The mates had had a good enough fight even for their appetites. Red Bill had a broken arm. Bedrock Ben, who had been to sea before and was a regular hard case, lay senseless in the scuppers, from the effects partly of belaying-pins and partly of poisonous liquor. The faces of Pat and the cockney were hardly recognisable, and even Broncho was hugging a damaged wrist, though, as he explained:
"I shore never goes nearer than the outskirts of the fight."
The ship had now passed through the Golden Gate, and the deep blue of the Pacific lay before her, stretching away to the indigo of the horizon, behind which lay the languid islands of the South Seas.
The glorious azure of the Californian sky was covered with fleecy white clouds, and a freshening breeze from the norrard was rippling the water into flashes of snowy foam, upon which the sun's rays sparkled and glittered.
Ahead the tugboat puffed away serenely, whilst the tow-rope, stretching between the two vessels, glistened with dropping beads of crystal as it alternately sagged and dipped into the blue, then rose again dripping and tautened.
Away to windward a beautiful little schooner bobbed gracefully to the swell under fore-staysail and mainsail, as it waited ready to take the pilot aboard.
And now the stentorian voice of the huge bosun rang through the ship:
"All hands make sail!"
Mechanically the men climbed up the ratlines and wearily crept out on to the yards to cast loose the gaskets and overhaul the gear.
As soon as the topsails had been loosed, the capstans on the maindeck were manned, and the ship resounded with the tramp of the men at the bars.