"Oh! to meet to die!" she sobbed, for the strength of the water and the rage of the surrounding sea had frightened her. "Oh, it is cruel!"

Presently she smothered her crying, and implored, "Come up here and tie yourself by my side; I want to hold your hand."

He wondered whether she loved him again, now that she saw him; and in spite of the chilling seas and the death at hand, he thrilled warm at the thought. He was about to obey her when Coronado and Garcia appeared, pale as two ghosts, clinging to each other, tottering and helpless. Thurstane went to them, got the old man lashed to one of the backstays, and helped Coronado to secure himself to another. Garcia was jabbering prayers and crying aloud like a scared child, his jaws shaking as if in a palsy. Coronado, although seeming resolved to bear himself like an hidalgo and maintain a grim silence, his face was wilted and seamed with anxiety, as if he had become an old man in the night. It was rather a fine sight to see him looking into the face of the storm with an air of defying death and all that it might bring; and perhaps he would have been helpful, and would have shown himself one of the bravest of the brave, had he not been prostrated by sickness. As it was, he took little interest in the fate of others, hardly noticing Thurstane as he resumed his post beside Clara, and only addressing the girl with one word: "Patience!"

Clara and Thurstane, side by side and hand in hand, were also for the most part silent, now looking around them upon their fate, and then at each other for strength to bear it.

Meantime part of the crew had tried the pumps, and been washed away from them twice by seas, floating helplessly about the main deck, and clutching at rigging to save themselves, but nevertheless discovering that the brig was filling but slowly, and would have full time to strike before she could founder.

"'Vast there!" called the captain; "'vast the pumps! All hands stand by to launch the boats!"

"Long boat's stove!" shouted the mate, putting his hands to his mouth so as to be heard through the gale.

"All hands aft!" was the next order. "Stand by to launch the quarter-boats!"

So the entire remaining crew—two mates and eight men, including the steward—splashed and clambered on to the quarter-deck and took station by the boat-falls, hanging on as they could.

"Can I do anything?" asked Thurstane.

"Not yet," answered the captain; "you are doing what's right; take care of the lady."

"What are the chances?" the lieutenant ventured now to inquire.

With fate upon him, and seemingly irresistible, the skipper had dropped his grim air of conflict and become gentle, almost resigned. His voice was friendly, sympathetic, and quite calm, as he stepped up by Thurstane's side and said, "We shall have a tough time of it. The land is only about ten miles away. At this rate we shall strike it inside of three hours. I don't see how it can be helped."

"Where shall we strike?"

"Smack into the Bay of Monterey, between the town and Point Pinos.'

"Can I do anything?"

"Do just what you've got in hand. Take care of the lady. See that she gets into the biggest boat—if we try the boats."

Clara overheard, gave the skipper a kind look, and said, "Thank you, captain."

"You're fit to be capm of a liner, miss," returned the sailor. "You're one of the best sort."

For some time longer, while waiting for the final catastrophe, nothing was done but to hold fast and gaze. The voyagers were like condemned men who are preceded, followed, accompanied, jostled, and hurried to the place of death by a vindictive people. The giants of the sea were coming in multitudes to this execution which they had ordained; all the windward ocean was full of rising and falling billows, which seemed to trample one another down in their savage haste. There was no mercy in the formless faces which grimaced around the doomed ones, nor in the tempestuous voices which deafened them with threatenings and insult. The breakers seemed to signal to each other; they were cruelly eloquent with menacing gestures. There was but one sentence among them, and that sentence was a thousand times repeated, and it was always DEATH.

To paint the shifting sublimity of the tempest is as difficult as it was to paint the steadfast sublimity of the Great Canon. The waves were in furious movement, continual change, and almost incessant death. They destroyed themselves and each other by their violence. Scarcely did one become eminent before it was torn to pieces by its comrades, or perished of its own rage. They were like barbarous hordes, exterminating one another or falling into dissolution, while devastating everything in their course.

There was a frantic revelry, an indescribable pandemonium of transformations. Lofty plumes of foam fell into hoary, flattened sheets; curling and howling cataracts became suddenly deep hollows. The indigo slopes were marbled with white, but not one of these mottlings retained the same shape for an instant; it was broad, deep, and creamy when the eye first beheld it; in the next breath it was waving, shallow, and narrow; in the next it was gone. A thousand eddies, whirls, and ebullitions of all magnitudes appeared only to disappear. Great and little jets of froth struggled from the agitated centres toward the surface, and never reached it. Every one of the hundred waves which made up each billow rapidly tossed and wallowed itself to death.

Yet there was no diminution in the spectacle, no relaxation in the combat. In the place of what vanished there was immediately something else. Out of the quick grave of one surge rose the white plume of another. Marbling followed marbling, and cataract overstrode cataract. Even to their bases the oceanic ranges and peaks were full of power, activity, and, as it were, explosions. It seemed as if endless multitudes of transformations boiled up through them from their abodes in sea-deep caves. There was no exhausting this reproductiveness of form and power. At every glance a thousand worlds of waters had perished, and a thousand worlds of waters had been created. And all these worlds, the new even more than the old, were full of malignity toward the wreck, and bent on its destruction.

