"Oh, laugh, if you want to," nodded Dawson, showing no offense. "But you'll find that I'm right. You know, I don't often make predictions."
"Yet, this time, you feel that something disastrous is going to happen before this train rolls out on the mole at Oakland? In other words, before we set foot in San Francisco?"
"No, I don't say quite that," objected Joe, thoughtfully. "There's a heap of the navigator about you, Tom Halstead, and you're pinning me down to the map and the chronometer. I won't predict quite as closely as that. But, either before we reach 'Frisco, or mighty soon after we get there, something is going to happen."
"And it's going to be a disaster?" questioned Tom, closely.
"For someone, yes; and we're going to be in it, at great risk."
"Well, it's a comfort to have it narrowed down even as closely as that," smiled Tom Halstead. "I hope it isn't going to be another earthquake, though."
"No," agreed Joe, thoughtfully.
"Oh, well, that much of your prediction will comfort the people of San Francisco, anyway."
"Now, you're laughing at me again," grinned Joe, good-naturedly.
"No; I'm not," protested Halstead, but belied himself by the twinkle in his eyes, and by whistling softly the air of a popular song that the boys had heard in a New York theatre just before leaving for the West.