiting broad on under her
counter, showering her decks with a sprout of icy spray. It was cold;
at times thick fogs cloaked all the world of water. To the east a
procession of bleak hills defiled slowly southward; lighthouses were
passed; streamers of smoke on the western horizon marked the passage of
steamships; and once they met