The wind, though invisible, was not less wonderful. It surpassed the ocean in strength, for it chased, gashed, and deformed the ocean. It inflicted upon it countless wounds, slashing fresh ones as fast as others healed. It not only tore off the hoary scalps of the billows and flung them through the air, but it wrenched out and hurled large masses of water, scattering them in rain and mist, the blood of the sea. Now and then it made all the air dense with spray, causing the Pacific to resemble the Sahara in a simoom. At other times it levelled the tops of scores of waves at once, crushing and kneading them by the immense force that lay in its swiftness.

It would not be looked in the face; it blinded the eyes that strove to search it; it seemed to flap and beat them with harsh, churlish wings; it was as full of insult as the billows. Its cry was not multitudinous like that of the sea, but one and incessant and invariable, a long scream that almost hissed. On reaching the wreck, however, this shriek became hoarse with rage, and howled as it shook the rigging. It used the shrouds and stays of the still upright mainmast as an aeolian harp from which to draw horrible music. It made the tense ropes tremble and thrill, and tortured the spars until they wailed a death-song. Its force as felt by the shipwrecked ones was astonishing; it beat them about as if it were a sea, and bruised them against the shrouds and bulwarks; it asserted its mastery over them with the long-drawn cruelty of a tiger.

Just around the wreck the tumult of both wind and sea was of course more horrible than anywhere else. These enemies were infuriated by the sluggishness of the disabled hulk; they treated it as Indians treat a captive who cannot keep up with their march; they belabored it with blows and insulted it with howls. The brig, constantly tossed and dropped and shoved, was never still for an instant. It rolled heavily and somewhat slowly, but with perpetual jerks and jars, shuddering at every concussion. Its only regularity of movement lay in this, that the force of the wind and direction of the waves kept it larboard side on, drifting steadily toward the land.

One moment it was on a lofty crest, seeming as if it would be hurled into air. The next it was rolling in the trough of the sea, between a wave which hoarsely threatened to engulf it, and another which rushed seething and hissing from beneath the keel. The deck stood mostly at a steep angle, the weather bulwarks being at a considerable elevation, and the lee ones dipping the surges. Against this helpless and partially water-logged mass the combers rushed incessantly, hiding it every few seconds with sheets of spray, and often sweeping it with deluges. Around the stern and bow the rush of bubbling, roaring whirls was uninterrupted.

The motion was sickly and dismaying, like the throes of one who is dying. It could not be trusted; it dropped away under the feet traitorously; then, by an insolent surprise, it violently stopped or lifted. It was made the more uncertain and distressing by the swaying of the water which had entered the hull. Sometimes, too, the under boiling of a crushed billow caused a great lurch to windward; and after each of these struggles came a reel to leeward which threatened to turn the wreck bottom up; the breakers meantime leaping aboard with loud stampings as if resolved to beat through the deck.

During hours of this tossing and plunging, this tearing of the wind and battering of the sea, no one was lost. The sailors were clustered around the boats, some clinging to the davits and others lashed to belaying pins, exhausted by long labor, want of sleep, and constant soakings, but ready to fight for life to the last. Coronado and Garcia were still fast to the backstays, the former a good deal wilted by his hardships, and the latter whimpering. Thurstane had literally seized up Clara to the outside of the weather shrouds, so that, although she was terribly jammed by the wind, she could not be carried away by it, while she was above the heaviest pounding of the seas. His own position was alongside of her, secured in like manner by ends of cordage.

Sometimes he held her hand, and sometimes her waist. She could lean her shoulder against his, and she did so nearly all the while. Her eyes were fixed as often on his face as on the breakers which threatened her life. The few words that she spoke were more likely to be confessions of love than of terror. Now and then, when a billow of unusual size had slipped harmlessly by, he gratefully and almost joyously drew her close to him, uttering a few syllables of cheer. She thanked him by sending all her affectionate heart through her eyes into his.

Although there had been no explanations as to the past, they understood each other's present feelings. It could not be, he was sure, that she clung to him thus and looked at him thus merely because she wanted him to save her life. She had been detached from him by others, he said; she had been drawn away from thinking of him during his absence; she had been brought to judge, perhaps wisely, that she ought not to marry a poor man; but now that she saw him again she loved him as of old, and, standing at death's door, she felt at liberty to confess it. Thus did he translate to himself a past that had no existence. He still believed that she had dismissed him, and that she had done it with cruel harshness. But he could not resent her conduct; he believed what he did and forgave her; he believed it, and loved her.

There were moments when it was delightful for them to be as they were. As they held fast to each other, though drenched and exhausted and in mortal peril, they had a sensation as if they were warm. The hearts were beating hotly clean through the wet frames and the dripping clothing.

"Oh, my love!" was a phrase which Clara repeated many times with an air of deep content.

Once she said, "My love, I never thought to die so easily. How horrible it would have been without you!"

Again she murmured, "I have prayed many, many times to have you. I did not know how the answer would come. But this is it."

"My darling, I have had visions about you," was another of these confessions. "When I had been praying for you nearly all one night, there was a great light came into the room. It was some promise for you. I knew it was then; something told me so. Oh, how happy I was!"

Presently she added, "My dear love, we shall be just as happy as that. We shall live in great light together. God will be pleased to see plainly how we love each other."

