Once again as the rudder went hard over, the “Bertha Millner” fretted and danced and shook her sails, calling impatiently for the wind, chafing at its absence like a child reft of a toy. Then again she scooped the nor'wester in the hollow palms of her tense canvases and settled quietly down on the new tack, her bowsprit pointing straight toward the Presidio. “We'll come about again soon,” Wilbur told himself, “and stand over toward the Contra Costa shore.” A fine huge breath of wind passed over the schooner. She heeled it on the instant, the water roaring along her quarter, but she kept her course. Wilbur fell thoughtful again, never more keenly observant. “She must come about soon,” he muttered uneasily, “if she's going to stand up toward Vallejo.” His heart sank with a sudden apprehension. A nervousness he could not overcome seized upon him. The “Bertha Millner” held tenaciously to the tack. Within fifty yards of the Presidio came the command again: “Stand by for stays.” Once more, her bows dancing, her cordage rattling, her sails flapping noisily, the schooner came about. Anxiously Wilbur observed the bowsprit as it circled like a hand on a dial, watching where now it would point. It wavered, fluctuated, rose, fell, then settled easily, pointing toward Lime Point. Wilbur felt a sudden coldness at his heart. “This isn't going to be so much fun,” he muttered between his teeth. The schooner was not bound up the bay for Alviso nor to Vallejo for grain. The track toward Lime Point could mean but one thing. The wind was freshening from the nor'west, the ebb tide rushing out to meet the ocean like a mill-race, at every moment the Golden Gate opened out wider, and within two minutes after the time of the last tack the “Bertha Millner” heeled to a great gust that had come booming in between the heads, straight from the open Pacific. “Stand by for stays.” As before, one of the Chinese hands stood by the sail rope of the jib. “Draw y'r jib.” The jib filled. The schooner came about on the port tack; Lime Point fell away over the stern rail. The huge ground swells began to come in, and as she rose and bowed to the first of these it was precisely as though the “Bertha Millner” were making her courtesy to the great gray ocean, now for the first time in full sight on her starboard quarter. The schooner was beating out to sea through the Middle Channel. Once clear of the Golden Gate, she stood over toward the Cliff House, then on the next tack cleared Point Bonita. The sea began building up in deadly earnest--they were about to cross the bar. Everything was battened down, the scuppers were awash, and the hawse-holes spouted like fountains after every plunge. Once the Captain ordered all men aloft, just in time to escape a gigantic dull green roller that broke like a Niagara over the schooner's bows, smothering the decks knee-deep in a twinkling.