Ice Pilot

Excerpt: 'It was raining in San Francisco. Over that Bagdad of the West a thin drizzling mist swept like some fine seiner's net; over the Bay a fog hung. A man stood alone on the crest of Telegraph Hill. Below him the city stretched with its square-checked habitations; its long, blurred lanes of lights; its trolley cars creeping like glow-worms up and down the slippery inclines. That evening the man had watched the sun go down in yellow splendour. He had seen the shadow of night chase the sunlight in a mad frolic beyond the edge of the world. He had noted-for his eyes were sharp-the fore-topsail of a windjammer cut a square nick out of the horizon, and come like a scared white thing through the Golden Gate. Directly below the man a house, which was perched on the declivity, seemed to burst with drunken mirth and laughter. A woman's voice swung in tune with a tinkling piano.'