Her only complaints were a patient "Isn't it hard?" when a new billow had covered her from head to foot, crushed her pitilessly against the shrouds, and nearly smothered her.

The next words would perhaps be, "I am so sorry for you, my darling. I wish for your sake that you had not come. But oh, how you help me!"

"I am glad to be here," firmly and honestly and passionately responded the young man, raising her wet hand and covering it with kisses. "But you shall not die."

He was bearing like a man and she like a woman. He was resolved to fight his battle to the last; she was weak, resigned, gentle, and ready for heaven.

The land, even to its minor features, was now distinctly visible, not more than a mile to leeward. As they rose on the billows they could distinguish the long beach, the grassy slopes, and wooded knolls beyond it, the green lawn on which stood the village of Monterey, the whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs of the houses, and the groups of people who were watching the oncoming tragedy.

"Are you not going to launch the boats?" shouted Thurstane after a glance at the awful line of frothing breakers which careered back and forth athwart the beach.

"They are both stove," returned the captain calmly. "We must go ashore as we are."



CHAPTER XLI.

When Thurstane heard, or rather guessed from the captain's gestures, that the boats were stove, he called, "Are we to do nothing?"

The captain shouted something in reply, but although he put his hands to his mouth for a speaking trumpet, his words were inaudible, and he would not have been understood had he not pointed aloft.

Thurstane looked upward, and saw for the first time that the main topmast had broken off and been cut clear, probably hours ago when he was in the cabin searching for Clara. The top still remained, however, and twisted through its openings was one end of a hawser, the other end floating off to leeward two hundred yards in advance of the wreck. Fastened to the hawser by a large loop was a sling of cordage, from which a long halyard trailed shoreward, while another connected it with the top. All this had been done behind his back and without his knowledge, so deafening and absorbing was the tempest. He saw at once what was meant and what he would have to do. When the brig struck he must carry Clara into the top, secure her in the sling, and send her ashore. Doubtless the crowd on the beach would know enough to make the hawser fast and pull on the halyard.

The captain shouted again, and this time he could be understood: "When she strikes hold hard."

"Did you hear him?" Thurstane asked, turning to Clara.

"Yes," she nodded, and smiled in his face, though faintly like one dying. He passed one arm around the middle stay of the shrouds and around her waist, passed the other in front of her, covering her chest; and so, with every muscle set, he waited.

Surrounded, pursued, pushed, and hammered by the billows, the wreck drifted, rising and falling, starting and wallowing toward the awful line where the breakers plunged over the undertow and dashed themselves to death on the resounding shore. There was a wide debatable ground between land and water. One moment it belonged to earth, the next lofty curling surges foamed howling over it; then the undertow was flying back in savage torrents. Would the hawser reach across this flux and reflux of death? Would the mast hold against the grounding shock? Would the sling work?

They lurched nearer; the shock was close at hand; every one set teeth and tightened grip. Lifted on a monstrous billow, which was itself lifted by the undertow and the shelving of the beach, the hulk seemed as if it were held aloft by some demon in order that it might be dashed to pieces. But the wave lost its hold, swept under the keel, staggered wildly up the slope, broke in a huge white deafening roll, and rushed backward in torrents. The brig was between two forces; it struck once, but not heavily; then, raised by the incoming surge, it struck again; there was an awful consciousness and uproar of beating and grinding; the next instant it was on its beam ends and covered with cataracts.

Every one aboard was submerged. Thurstane and Clara were overwhelmed by such a mass of water that they thought themselves at the bottom of the sea. Two men who had not mounted the rigging, but tried to cling to the boat davits, were hurled adrift and sent to agonize in the undertow. The brig trembled as if it were on the point of breaking up and dissolving in the horrible, furious yeast of breakers. Even to the people on shore the moment and the spectacle were sublime and tremendous beyond description. The vessel and the people on board disappeared for a time from their sight under jets and cascades of surf. The spray rose in a dense sheet as high as the maintopmast would have been had it stood upright.

When Thurstane came out of his state of temporary drowning, he was conscious of two sailors clambering by him toward the top, and heard a shout in his ears of "Cast loose."

It was the captain. He had sprung alongside of Clara, and was already unwinding her lashings. Thrice before the job was done they were buried in surf, and during the third trial they had to hold on with their hands, the two men clasping the girl desperately and pressing her against the rigging. It was a wonder that she and all of them were not disabled, for the jamming of the water was enough to break bones.

They got her up a few ratlines; then came another surge, during which they gripped hard; then there was a second ascent, and so on. The climbing was the easier and the holding on the more difficult, because the mast was depressed to a low angle, its summit being hardly ten feet higher than its base. Even in the top there was a desperate struggle with the sea, and even after Clara was in the sling she was half drowned by the surf.

Meantime the people on shore had made fast the hawser to a tree and manned the halyard. Not a word was uttered by Clara or Thurstane when they parted, for she was speechless with exhaustion and he with anxiety and terror. The moment he let go of her he had to grip a loop of top-hamper and hold on with all his might to save himself from being pitched into the water by a fresh jerk of the mast and a fresh inundation of flying surge. When he could look at her again she was far out on the hawser, rising and falling in quick, violent, perilous swings, caught at by the toppling breakers and howled at by the undertow. Another deluge blinded him; as soon as he could he gazed shoreward again, and shrieked with joy; she was being carefully lifted from the sling; she was saved—if she was not dead.

