to the schooner with word to Moran that he would take a walk
around the beach and return in an hour or two. He set off along the
shore in the direction of Fort Mason, the old red-brick fort at the
entrance to the Golden Gate. At this point in the Presidio Government
reservation the land is solitary. Wilbur followed the line of the beach
to the old fort; and there, on the very threshold of the Western
world, at the very outpost of civilization, sat down in the lee of the
crumbling fortification, and scene by scene reviewed the extraordinary
events of the past six months.

In front of him ran the narrow channel of the Golden Gate; to his right
was the bay and the city; at his left the open Pacific.

He saw himself the day of his advent aboard the "Bertha" in his top hat
and frock coat; saw himself later "braking down" at the windlass, the
"Petrel" within hailing distance.

Then the pictures began to thicken fast: the derelict bark "Lady
Letty" rolling to her scuppers, abandoned and lonely; the "boy" in the
wheel-box; Kitchell wrenching open the desk in the captain's stateroom;
Captain Sternersen buried at sea, his false teeth upside down; the black
fury of the squall, and Moran at the wheel; Moran lying at full
length on the deck, getting the altitude of a star; Magdalena Bay; the
shark-fishing; the mysterious lifting and shuddering of the schooner;
the beach-combers' junk, with its staring red eyes; Hoang, naked to the
waist, gleaming with sweat and whale-oil; the ambergris; the race to
beach the sinking schooner; the never-to-be-forgotten night when he and
Moran had camped together on the beach; Hoang taken prisoner, and the
hideous filing of his teeth; the beach-combers, silent and watchful
behind their sand breastworks; the Chinaman he had killed twitching and
hic-coughing at his feet; Moran turned Berserker, bursting down upon
him through a haze of smoke; Charlie dying in the hammock aboard the
schooner, ordering his funeral with its "four-piecee horse"; Coronado;
the incongruous scene in the ballroom; and, last of all, Josie Herrick
in white duck and kid shoes, giving her hand to Moran in her boots and
belt, hatless as ever, her sleeves rolled up to above the elbows, her
white, strong arm extended, her ruddy face, and pale, milk-blue eyes
gravely observant, her heavy braids, yellow as ripening rye, hanging
over her shoulder and breast.

A sudden explosion of cold wind, striking down blanket-wise and
bewildering