The plank led to the door of a building that was a marvel even in the chaotic frontier architecture of the street.  The houses on either side—­irregular frames of wood or corrugated iron—­bore evidence of having been quickly thrown together, to meet the requirements of the goods and passengers who were once disembarked on what was the muddy beach of the infant city.  But the building in question exhibited a certain elaboration of form and design utterly inconsistent with this idea.  The structure obtruded a bowed front to the street, with a curving line of small windows, surmounted by elaborate carvings and scroll work of vines and leaves, while below, in faded gilt letters, appeared the legend “Pontiac—­Marseilles.”  The effect of this incongruity was startling.

It is related that an inebriated miner, impeded by mud and drink before its door, was found gazing at its remarkable facade with an expression of the deepest despondency.  “I hev lived a free life, pardner,” he explained thickly to the Samaritan who succored him, “and every time since I’ve been on this six weeks’ jamboree might have kalkilated it would come to this.  Snakes I’ve seen afore now, and rats I’m not unfamiliar with, but when it comes to the starn of a ship risin’ up out of the street, I reckon it’s time to pass in my checks.”

“It is a ship, you blasted old soaker,” said the Samaritan curtly.

It was indeed a ship.  A ship run ashore and abandoned on the beach years before by her gold-seeking crew, with the debris of her scattered stores and cargo, overtaken by the wild growth of the strange city and the reclamation of the muddy flat, wherein she lay hopelessly imbedded; her retreat cut off by wharves and quays and breakwater, jostled at first by sheds, and then impacted in a block of solid warehouses and dwellings, her rudder, port, and counter boarded in, and now gazing hopelessly through her cabin windows upon the busy street before her.  But still a ship despite her transformation.  The faintest line of contour yet left visible spoke of the buoyancy of another element; the balustrade of her roof was unmistakably a taffrail.  The rain slipped from her swelling sides with a certain lingering touch of the sea; the soil around her was still treacherous with its suggestions, and even the wind whistled nautically over her chimney.  If, in the fury of some southwesterly gale, she had one night slipped her strange moorings and left a shining track through the lower town to the distant sea, no one would have been surprised.

Least of all, perhaps, her present owner and possessor, Mr. Abner Nott.  For by the irony of circumstances, Mr. Nott was a Far Western farmer who had never seen a ship before, nor a larger stream of water than a tributary of the Missouri River.  In a spirit, half of fascination, half of speculation, he had bought her at the time of her abandonment, and had since mortgaged his ranch at Petaluma with his live stock,