On the seventh morning we signed a deed of partnership, for Jim would not accept a dollar of my money otherwise; and having once more engaged myself--or that mortal part of me, my purse--among the wheels of his machinery, I returned alone to San Francisco and took quarters in the Palace Hotel.
The same night I had Nares to dinner.

His sunburnt face, his queer and personal strain of talk, recalled days that were scarce over and that seemed already distant.

Through the music of the band outside, and the chink and clatter of the dining-room, it seemed to me as if I heard the foaming of the surf and the voices of the sea-birds about Midway Island.
The bruises on our hands were not yet healed; and there we sat, waited on by elaborate darkies, eating pompano and drinking iced champagne.
"Think of our dinners on the Norah, captain, and then oblige me by looking round the room for contrast." He took the scene in slowly.

"Yes, it is like a dream," he said: "like as if the darkies were really about as big as dimes; and a great big scuttle might open up there, and Johnson stick in a great big head and shoulders, and cry, 'Eight bells!'-- and the whole thing vanish." "Well, it's the other thing that has done that," I replied.

"It's all bygone now, all dead and buried.