As in a dream, I saw the familiar mainsail of the Reindeer as she
slipped out of San Rafael Creek on a light puff of morning air.
This dream was very much broken. There are intervals I can never
recollect on looking back over it. Three things, however, I
distinctly remember: the first sight of the Reindeer's mainsail;
her lying at anchor a few hundred feet away and a small boat
leaving her side; and the cabin stove roaring red-hot, myself
swathed all over with blankets, except on the chest and shoulders,
which Charley was pounding and mauling unmercifully, and my mouth
and throat burning with the coffee which Neil Partington was
pouring down a trifle too hot.
But burn or no burn, I tell you it felt good. By the time we
arrived in Oakland I was as limber and strong as ever,--though
Charlie and Neil Partington were afraid I was going to have
pneumonia, and Mrs. Partington, for my first six months of school,
kept an anxious eye upon me to discover the first symptoms of
consumption.
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