I looked up from my investigation of the empty berths.

“I don’t think much about it,” I replied, “except that by the look of the stores we’re due for more than Honolulu; and from the look of the light we’d better turn to on deck.”

An embarrassed pause fell.

“Who are you, anyway?” bluntly demanded the man with the steel hook.

“My name is Eagen,” I replied; “I’ve the berth of mate.  Which of these bunks are empty?”

They indicated what I desired with just a trace of sullenness.  I understood well enough their resentment at having a ship’s officer quartered on them,—­the forec’stle they considered as their only liberty when at sea, and my presence as a curtailment to the freedom of speech.  I subsequently did my best to overcome this feeling, but never quite succeeded.

At my command the Nigger went to his galley, I ascended to the deck.  Dusk was falling, in the swift Californian fashion.  Already the outlines of the wharf houses were growing indistinct, and the lights of the city were beginning to twinkle.  Captain Selover came to my side and leaned over the rail, peering critically at the black water against the piles.

“She’s at the flood,” he squeaked.  “And here comes the Lucy Belle.”

The tug took us in charge and puffed with us down the harbour and through the Golden Gate.  We had sweated the canvas on her, even to the flying jib and a huge club topsail she sometimes carried at the main, for the afternoon trades had lost their strength.  About midnight we drew up on the Farallones.

The schooner handled well.  Our crew was divided into three watches—­an unusual arrangement, but comfortable.  Two men could sail her handily in most sorts of weather.  Handy Solomon had the wheel.  Otherwise the deck was empty.  The man’s fantastic headgear, the fringe of his curling oily locks, the hawk outline of his face momentarily silhouetted against the phosphorescence astern as he glanced to windward, all lent him an appearance of another day.  I could almost imagine I caught the gleam of silver-butted horse pistols and cutlasses at his waist.

I brooded in wonder at what I had seen and how little I had explained.  The number of boats, sufficient for a craft of three times the tonnage; the capacity of the forec’stle with its eighteen bunks, enough for a passenger ship,—­what did it mean?  And this wild, unkempt, villainous crew with its master and his almost ridiculous contrast of neatness and filth;—­did Dr. Schermerhorn realise to what he had trusted himself and his precious expedition, whatever it might be?

The lights of shore had sunk; the Laughing Lass staggered and leaped joyously with the glory of the open sea.  She seemed alone on the bosom of the ocean; and for the life of me I could not but feel that I was embarked on some desperate adventure.  The notion was utterly illogical; that I knew well.  In sober thought, I, a reporter, was shadowing a respectable and venerable scientist, who in turn was probably about to investigate at length some little-known deep-sea conditions or phenomena of an unexplored island.  But that did not suffice to my imagination.  The ship, its surroundings, its equipment, its crew—­all read fantastic.  So much the better story, I thought, shrugging my shoulders at last.