``How do things go aboard?’’ said I.

``Bad enough,’’ said he; ``hard work and not a kind word spoken.’’

``What!’’ said I, ``have you been at work all day?’’

``Yes! no more Sunday for us.  Everything has been moved in the hold, from stem to stern, and from the water-ways to the keelson.’’

I went up to the house to supper.  We had frijoles (the perpetual food of the Californians, but which, when well cooked, are the best bean in the world), coffee made of burnt wheat, and hard bread.  After our meal, the three men sat down by the light of a tallow candle, with a pack of greasy Spanish cards, to the favorite game of ``treinte uno,’’ a sort of Spanish ``everlasting.’’ I left them and went out to take up my bivouac among the hides.  It was now dark; the vessel was hidden from sight, and except the three men in the house there was not a living soul within a league.  The coyotes (a wild animal of a nature and appearance between that of the fox and the wolf) set up their sharp, quick bark, and two owls, at the end of two distant points running out into the bay, on different sides of the hill where I lay, kept up their alternate dismal notes.  I had heard the sound before at night, but did not know what it was, until one of the men, who came down to look at my quarters, told me it was the owl.  Mellowed by the distance, and heard alone, at night, it was a most melancholy and boding sound.  Through nearly all the night they kept it up, answering one another slowly at regular intervals.  This was relieved by the noisy coyotes, some of which came quite near to my quarters, and were not very pleasant neighbors.  The next morning, before sunrise, the long-boat came ashore, and the hides were taken off.

We lay at San Pedro about a week, engaged in taking off hides and in other labors, which had now become our regular duties.  I spent one more day on the hill, watching a quantity of hides and goods, and this time succeeded in finding a part of a volume of Scott’s Pirate in a corner of the house; but it failed me at a most interesting moment, and I betook myself to my acquaintances on shore, and from them learned a good deal about the customs of the country, the harbors, &c.  This, they told me, was a worse harbor than Santa Barbara for southeasters, the bearing of the headland being a point and a half more to windward, and it being so shallow that the sea broke often as far out as where we lay at anchor.  The gale for which we slipped at Santa Barbara had been so bad a one here, that the whole bay, for a league out, was filled with the foam of the breakers, and seas actually broke over the Dead Man’s Island.  The Lagoda was lying there, and slipped at the first alarm, and in such haste that she was obliged to leave her launch behind her at anchor.  The little boat rode it out for several hours, pitching at her anchor, and standing with her stern up almost perpendicularly.  The men told me that they watched her till towards night, when she snapped her cable and drove up over the breakers high and dry upon the beach.