The _Mist_, being broad of beam, was comfortable and roomy.
A man could stand upright in the cabin, and what with the stove,
cooking-utensils, and bunks, we were good for trips in her of a week at
a time. And we were just starting out on the first of such trips, and it
was because it was the first trip that we were sailing by night. Early
in the evening we had beaten out from Oakland, and we were now off the
mouth of Alameda Creek, a large salt-water estuary which fills and
empties San Leandro Bay.

"Men lived in those days," Paul said, so suddenly as to startle me from
my own thoughts. "In the days of the sea-kings, I mean," he explained.

I said "Oh!" sympathetically, and began to whistle "Captain Kidd."

"Now, I've my ideas about things," Paul went on. "They talk about
romance and adventure and all that, but I say romance and adventure are
dead. We're too civilized. We don't have adventures in the twentieth
century. We go to the circus----"

"But----" I strove to interrupt, though he would not listen to me.

"You look here, Bob," he said. "In all the time you and I've gone
together what adventures have we had? True, we were out in the hills
once, and didn't get back till late at night, and we were good and
hungry, but we weren't even lost. We knew where we were all the time. It
was only a case of walk. What I mean is, we've never had to fight for
our lives. Understand? We've never had a pistol fired at us, or a
cannon, or a sword waving over our heads, or--or anything....