The council had authorized two long wharves, one at the foot of Clay street, 547 feet long. This was a great undertaking and had caused much discussion pro and con. But now it was almost completed and a matter of much civic pride. Large ships, anchored at its terminus, were discharging cargo, and thither Benito bent his course, head bent, hat pulled well down on his forehead, until a rousing slap on the back spun him around almost angrily. He looked into the wise and smiling eyes of Edward C. Kemble. "Well, lad," the editor of the _Californian Star_ accosted, "I hear you've been to San Jose. What's new up there, if I may ask you?" "Very little ... nothing," said Benito, adding, "save the talk of gold at Marshall's mill." "Pooh!" exclaimed the editor. "Marshall's mill, and Mormon island! One would think the famous fairy tale of El Dorado had come true." "You place no credence in it, then?" asked Benito, disappointed. "Not I," said Kemble. "See here," he struck one fist into the palm of another. "All such balderdash is bad for San Francisco. We're trying to get ahead, grow, be a city. Look at the work going on. That means progress, sustained stimulus. And along come these stories of gold finds. It's the wrong time. The wrong time, I tell you. It'll interfere. If we get folks excited they'll pull out for the hills, the wilderness. Everything'll stop here.... Then, bye and bye, they'll come back--busted! Mark my words, BUSTED! Is that business? No." He went off shaking his head sagely. Benito puzzled, half resentful, gazed after him. He abandoned the walk to the dock and returned with low-spirited resignation to his tasks at Ward & Smith's store. * * * * * For several months gold rumors continued to come. Citizens, fearing ridicule, perhaps, slipped unobtrusively out of town, to test their truth. Kemble was back from a trip to the so-called gold fields. Editorially, he made sport of his findings. He had seen feather-brained fortune-seekers gambling hopelessly with fate, suffering untold hardships for half the pay they could have gained from "honest labor." Now and then a miner, dirty and disheveled, came in ragged clothes to gamble or drink away the contents of a pouch of "dust." It was at first received suspiciously. Barkeepers took "a pinch for a drink," meaning what they could grasp with their fingers, and one huge-fisted man estimated that this method netted him three dollars per glass. San Francisco awoke to a famine in butcher-knives, pans and candles. Knives at first were used to gouge out auriferous rock, and soon these common household appurtenances brought as high as twenty-five dollars each. Candles ere long were the equivalent of dollars, and pans were cheap at five dollars each. Still San Francisco waited, though a constant dribble of departures made at last perceptible inroads on its population. Then, one May afternoon, the fat was in the fire.