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But think of those three Babes-in-the-Wood villains, skipper Davis, the Yankee swashbuckler and ship scuttler; Herrick, the dreamy poet, ruined by commerce and early love, with his days of remorse and his days of compensatary liquor; and Huish, the great-hearted Scotch ruffian, who chafed at the conventional concealments of trade among pals and never could as a true Scotchman understand why you should wait to use a knife upon a victim when promptness lay in the club right at hand think of them sailing out of Honolulu harbor on the Farallone.
The captain scrambled to his feet, and stood gasping and staring. 'Mr Herrick, don't startle a man like that! he said. 'I don't seem someways rightly myself since... he broke off. 'What did you say anyway? O, the Farallone, and he looked languidly out. 'Yes, said Herrick. 'There she burns! and you may guess from that what the news is. 'The Trinity Hall, I guess, said the captain.
'For Heaven's sake, tell me some of the words, whispered Herrick. An hour later, the Farallone was under all plain sail, the rudder hard a-port, and the cheerfully clanking windlass had brought the anchor home. 'All clear, sir, cried Herrick from the bow. The captain met her with the wheel, as she bounded like a stag from her repose, trembling and bending to the puffs.
When that was done, and the great trapezium of canvas had begun to draw and to trail the lee-rail of the Farallone level with the foam, he laughed out an empty laugh, drained his glass, sprawled back among the lumber in the boat, and fetched out a crumpled novel. Herrick watched him, and his indignation glowed red hot.
The guard boat gave a parting hail, the wake whitened and ran out; the Farallone was under weigh. Her berth had been close to the pass. Even as she forged ahead Davis slewed her for the channel between the pier ends of the reef, the breakers sounding and whitening to either hand. But they were not yet done with the shore and the horror of the yellow flag.
Seen from the beach through the thin line of shipping, two objects stood conspicuous to seaward: the little isle, on the one hand, with its palms and the guns and batteries raised forty years before in defence of Queen Pomare's capital; the outcast Farallone, upon the other, banished to the threshold of the port, rolling there to her scuppers, and flaunting the plague-flag as she rolled.
The Golden Gate Park is now famous the world over and vies in beauty and splendour with Central Park in New York, nay, in some respects surpasses this, in that it has a magnificent frontage on the Pacific ocean, a long coast view and a wide range of sea with the Farallone Islands, about twenty miles off in the foreground of the picture, and visible on a clear day always, and most enchanting in the sunset hour as we gazed on them.
Twice a day the ocean crowded in that narrow entrance and was heaped between these frail walls; twice a day, with the return of the ebb, the mighty surplusage of water must struggle to escape. The hour in which the Farallone came there was the hour of the flood. The schooner looked up close-hauled, and was caught and carried away by the influx like a toy.
The appearance, thus "instantaneously disclosed" to those on the deck of the Farallone, was not that of a city, rather of a substantial country farm with its attendant hamlet: a long line of sheds and store-houses; apart, upon the one side, a deep-verandah'd dwelling-house; on the other, perhaps a dozen native huts; a building with a belfry and some rude offer at architectural features that might be thought to mark it out for a chapel; on the beach in front some heavy boats drawn up, and a pile of timber running forth into the burning shallows of the lagoon.
But to you I'll rip it right out. I got a ship. 'A ship? cried Herrick. 'What ship? 'That schooner we saw this morning off the passage. 'The schooner with the hospital flag? 'That's the hooker, said Davis. 'She's the Farallone, hundred and sixty tons register, out of 'Frisco for Sydney, in California champagne.
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