The second incident was more dramatic, and had, besides, a bearing on my future. I was standing, one day, near a boat-landing under Telegraph Hill. A large barque, perhaps of eighteen hundred tons, was coming more than usually close about the point to reach her moorings; and I was observing her with languid inattention, when I observed two men to stride across the bulwarks, drop into a shore boat, and, violently dispossessing the boatman of his oars, pull toward the landing where I stood. In a surprisingly short time they came tearing up the steps; and I could see that both were too well dressed to be foremast hands--the first even with research, and both, and specially the first, appeared under the empire of some strong emotion. “Nearest police office!” cried the leader. “This way,” said I, immediately falling in with their precipitate pace. “What's wrong? What ship is that?” “That's the Gleaner,” he replied. “I am chief officer, this gentleman's third; and we've to get in our depositions before the crew. You see they might corral us with the captain; and that's no kind of berth for me. I've sailed with some hard cases in my time, and seen pins flying like sand on a squally day--but never a match to our old man. It never let up from the Hook to the Farallones; and the last man was dropped not sixteen hours ago. Packet rats our men were, and as tough a crowd as ever sand-bagged a man's head in; but they looked sick enough when the captain started in with his fancy shooting.” “O, he's done up,” observed the other. “He won't go to sea no more.” “You make me tired,” retorted his superior. “If he gets ashore in one piece and isn't lynched in the next ten minutes, he'll do yet. The owners have a longer memory than the public; they'll stand by him; they don't find as smart a captain every day in the year.” “O, he's a son of a gun of a fine captain; there ain't no doubt of that,” concurred the other, heartily. “Why, I don't suppose there's been no wages paid aboard that Gleaner for three trips.” “No wages?” I exclaimed, for I was still a novice in maritime affairs. “Not to sailor-men before the mast,” agreed the mate. “Men cleared out; wasn't the soft job they maybe took it for. She isn' the first ship that never paid wages.”