When the apparatus was hauled back to the top the captain said to Thurstane, "Your turn now."

The young man hesitated, glanced around for Coronado and Garcia, and replied, "Those first."

It was not merely humanity, and not at all good-will toward these two men, which held him back from saving his life first; it was mainly that motto of nobility, that phrase which has such a mighty influence in the army, "An officer and a gentleman." He believed that he would disgrace his profession and himself if he should quit the wreck while any civilian remained upon it.

Coronado, leaving his uncle to the care of a sailor, had already climbed the shrouds, and was now crawling through the lubber hole into the top. For once his hardihood was beaten; he was pale, tremulous and obviously in extreme terror; he clutched at the sling the moment he was pointed to it. With the utmost care, and without even a look of reproach, Thurstane helped secure him in the loops and launched him on his journey. Next came the turn of Garcia. The old man seemed already dead. He was livid, his lips blue, his hands helpless, his voice gone, his eyes glazed and set. It was necessary to knot him into the sling as tightly as if he were a corpse; and when he reached shore it could be seen that he was borne off like a dead weight.

"Now then," said the captain to Thurstane. "We can't go till you do. Passengers first."

Exhausted by his drenchings, and by a kind of labor to which he was not accustomed, the lieutenant obeyed this order, took his place in the sling, nodded good-by to the brave sailors, and was hurled out of the top by a plunge of surf, as a criminal is pushed from the cart by the hangman.

No idea has been given, and no complete idea can be given, of the difficulties, sufferings, and perils of this transit shoreward. Owing to the rising and falling of the mast, the hawser now tautened with a jerk which flung the voyager up against it or even over it, and now drooped in a large bight which let him down into the seethe of water and foam that had just rushed over the vessel, forcing it down on its beam ends. Thurstane was four or five times tossed and as often submerged. The waves, the wind, and the wreck played with him successively or all together. It was an outrage and a torment which surpassed some of the tortures of the Inquisition. First came a quick and breathless plunge; then he was imbedded in the rushing, swirling waters, drumming in his ears and stifling his breath; then he was dragged swiftly upward, the sling turning him out of it. It seemed to him that the breath would depart from his body before the transit was over. When at last he landed and was detached from the cordage, he was so bruised, so nearly drowned, so every way exhausted, that he could not stand. He lay for quite a while motionless, his head swimming, his legs and arms twitching convulsively, every joint and muscle sore, catching his breath with painful gasps, almost fainting, and feeling much as if he were dying.

He had meant to help save the captain and sailors. But there was no more work in him, and he just had strength to walk up to the village, a citizen holding him by either arm. As soon as he could speak so as to be understood, he asked, first in English and then in Spanish, "How is the lady?"

"She is insensible," was the reply—a reply of unmeant cruelty.

Remembering how he had suffered, Thurstane feared lest Clara had received her death-stroke in the slings, and he tottered forward eagerly, saying, "Take me to her."

Arrived at the house where she lay, he insisted upon seeing her, and had his way. He was led into a room; he did not see and could never remember what sort of a room it was; but there she was in bed, her face pale and her eyes closed; he thought she was dead, and he nearly fell. But a pitying womanly voice murmured to him, "She lives," with other words that he did not understand, or could not afterward recall. Trusting that this unconsciousness was a sleep, he suffered himself to be drawn away by helping hands, and presently was himself in a bed, not knowing how he got there.

Meantime the tragedy of the wreck was being acted out. The sling broke once, the sailor who was in it falling into the undertow, and perishing there in spite of a rush of the townspeople. One of the two men who were washed overboard at the first shock was also drowned. The rest escaped, including the heroic captain, who was the last to come ashore.

When Thurstane was again permitted to see Clara, it was, to his great astonishment, the morning of the following day. He had slept like the dead; if any one had sought to awaken him, it would have been almost impossible; there was no strength left in body or spirt but for sleep. Clara's story had been much the same: insensibility, then swoons, then slumber; twelve hours of utter unconsciousness. On waking the first words of each were to ask for the other. Thurstane put on his scarcely dried uniform and hurried to the girl's room. She received him at the door, for she had heard his step although it was on tiptoe, and she knew his knock although as light as the beating of a bird's wing.

It was another of those interviews which cannot be described, and perhaps should not be. They were uninterrupted, for the ladies of the house had learned from Clara that this was her betrothed, and they had woman's sense of the sacredness of such meetings. Presents came, and were not sent in: Coronado called and was not admitted. The two were alone for two hours, and the two hours passed like two minutes. Of course all the ugly past was explained.

"A letter dismissing you!" exclaimed Clara with tears. "Oh! how could you think that I would write such a letter? Never—never! Oh, I never could. My hand should drop off first. I should die in trying to write such wickedness. What! don't you know me better? Don't you know that I am true to you? Oh, how could you believe it of me? My darling, how could you?"

