A racking grind sounded, and the iron teeth of the winch swallowed the rusty chain like a giant biting a meal. The ship steadied in the tide which was flowing through the Golden Gate as the anchor lifted from the mud and silt of the bay.
"All's clear!" Cushner called over the whaleboats.
"Hard aport!" said Stirling, sensing the position. "Put her hard aport. Now up a spoke! More! Steady there!"
Marr reached for the engine-room telegraph, a bell clanged below, the single screw thrashed the water astern and the Pole Star rounded on a long arc, gliding down the bay to a position off Meigg's Wharf.
A pilot and the last papers were brought out in a revenue cutter as Stirling kept the ship under bare headway. The siren aft the funnel plumed into one short blast, and they were off on the first leg of the passage to the Arctic and the Bering Sea.
Foghorn and whistle sounded in cadence, and was answered from starboard and port. Once a bell rang directly ahead through the fog. The engines raced in reverse, and the Pole Star swung with her dainty jib boom groping through the fog like an antenna. She straightened under the pilot's directions.
The veil thinned, as the sun struck through, bringing out the clean-cut details of the yards and spars. A stagelike setting appeared. To port lay the city—hill after hill of close-packed habitations; to starboard reared the green slopes of the Coast Range and the higher land of Mount Tamalpais. Beyond and directly ahead the sun kissed the sparkling ocean.
The Pole Star glided under the frowning guns of the Presidio, and danced across the bar. The Cliff House and the seal rocks were thrown astern. The land of California sank to a low, black line after the pilot had been dropped upon the deck of a tossing kicker yacht.
[CHAPTER V—INTO A PURPLE TWILIGHT]
A breeze, fresh and gripping with the taste of brine, swept over the stern of the ship and filled the canvas which Cushner and Whitehouse ordered set. The anchor was brought inboard and lashed to the cleats close by the port cat. The crew, feeling their sea legs, brought out hose and swabs and started cleaning up the shore litter and dunnage, working to the old-time chantey: "'Rah for the grog—the jolly, jolly grog."