may lose our way in the mist; let us vamos; and we vamosed.
As we turned our steps to the eastward and passed over the crest of the mountain again, we saw the mist moving up through the Golden Gate, and rolling over the island of Alcatraz, which in a moment was enveloped and hidden from sight. As the island disappeared, the low, mournful voice of the tolling fog-bell came faintly but distinctly to our ears, borne on the soft, moist air. B-o-o-m! b-o-o-m! b-o-o-m! a throbbing pulsation of sound, always inexpressibly painful for me to listen to, and I have heard it thousands of times. A San Francisco poet has beautifully expressed in the following lines the thoughts awakened by night—and by day as well—not in his mind alone, by the voice of
THE FOG BELL OF ALCATRAZ.
O weary warden, that o'er sea and marshes
Monotonously calls
Thy challenge to the foe, whose stealthy marches
Invest the city walls.
Thy voice of warning far and wide diverges,
Thrilling the midnight air;
Yet in thy tower, above the rocking surges,
Thou dost not heed, nor care.
Thou readest not the message of thy bringing;
Thou dost not know the weight
Of that which in thy little are forever swinging,
Thou dost reiterate.
Thou heedest not the text, whose repetition
Makes the dark night more drear;
Thou fill'st the world with formal admonition—
But show'st no sky more clear!