"Forgive me," begged the humbled young fellow, trembling with joy in his humility. "It was weak and wicked in me. I deserved to be punished as I have been. And, oh, I did not deserve this happiness. But, my little girl, how could I help being deceived? There was your handwriting and your signature."

"Ah! I know who it was," broke out Clara. "It has been he all through. He shall pay for this, and for all," she added, her Spanish blood rising in her cheeks, and her soft eyes sparkling angrily for a minute.

"I have saved his life for the last time," returned Thurstane. "I have spared it for the last time. Hereafter—"

"My darling, my darling!" begged Clara, alarmed by his blackening brow. "Oh, my darling, I don't love to see you angry. Just now, when we have just been spared to each other, don't let us be angry. I spoke angrily first. Forgive me."

"Let him keep out of my way," muttered Thurstane, only in part pacified.

"Yes," answered Clara, thinking that she would herself send Coronado off, so that there might be no duel between him and this dear one.

Presently the lover added one thing which he had felt all the time ought to have been said at first.

"The letter—it was right. Although he wrote it, it was right. I have no claim to marry a rich woman, and you have no right to marry a poor man."

He uttered this in profound misery, and yet with a firm resolution. Clara turned pale and stared at him with anxious eyes, her lips parted as though to speak, but saying nothing. Knowing his fastidious sense of honor, she guessed the full force with which this scruple weighed upon him, and she did not know how to drag it off his soul.

"You are worth a million," he went on, in a broken-hearted sort of voice which to us may seem laughable, but which brought the tears into Clara's eyes.

The next instant she brightened; she knew, or thought she knew, that she was not worth a million; so she smiled like a sunburst and caught him gayly by the wrists.

"A million!" she scoffed, laughingly. "Do you believe all Coronado tells you?"

"What! isn't it true?" exclaimed Thurstane, reddening with joy. "Then you are not heir to your grandfather's fortune? It was one of his lies? Oh, my little girl, I am forever happy."

She had not meant all this; but how could she undeceive him? The tempting thought came into her mind that she would marry him while he was in this ignorance, and so relieve him of his noble scruples about taking an heiress. It was one of those white lies which, it seems to us, must fade out of themselves from the record book, without even needing to be blotted by the tear of an angel.

"Are you glad?" she smiled, though anxious at heart, for deception alarmed her. "Really glad to find me poor?"

His only response was to cover her hands, and hair, and forehead with kisses.

At last came the question, When? Clara hesitated; her face and neck bloomed with blushes as dewy as flowers; she looked at him once piteously, and then her gaze fell in beautiful shame.

"When would you like?" she at last found breath to whisper.

"Now—here," was the answer, holding both her hands and begging with his blue-black eyes, as soft then as a woman's.

"Yes, at once," he continued to implore. "It is best everyway. It will save you from persecutions. My love, is it not best?"

Under the circumstances we cannot wonder that this should be just as she desired.

"Yes—it is—best," she murmured, hiding her face against his shoulder. "What you say is true. It will save me trouble."

After a short heaven of silence he added, "I will go and see what is needed. I must find a priest."

As he was departing she caught him; it seemed to her just then that she could not be a wife so soon; but the result was that after another silence and a faint sobbing, she let him go.

Meantime Coronado, that persevering and audacious but unlucky conspirator, was in treble trouble. He was afraid that he would lose Clara; afraid that his plottings had been brought to light, and that he would be punished; afraid that his uncle would die and thus deprive him of all chance of succeeding to any part of the estate of Munoz. Garcia had been brought ashore apparently at his last gasp, and he had not yet come out of his insensibility. For a time Coronado hoped that he was in one of his fits; but after eighteen hours he gave up that feeble consolation; he became terribly anxious about the old man; he felt as though he loved him. The people of Monterey universally admitted that they had never before known such an affectionate nephew and tender-hearted Christian as Coronado.

He tried to see Clara, meaning to make the most with her of Garcia's condition, and hoping that thus he could divert her a little from Thurstane. But somehow all his messages failed; the little house which held her repelled him as if it had been a nunnery; nor could he get a word or even a note from her. The truth is that Clara, fearing lest Coronado should tell more stories about her million to Thurstane, had taken the women of the family into her confidence and easily got them to lay a sly embargo on callers and correspondents.

On the second day Garcia came to himself for a few minutes, and struggled hard to say something to his nephew, but could give forth only a feeble jabber, after which he turned blank again. Coronado, in the extreme of anxiety, now made another effort to get at Clara. Reaching her house, he learned from a bystander that she had gone out to walk with the Americano, and then he thought he discovered them entering the distant church.

He set off at once in pursuit, asking himself with an anxiety which almost made him faint, "Are they to be married?"



CHAPTER XLII.

In those days the hymeneal laws of California were as easy as old shoes, and people could espouse each other about as rapidly as they might want to.

The consequence was that, although Ralph Thurstane and Clara Van Diemen had only been two days in Monterey and had gone through no forms of publication, they were actually being married when Coronado reached the village church.

Leaning against the wall, with eyes as fixed and face as livid as if he were a corpse from the neighboring cemetery, he silently witnessed a ceremony which it would have been useless for him to interrupt, and then, stepping softly out of a side door, lurked away.

