t the roofs of the nearest
houses were almost at their feet; and beyond these the city tumbled
raggedly down to meet the bay in a confused, vague mass of roofs,
cornices, cupolas, and chimneys, blurred and indistinct in the
twilight, but here and there pierced by a new-lighted street lamp.
Then came the bay. To the east they could see Goat Island, and the
fleet of sailing-ships anchored off the water-front; while directly in
their line of vision the island of Alcatraz, with its triple crown of
forts, started from the surface of the water. Beyond was the Contra
Costa shore, a vast streak of purple against the sky. The eye followed
its sky-line westward till it climbed, climbed, climbed up a long slope
that suddenly leaped heavenward with the crest of Tamalpais, purple and
still, looking always to the sunset like a great watching sphinx.
Then, further on, the slope seemed to break like the breaking of an
advancing billow, and go tumbling, crumbling downward to meet the
Golden Gate--the narrow inlet of green tide-water with its flanking
Presidio. But, further than this, the eye was stayed. Further than
this there was nothing, nothing but a vast, illimitable plain of
green--the open Pacific. But at this hour the color of the scene was
its greatest charm. It glowed with all the sombre radiance of a
cathedral. Everything was seen through a haze of purple--from the low
green hills in the Presidio Reservation to the faint red mass of Mount
Diablo shrugging its rugged shoulder over the Contra Costa foot-hills.
As the evening faded, the west burned down to a dull red glow that
overlaid the blue of the bay with a sheen of ruddy gold. The
foot-hills of the opposite shore, Diablo, and at last even Tamalpais,
resolved themselves in the velvet gray of the sky. Outlines were lost.
Only the masses remained, and these soon began to blend into one
another. The sky, and land, and the city's huddled roofs were one.
Only the sheen of dull gold remained, piercing the single vast mass of
purple like the blade of a golden sword.

"There's a ship!" said Blix in a low tone.

A four-master was dropping quietly through the Golden Gate, swimming on
that sheen of gold, a mere shadow, specked with lights red and green.
In a few moments her bows were shut from sight by the old fort at the
Gate. Then her red light vanished, then the mainmast. She was gone.
By midnight she would be out of sight of land, rolling on the swell of
the lonely o