The broad decks of the Olympia, built by the builders of the matchless Oregon, had a comforting solidity under my feet.

The Admiral was believed to be having a nap; but he was wide awake, and invited the visitor to take a big chair, which, after having accompanied the launch in the dance with the whitecaps, was peculiarly luxurious.

The Admiral didn't mind me, and had a moment's surprise about an observer of long ago strolling so far from home and going forth in a high sea to make a call.

I confessed to being an ancient Wanderer, but not an Ancient Mariner, and expressed disapprobation of the deplorable roughness of the California Albatross, a brute of a bird--a feathered ruffian that ought to be shot.
The Admiral would be picked out by close attention as the origin of some millions of pictures; but he is unlike as well as like them.

Even the best photographs do not do justice to his fine eyes, large, dark and luminous, or to the solid mass of his head with iron-brown hair tinged with gray.