My belongings were packed snugly in a sea-chest, and I was all ready to
buy my ticket and ride down on the train to Oakland, when Neil
Partington arrived in Benicia. The _Reindeer_ was needed immediately for
work far down on the Lower Bay, and Neil said he intended to run
straight for Oakland. As that was his home and as I was to live with his
family while going to school, he saw no reason, he said, why I should
not put my chest aboard and come along.
So the chest went aboard, and in the middle of the afternoon we hoisted
the _Reindeer's_ big mainsail and cast off. It was tantalizing fall
weather. The sea-breeze, which had blown steadily all summer, was gone,
and in its place were capricious winds and murky skies which made the
time of arriving anywhere extremely problematical. We started on the
first of the ebb, and as we slipped down the Carquinez Straits, I looked
my last for some time upon Benicia and the bight at Turner's Shipyard,
where we had besieged the _Lancashire Queen,_ and had captured Big Alec,
the King of the Greeks. And at the mouth of the Straits I looked with
not a little interest upon the spot where a few days before I should
have drowned but for the good that was in the nature of Demetrios
Contos.
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