He walked a quarter of a mile very fast, ran nearly another quarter of a mile, turned into a by-road, sought its thickest underbrush, threw himself on the ground, and growled. For once he had a heavier burden upon him than he could bear in human presence, or bear quietly anywhere. He must be alone; also he must weep and curse. He was in a state to tear his hair and to beat his head against the earth. Refined as Coronado usually was, admirably as he could imitate the tranquil gentleman of modern civilization, he still had in him enough of the natural man to rave. For a while he was as simple and as violent in his grief as ever was any Celtiberian cave-dweller of the stone age.

Jealousy, disappointed love, disappointed greed, plans balked, labor lost, perils incurred in vain! All the calamities that he could most dread seemed to have fallen upon him together; he was like a man sucked by the arms of a polypus, dying in one moment many deaths. We must, however, do him the justice to believe that the wound which tore the sharpest was that which lacerated his heart. At this time, when he realized that he had altogether and forever lost Clara, he found that he loved her as he had never yet believed himself capable of loving. Considering the nobility of this passion, we must grant some sympathy to Coronado.

Unfortunate as he was, another misfortune awaited him. When he returned to the house where Garcia lay, he found that the old man, his sole relative and sole friend, had expired. To Coronado this dead body was the carcass of all remaining hope. The exciting drama of struggle and expectation which had so violently occupied him for the last six months, and which had seemed to promise such great success, was over. Even if he could have resolved to kill Clara, there was no longer anything to be gained by it, for her money would not descend to Coronado. Even if he should kill Thurstane, that would be a harm rather than a benefit, for his widow would hate Coronado. If he did any evil deed now, it must be from jealousy or from vindictiveness. Was murder of any kind worth while? For the time, whether it were worth while or not, he was furious enough to do it.

If he did not act, he must go; for as everything had miscarried, so much had doubtless been discovered, and he might fairly expect chastisement. While he hesitated a glance into the street showed him something which decided him, and sent him far from Monterey before sundown. Half a dozen armed horsemen, three of them obviously Americans, rode by with a pinioned prisoner, in whom Coronado recognized Texas Smith. He did not stop to learn that his old bravo had committed a murder in the village, and that a vigilance committee had sent a deputation after him to wait upon him into the other world. The sight of that haggard, scarred, wicked face, and the thought of what confessions the brute might be led to if he should recognize his former employer, were enough to make Coronado buy a horse and ride to unknown regions.

Under the circumstances it would perhaps be unreasonable to blame him for leaving his uncle to be buried by Clara and Thurstane.

These two, we easily understand, were not much astonished and not at all grieved by his departure.

"He is gone," said Thurstane, when he learned the fact. "No wonder."

"I am so glad!" replied Clara.

"I suspect him now of being at the bottom of all our troubles."

"Don't let us talk of it, my love. It is too ugly. The present is so beautiful!"

"I must hurry back to San Francisco and try to get a leave of absence," said the husband, turning to pleasanter subjects. "I want full leisure to be happy."

"And you won't let them send you to San Diego?" begged the wife. "No more voyages now. If you do go, I shall go with you."

"Oh no, my child. I can't trust the sea with you again. Not after this," and he waved his hand toward the wreck of the brig.

"Then I will beg myself for your leave of absence."

Thurstane laughed; that would never do; no such condescension in his wife!

They went by land to San Francisco, and Clara kept the secret of her million during the whole journey, letting her husband pay for everything out of his shallow pocket, precisely as if she had no money. Arrived in the city, he left her in a hotel and hurried to headquarters. Two hours later he returned smiling, with the news that a brother officer had volunteered to take his detail, and that he had obtained a honeymoon leave of absence for thirty days.

"Barclay is a trump," he said. "It is all the prettier in him to go that he has a wife of his own. The commandant made no objection to the exchange. In fact the old fellow behaved like a father to me, shook hands, patted me on the shoulder, congratulated me, and all that sort of thing. Old boy, married himself, and very fond of his family. Upon my word, it seems to better a man's heart to marry him."

"Of course it does," chimed in Clara. "He is so much happier that of course he is better."

"Well, my little princess, where shall we go?"

"Go first to see Aunt Maria. There! don't make a face. She is very good in the long run. She will be sweet enough to you in three days."

"Of course I will go. Where is she?"

"Boarding at a hacienda a few miles from town. We can take horses, canter out there, and pass the night."

She was full of spirits; laughed and chattered all the way; laughed at everything that was said; chattered like a pleased child. Of course she was thinking of the surprise that she would give him, and how she had circumvented his sense of honor about marrying a rich girl, and how hard and fast she had him. Moreover the contrast between her joyous present and her anxious past was alone enough to make her run over with gayety. All her troubles had vanished in a pack; she had gone at one bound from purgatory to paradise.

At the hacienda Thurstane was a little struck by the respect with which the servants received Clara; but as she signed to them to be silent, not a word was uttered which could give him a suspicion of the situation. Mrs. Stanley, moreover, was taking a siesta, and so there was another tell-tale mouth shut.

"Nobody seems to be at home," said Clara, bursting into a merry laugh over her trick as they entered the house. "Where can the master and mistress be?"

They were now in a large and handsomely furnished room, which was the parlor of the hacienda.

