The moments following the disaster were now fathomless, but he fancied that he had been outwardly cool, chilled into subconscious calculation by the very violence of the shock ... The frenzy had come later when he found himself aboard a ferryboat bound for Oakland. He could not disentangle the mixed impulses which had sent him upon this irrational errand, but he remembered now that a consuming desire to see Hilmer had possessed him. Perhaps an itching for revenge again had sprung into life, perhaps a fury to release a measure of his scorn and contempt, perhaps a mere curiosity to glimpse once more this man whose armor of arrogance remained unpierced ... Whatever the urge, it had keyed him to a quivering determination. He had wondered what stupidity possessed him to send Ginger in warning to a man like Hilmer. ... With almost psychic power he had created for himself the scene at the depot with Ginger pouring her tremulous message into contemptuous ears. For it was certain that Hilmer had been contemptuous. ... Afterward, standing before the north gate of Hilmer's shipyards, a man at his side confirmed his intuitions between irritating puffs from a blackened pipe: "Nobody can double-cross Hilmer ... and they'd better give up trying ... He said a launching at noon and it _was_ at noon, you can bet your life on that! ... They say a woman tried to scare the old man this morning ... He just laughed in her face and came on over." Almost as the man had finished speaking the crowd surged forward. And in a twinkling Hilmer's machine had swept past, leaving Fred, trembling from head to foot, staring stupidly into a cloud of dust ... He had not even glimpsed the occupants! But his failure to achieve whatever vague plan was buffeting him about drove him back to San Francisco. His confused mind had worked with the rational capacity for details which characterizes madness. He knew that Hilmer must wait for the automobile ferry...that the regular passenger boat would reach the other side at least a half hour in advance. He had been prepared this time for the appearance of Hilmer's car. It came off the boat preceded by a thin line of automobiles, moving slowly. ... For a moment he wondered how he would achieve his purpose, and the next thing he knew he had leaped aboard the running board... He remembered long after that his wife had given a cry, that Mrs. Hilmer had stirred ever so slightly, that Hilmer's eyes had widened. Then out of a tense moment of suppressed confusion he had heard his wife's voice floating toward him as she said: "Ah, then you were not drowned, after all!" With amazing effrontery he threw open the door and pressed down the emergency seat opposite her. "No... I swam out of that black pool!" A slight tremor ran through her. Mrs. Hilmer smiled.