He walked straight on to the schoolyard gate and passed out.  Here his worshipers halted in wonderment, but he kept on to the corner and out of sight.  For some time he wandered along aimlessly, till he came to the tracks of a cable road.  A down-town car happening to stop to let off passengers, he stepped aboard and ensconced himself in an outside corner seat.  The next thing he was aware of, the car was swinging around on its turn-table and he was hastily scrambling off.  The big ferry building stood before him.  Seeing and hearing nothing, he had been carried through the heart of the business section of San Francisco.

He glanced up at the tower clock on top of the ferry building.  It was ten minutes after one—­time enough to catch the quarter-past-one boat.  That decided him, and without the least idea in the world as to where he was going, he paid ten cents for a ticket, passed through the gate, and was soon speeding across the bay to the pretty city of Oakland.

In the same aimless and unwitting fashion, he found himself, an hour later, sitting on the string-piece of the Oakland city wharf and leaning his aching head against a friendly timber.  From where he sat he could look down upon the decks of a number of small sailing-craft.  Quite a crowd of curious idlers had collected to look at them, and Joe found himself growing interested.

There were four boats, and from where he sat he could make out their names.  The one directly beneath him had the name Ghost painted in large green letters on its stern.  The other three, which lay beyond, were called respectively La Caprice, the Oyster Queen, and the Flying Dutchman.

Each of these boats had cabins built amidships, with short stovepipes projecting through the roofs, and from the pipe of the Ghost smoke was ascending.  The cabin doors were open and the roof-slide pulled back, so that Joe could look inside and observe the inmate, a young fellow of nineteen or twenty who was engaged just then in cooking.  He was clad in long sea-boots which reached the hips, blue overalls, and dark woolen shirt.  The sleeves, rolled back to the elbows, disclosed sturdy, sun-bronzed arms, and when the young fellow looked up his face proved to be equally bronzed and tanned.

The aroma of coffee arose to Joe’s nose, and from a light iron pot came the unmistakable smell of beans nearly done.  The cook placed a frying-pan on the stove, wiped it around with a piece of suet when it had heated, and tossed in a thick chunk of beefsteak.  While he worked he talked with a companion on deck, who was busily engaged in filling a bucket overside and flinging the salt water over heaps of oysters that lay on the deck.  This completed, he covered the oysters with wet sacks, and went into the cabin, where a place was set for him on a tiny table, and where the cook served the dinner and joined him in eating it.