saluted by the officers in command. After this, boats kept
passing backward and forward for a long time between the Hornet and the
shore, which was natural, seeing that a first night in port is a sort of
holiday for officers and men. If these sailors had been watched closely,
however, it would have been seen that they visited but few saloons on
shore, and drank little, and then evidently as a blind. Close watching
would also have discovered the fact that there were a few people on
shore who were glad to see the safe arrival of the Hornet, and who,
about one o'clock in the morning, almost fell on the neck of Captain
Shewell as they bade him good bye. Then, for the rest of the night, coal
was carried out to the Hornet in boats and barges.

By daybreak her coal was aboard, then came cleaning up, and preparations
to depart. Captain Shewell's eye was now much on the Cormorant. He had
escaped one danger, he had landed half a million dollars' worth of opium
in the night, under the very nose of the law, and while Customs boats
were patrolling the bay; there was another danger--the inquisitiveness
of the Cormorant. It was etiquette for him to call upon the captain of
the Cormorant, and he ought to have done so the evening before, but he
had not dared to run the risk, nor could he venture this morning.
And yet if the Cormorant discovered that the Hornet was not a British
man-of-war, but a bold and splendid imposture, made possible by a daring
ex-officer of the British Navy, she might open fire, and he could make
but a sorry fight, for he was equipped for show rather than for
deadly action. He had got this ex-British man-of-war two years before,
purchased in Brazil by two adventurous spirits in San Francisco, had
selected his crew carefully, many of them deserters from the British
Navy, drilled them, and at last made this bold venture under the teeth
of a fortress, and at the mouth of a warship's guns.

Just as he was lifting anchor to get away, he saw a boat shoot out from
the side of the Cormorant. Captain Debney, indignant at the lack of
etiquette, and a little suspicious also now--for there was no Hornet in
the Pacific Squadron, though there was a Hornet, he knew, in the China
Squadron--was coming to visit the discourteous commander.

He was received with the usual formalities, and was greeted at once
by Captain Shewell. As the eyes of the two men met both started, but
Captain Debney was most shaken. He turned white, and put