Golden Gate--the narrow inlet of green tide-water with its
flanking Presidio. But, further than this, the eye was stayed.
Further than this there was nothing, nothing but a vast,
illimitable plain of green--the open Pacific. But at this hour
the color of the scene was its greatest charm. It glowed with all
the sombre radiance of a cathedral. Everything was seen through a
haze of purple--from the low green hills in the Presidio
Reservation to the faint red mass of Mount Diablo shrugging its
rugged shoulder over the Contra Costa foot-hills. As the evening
faded, the west burned down to a dull red glow that overlaid the
blue of the bay with a sheen of ruddy gold. The foot-hills of the
opposite shore, Diablo, and at last even Tamalpais, resolved
themselves in the velvet gray of the sky. Outlines were lost.
Only the masses remained, and these soon began to blend into one
another. The sky, and land, and the city's huddled roofs were
one. Only the sheen of dull gold remained, piercing the single
vast mass of purple like the blade of a golden sword.

"There's a ship!" said Blix in a low tone.

A four-master was dropping quietly through the Golden Gate,
swimming on that sheen of gold, a mere shadow, specked with lights
red and green. In a few moments her bows were shut from sight by
the old fort at the Gate. Then her red light vanished, then the
mainmast. She was gone. By midnight she would be out of sight of
land, rolling on the swell of the lonely ocean under the moon's
white eye.

Condy and Blix sat quiet and without speech, not caring to break
the charm of the evening. For quite five minutes they sat thus,