hour or so of this, when it would seem that all of these things together with the tonic of the fresh salt breeze had made everybody wolfishly hungry, Mrs. Harrington's butler, expertly assisted, opened great hampers of eatables and drinkables, and began to serve them in the cabin which would have been rather spacious if the crowd had not been so large.
"Calmer water, James, while supper is being served!" Mrs. Harrington had ordered with a peace-be-still air.
James communicated the order to the captain, who understood very well that Mrs. Harrington was a lady to be obeyed. But it happened that there was a very fresh breeze on the Bay that night, and that a swell which was a kind of left-over from a gale outside two days before was still sloshing about inside, so that "calmer water" was not just the easiest thing to find, though the captain looked for it hard.
"Calmer water, James, I said!" Mrs. Harrington directed reprovingly, after an interval of watchful impatience, accompanying the observation by a look that shot barbs into the eye of the butler. A close observer would have noticed—and James was a close observer of his mistress—that Mrs. Harrington's neck swelled slightly, and that a flush began to mount upon her cheeks.
James knew this pouter-pigeon swelling well and its significance. Mrs. Harrington must now be obeyed. Calmer water had to be had, if it had to be made.
"Back of Yerba Buena, it is calmer," the lady concluded, with an increase of acerbity.
James lost no time in conveying this second command and a description of its accompanying signal, to the captain.
"'Behind the Goat,' she said," James concluded.
Now this island which humps like a camel in the middle of the San Francisco Bay is known to the esthetics as