"Don't sit down," cried Clara, her eyes sparkling with joy. "Stand just there as you are. Let me look at you a moment. Wait till I tell you something."

She fronted him for a few seconds, watching his wondering face, hesitating, blushing, and laughing. Suddenly she bounded forward, threw her arms around his shoulders and cried excitedly, hysterically, "My love! my husband! all this is yours. Oh, how happy I am!"

The next moment she burst into tears on the shoulder to which she was clinging.

"What is the matter?" demanded Thurstane in some alarm; for he did not know that women can tremble and weep with gladness, and he thought that surely his wife was sick if not deranged.

"What! don't you guess it?" she asked, drawing back with a little more calmness, and looking tenderly into his puzzled eyes.

"You don't mean—?"

"Yes, darling."

"It can't be that—?"

"Yes, darling."

He began to comprehend the trick that had been played upon him, although as yet he could not fully credit it. What mainly bewildered him was that Clara, whom he had always supposed to be as artless as a child—Clara, whom he had cared for as an elder and a father—should have been able to keep a secret and devise a plot and carry out a mystification.

"Great —— Scott!" he gasped in his stupefaction, using the name of the then commander-in-chief for an oath, as officers sometimes did in those days.

"Yes, yes, yes," laughed and chattered Clara. "Great Scott and great Thurstane! All yours. Three hundred thousand. Half a million. A million. I don't know how much. All I know is that it is all yours. Oh, my darling! oh, my darling! How I have fooled you! Are you angry with me? Say, are you angry? What will you do to me?"

We must excuse Thurstane for finding no other chastisement than to squeeze her in his arms and choke her with kisses. Next he held her from him, set her down upon a sofa, fell back a pace and stared at her much as if she were a totally new discovery, something in the way of an arrival from the moon. He was in a state of profound amazement at the dexterity with which she had taken his destiny out of his own hands into hers, without his knowledge. He had not supposed that she was a tenth part so clever. For the first time he perceived that she was his match, if indeed she were not the superior nature; and it is a remarkable fact, though not a dark one if one looks well into it, that he respected her the more for being too much for him.

"It beats Hannibal," he said at last. "Who would have expected such generalship in you? I am as much astonished as if you had turned into a knight in armor. Well, how much it has saved me! I should have hesitated and been miserable; and I should have married you all the same; and then been ashamed of marrying money, and had it rankle in me for years. And now—oh, you wise little thing!—all I can say is, I worship you."

"Yes, darling," replied Clara, walking gravely up to him, putting her hands on his shoulders, and looking him thoughtfully in the eyes. "It was the wisest thing I ever did. Don't be afraid of me. I never shall be so clever again. I never shall be so tempted to be clever."

We must pass over a few months. Thurstane soon found that he had the Munoz estate in his hands, and that, for the while at least, it demanded all his time and industry. Moreover, there being no war and no chance of martial distinction, it seemed absurd to let himself be ordered about from one hot and cramped station to another, when he had money enough to build a palace, and a wife who could make it a paradise. Finally, he had a taste for the natural sciences, and his observations in the Great Canon and among the other marvels of the desert had quickened this inclination to a passion, so that he craved leisure for the study of geology, mineralogy, and chemistry. He resigned his commission, established himself in San Francisco, bought all the scientific books he could hear of, made expeditions to the California mountains, collected garrets full of specimens, and was as happy as a physicist always is.

Perhaps his happiness was just a little increased when Mrs. Stanley announced her intention of returning to New York. The lady had been amiable on the whole, as she meant always to be; but she could not help daily taking up her parable concerning the tyranny and stupidity of man and the superior virtue of woman; and sometimes she felt it her duty to put it to Thurstane that he owed everything to his wife; all of which was more or less wearing, even to her niece. At the same time she was such a disinterested, well-intentioned creature that it was impossible not to grant her a certain amount of admiration. For instance, when Clara proposed to make her comfortable for life by settling upon her fifty thousand dollars, she replied peremptorily that it was far too much for an old woman who had decided to turn her back on the frivolities of society, and she could with difficulty be brought to accept twenty thousand.

Furthermore, she was capable, that is, in certain favored moments, of confessing error. "My dear," she said to Clara, some weeks after the marriage, "I have made one great mistake since I came to these countries. I believed that Mr. Coronado was the right man and Mr. Thurstane the wrong one. Oh, that smooth-tongued, shiny-eyed, meeching, bowing, complimenting hypocrite! I see at last what a villain he was. I see it," she emphasized, as if nobody else had discovered it. "To think that a person who was so right on the main question [female suffrage] could be so wrong on everything else! The contradiction adds to his guilt. Well, I have had my lesson. Every one must make her mistake. I shall never be so humbugged again."

Some little time after Thurstane had received the acceptance of his resignation and established himself in his handsome city house, Aunt Maria observed abruptly, "My dears, I must go back."

"Go back where? To the desert and turn hermit?" asked Clara, who was accustomed to joke her relative about "spheres and missions."

"To New York," replied Mrs. Stanley. "I can accomplish nothing here. This miserable Legislature will take no notice of my petitions for female suffrage."

"Oh, that is because you sign them alone," laughed the younger lady.

