The cruise began with a run far up San Pablo Bay toward Carquinez Straits, followed by a straightaway drive out through the Golden Gate to watch the sun sink between the horns of the Farallones; but here the heavy swells made the ladies gasp and clamor for a return to the shelter of the Bay. Re-entering the Gate as night fell, there was good fun in playing hide-and-seek from searchlight practice of the forts on either side the famous tideway, and some mischievous satisfaction in lounging in the track of the floundering, pounding ferryboats, and getting vigorously whistled out of the way. It was even enjoyable to grow sentimental over the phosphorescent glow of the waves in the wake or the play of the moonbeams on the bone-white crest at the bow. But after an hour or so of this, when it would seem that all of these things together with the tonic of the fresh salt breeze had made everybody wolfishly hungry, Mrs. Harrington’s butler, expertly assisted, opened great hampers of eatables and drinkables, and began to serve them in the cabin which would have been rather spacious if the crowd had not been so large. "Calmer water, James, while supper is being served!" Mrs. Harrington had ordered with a peace-be-still air. James communicated the order to the captain, who understood very well that Mrs. Harrington was a lady to be obeyed. But it happened that there was a very fresh breeze on the Bay that night, and that a swell which was a kind of left-over from a gale outside two days before was still sloshing about inside, so that "calmer water" was not just the easiest thing to find, though the captain looked for it hard. "Calmer water, James, I said!" Mrs. Harrington directed reprovingly, after an interval of watchful impatience, accompanying the observation by a look that shot barbs into the eye of the butler. A close observer would have noticed—and James was a close observer of his mistress—that Mrs. Harrington’s neck swelled slightly, and that a flush began to mount upon her cheeks. James knew this pouter-pigeon swelling well and its significance. Mrs. Harrington _must_ now be obeyed. Calmer water had to be had, if it had to be made. "Back of Yerba Buena, it is calmer," the lady concluded, with an increase of acerbity. James lost no time in conveying this second command and a description of its accompanying signal, to the captain. "’Behind the Goat,’ she said," James concluded. Now this island which humps like a camel in the middle of the San Francisco Bay is known to the esthetics as Yerba Buena, but to folks and to mariners it is Goat Island. James was folks; the captain was a mariner. Mrs. Harrington might have been esthetic. "She draws too much to go nosin’ round in there," replied the captain reluctantly, and explained his reluctance with a mixture of emphasis and the picturesque, by adding, "Behind the Goat it’s shoal from hell to breakfast." "She said it," replied James truculently; and stood by to see the helm shift.