“Go and dispatch them, Orondo. I trust thee to lay the lash on them lightly. Go, thou, also, Setos, to see that they get the regulation stripes before setting forth.”
The Dorado picked up the parchments signed and sealed earlier in the day, and locking them in a strong box of curious design, dismissed the two courtiers with a nod and a smile.
“I pray thee return quickly. Alcamayn needs advice from thee respecting thy special departments of service.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE TEMPLE OF LOVE IN THE LAND OF FIRE
The watchers on the top of Mount Diablo looked anxiously for sunrise the morning Yermah and his followers rowed slowly across San Francisco Bay, hugging the shorelines until the mouth of the Sacramento River was reached.
Four times in the year the early visitor to Mount Diablo sees the “Shadow of the Devil” cast a triangular outline against its grizzled peak. The contacts last but a second and fade like a breath of mist from a looking-glass.
All of the cluster of piny hills which surrounds Diablo like brilliants around a stone of the first water are still in darkness, and the two large valleys at either side seem an indistinct blur, when the heavy, phantom-like shadow is thrown on the scene, slantingly, clear, and sudden.
On the right side of the mountain, the light nearest the black line that accentuates the shadow is palest yellow, shading gradually into green, until it is lost in the yellow-brown of the hills. To the left the line is reddish, and the shadow blue-black.
That the triangle shaped itself perfectly, and gave good omen of the enterprise in hand, was evident from the excitement among the men whose duty it was to signal the good news to the Observatory tower in Tlamco, and also to the fleet in the bay and river.
Without mishap or deterrent incident the expedition found its way up the river past the bog-rushes, or tules, which gossip among themselves throughout the year. Occasionally the cry of a lone bittern or loon warned the invaders of a priority of claim upon the sustenance hidden by the murky waters or along the grassy banks.