French Pete scrambled forward like a cat, at the same time drawing his knife, with one stroke of which he severed the rope that held them to the spare anchor.  This threw the whole weight of the Dazzler on the chain-anchor.  In consequence she swung off to the left, and just in time; for the next instant, drifting stern foremost, the Ghost passed over the spot she had vacated.

“Why, she ’s got four anchors out!” Joe exclaimed, at sight of four taut ropes entering the water almost horizontally from her bow.

“Two of ’em ’s dredges,” ’Frisco Kid grinned; “and there goes the stove.”

As he spoke, two young fellows appeared on deck and dropped the cooking-stove overside with a line attached.

“Phew!” ’Frisco Kid cried.  “Look at Nelson.  He ’s got one reef in, and you can just bet that ’s a sign she ’s howlin’!”

The Reindeer came foaming toward them, breasting the storm like some magnificent sea-animal.  Red Nelson waved to them as he passed astern, and fifteen minutes later, when they were breaking out the one anchor that remained to them, he passed well to windward on the other tack.

French Pete followed her admiringly, though he said ominously:  “Some day, pouf! he go just like dat, I tell you, sure.”

A moment later the Dazzler’s reefed jib was flung out, and she was straining and struggling in the thick of the fight.  It was slow work, and hard and dangerous, clawing off that lee shore, and Joe found himself marveling often that so small a craft could possibly endure a minute in such elemental fury.  But little by little she worked off the shore and out of the ground-swell into the deeper waters of the bay, where the main-sheet was slacked away a bit, and she ran for shelter behind the rock wall of the Alameda Mole a few miles away.  Here they found the Reindeer calmly at anchor; and here, during the next several hours, straggled in the remainder of the fleet, with the exception of the Ghost, which had evidently gone ashore to keep the Go Ask Her company.

By afternoon the wind had dropped away with surprising suddenness, and the weather had turned almost summer-like.

“It does n’t look right,” ’Frisco Kid said in the evening, after French Pete had rowed over in the skiff to visit Nelson.

“What does n’t look right?” Joe asked.

“Why, the weather.  It went down too sudden.  It did n’t have a chance to blow itself out, and it ain’t going to quit till does blow itself out.  It ’s likely to puff up and howl at any moment, if I know anything about it.”

“Where will we go from here?” Joe asked.  “Back to the oyster-beds?”

’Frisco Kid shook his head.  “I can’t say what French Pete ’ll do.  He ’s been fooled on the iron, and fooled on the oysters, and he ’s that disgusted he ’s liable to do ’most anything desperate.  I would n’t be surprised to see him go off with Nelson towards Redwood City, where that big thing is that I was tellin’ you about.  It ’s somewhere over there.”