Soon after the _Challenge_ rounded to and let go anchor, in San Francisco Bay, she was boarded by a throng of crimps and runners who at once took the crew and their dunnage ashore. There was nothing unusual in this, for it happened nearly every day, captains and mates being powerless to prevent it. A gang of longshoremen would then be sent aboard at wages of from $3 to $5 an hour each, to heave up anchor, put the ship alongside the wharf, stow sails and clear up the decks. As these prosperous sons of toil were never in much of a hurry, it usually required from four to five hours to finish up these jobs, and meant a heavy expense to the ship-owner for work that should have been done by the crew. When the crew of the _Challenge_ got on shore, some of them had terrible tales to tell about their hardships and privations during the voyage; how they had been nearly starved to death; how some of the crew had starved to death or been murdered, and their bodies hove overboard like dead rats, and how six men had been shot from the mizzentopsail yard in a gale of wind off Cape Horn. According to these blatant imposters, no such floating hell as the _Challenge_ had ever before set sail upon the ocean, and as for Captain Waterman, he was a blood-thirsty, inhuman navigator, the like of whom had never been seen or heard of, since the days when Noah put his ship ashore among the mountains of Ararat. All this was, of course, profitable material for journalists, one impetuous knight of the pen actually proposing that Captain Waterman should be burned alive, until finally the publisher of this attack became frightened for his own safety, as he had incited the most dangerous set of men, perhaps, that ever existed in any seaport--ticket-of-leave from Australia, cut-throats from New Mexico, and drainings from the social gutters and cesspools of European ports.