lical impudence.

That very day Mr. Pullwool left for Washington, and the Devil left for
_his_ place, each of them sure to find the other when he wanted him, if
indeed their roads lay apart.

LOST IN THE FOG.

By Noah Brooks.

(_Overland Monthly, December,_ 1868.)

"Down with your helm! you'll have us hard and fast aground!"

My acquaintance with Captain Booden was at that time somewhat limited,
and if possible I knew less of the difficult and narrow exit from
Bolinas Bay than I did of Captain Booden. So with great trepidation I
jammed the helm hard down, and the obedient little Lively Polly fell
off easily, and we were over the bar and gliding gently along under the
steep bluff of the Mesa, whose rocky edge, rising sheer from the beach
and crowned with dry grass, rose far above the pennon of the little
schooner. I did not intend to deceive Captain Booden, but being anxious
to work my way down to San Francisco, I had shipped as "able seaman" on
the Lively Polly, though it was a long day since I had handled a
foresheet or anything bigger than the little plungers which hover about
Bolinas Bay, and latterly I had been ranching it at Point Reyes, so
what could I know about the bar and the shoals of the harbor, I would
like to know? We had glided out of the narrow channel which is skirted
on one side by a long sandspit that curves around and makes the
southern and western shelter of the bay, and on the other side by a
huge elevated tongue of table-land, called by the inhabitants
thereabouts the Mesa. High, precipitous, perpendicular, level, and
dotted with farm-houses, this singular bit of land stretches several
miles out southward to sea, bordered with a rocky beach, and tapered
off into the wide ocean with Duxbury Reef--a dangerous rocky reef,
curving down to the southward and almost always white with foam, save
when the sea is calm, and then the great lazy green waves eddy
noiselessly over the half-hidden rocks, or slip like oil over the
dreadful dangers which they hide.

Behind us was the lovely bay of Bolinas, blue and sparkling in the
summer afternoon sun, its borders dotted with thrifty ranches, and the
woody ravines and bristling Tamalpais Range rising over all. The tide
was running out, and only a peaceful swash whispered along the level
sandy beach on our left, where the busy sandpiper chased the playful
wave as it softly rose and fell along the shore. On the higher centre
of the sandspit which s