"I can't get anybody else to sign them," said Aunt Maria with some asperity. "And what if I do sign them alone? A house full of men ought to have gallantry enough to grant one lady's request. California is not ripe for any great and noble measure. I can't remain where I find so little sympathy and collaboration. I must go where I can be of use. It is my duty."

And go she did. But before she shook off her dust against the Pacific coast there was an interview with an old acquaintance.

It must be understood that the fatigues and sufferings of that terrible pilgrimage through the desert had bothered the constitution of little Sweeny, and that, after lying in garrison hospital at San Francisco for several months, he had been discharged from the service on "certificate of physical disability." Thurstane, who had kept track of him, immediately took him to his house, first as an invalid hanger-on, and then as a jack of all work.

As the family were sitting at breakfast Sweeny's voice was heard in the veranda outside, "colloguing" with another voice which seemed familiar.

"Listen," whispered Clara. "That is Captain Glover. Let us hear what they say. They are both so queer!"

"An' what" ("fwat" he pronounced it) "the divil have ye been up to?" demanded Sweeny. "Ye're a purty sailor, buttoned up in a long-tail coat, wid a white hankerchy round yer neck. Have ye been foolin' paple wid makin' 'em think ye're a Protestant praste?"

"I've been blowin' glass, Sweeny," replied the sniffling voice of Phineas Glover.

"Blowin' glass! Och, yees was always powerful at blowin'. But I niver heerd ye blow glass. It was big lies mostly whin I was a listing."

"Yes, blowin' glass," returned the Fair Havener in a tone of agreeable reminiscence, as if it had been a not unprofitable occupation. "Found there wasn't a glass-blower in all Californy. Bought 'n old machine, put up to the mines with it, blew all sorts 'f jigmarigs 'n' thingumbobs, 'n' sold 'em to the miners 'n' Injuns. Them critters is jest like sailors ashore; they'll buy anything they set eyes on. Besides, I sounded my horn; advertised big, so to speak; got up a sensation. Used to mount a stump 'n' make a speech; told 'em I'd blow Yankee Doodle in glass, any color they wanted; give 'em that sort 'f gospel, ye know."

"An' could ye do it?" inquired the Paddy, confounded by the idea of blowing a glass tune.

"Lord, Sweeny! you're greener 'n the miners. When ye swaller things that way, don't laugh 'r ye'll choke yerself to death, like the elephant did when he read the comic almanac at breakfast."

"I don't belave that nuther," asseverated Sweeny, anxious to clear himself from the charge of credulity.

"Don't believe that!" exclaimed Glover. "He did it twice."

"Och, go way wid ye. He couldn't choke himself afther he was dead. I wouldn't belave it, not if I see him turn black in the face. It's yerself'll get choked some day if yees don't quit blatherin'. But what did ye get for yer blowin'? Any more'n the clothes ye're got to yer back?"

For answer Glover dipped into his pockets, took out two handfuls of gold pieces and chinked them under the Irishman's nose.

"Blazes! ye're lousy wid money," commented Sweeny. "Ye want somebody to scratch yees."

"Twenty thousan' dollars in bank," added Glover. "All by blowin' 'n' tradin'. Goin' hum in the next steamer. Anythin' I can do for ye, old messmate? Say how much."

"It's the liftinant is takin' care av me. He's made a betther livin' nor yees, a thousand times over, by jist marryin' the right leddy. An' he's going to put me in charrge av a farrum that they call the hayshindy, where I'll sell the cattle for myself, wid half to him, an' make slathers o' money."

"Thunder, Sweeny! You'll end by ridin' in a coach. What'll ye take for yer chances? Wal, I'm glad to hear ye're doin' so well. I am so, for old times' sake."

"Come in, Captain Glover," at this moment called Clara through the blinds. "Come in, Sweeny. Let us all have a talk together about the old times and the new ones."

So there was a long talk, miscellaneous and delightful, full of reminiscences and congratulations and good wishes.

"Wal, we're a lucky lot," said Glover at last. "Sh'd like to hear 'f some good news for the sergeant and Mr. Kelly. Sh'd go back hum easier for it."

"Kelly is first sergeant," stated Thurstane, "and Meyer is quartermaster-sergeant, with a good chance of being quartermaster. He is capable of it and deserves it. He ought to have been promoted years ago for his gallantry and services during the war. I hope every day to hear that he has got his commission as lieutenant."

"Wal, God bless 'em, 'n' God bless the hull army!" said Glover, so gratified that he felt pious. "An' now, good-by. Got to be movin'."

"Stay over night with us," urged Thurstane. "Stay a week. Stay as long as you will."

"Do," begged Clara. "You can go geologizing with my husband. You can start Sweeny on his farm."

"Och, he's a thousin' times welkim," put in Sweeny, "though I'm afeard av him. He'd tache the cattle to trade their skins wid ache other, an slather me wid lies till I wouldn't know which was the baste an' which was Sweeny."

Glover grinned with an air of being flattered, but replied, "Like to stay first rate, but can't work it. Passage engaged for to-morrow mornin'."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Aunt Maria, agreeably surprised by an idea.

And the result was that she went to New York under the care of Captain Glover.

As for Clara and Thurstane, they are surely in a state which ought to satisfy their friends, and we will therefore say no more of them.

THE END