Soon the rescued and rescuer were safe on board. There was talk among the officers of court-martials and executions, with the outcome, that, after much persuasion on the part of the young lieutenant, the commander granted his request that the leader be pardoned pending his good behavior.
The troops were not again recalcitrant.
From the swamps and the heat of the Philippines Captain Mendoza—for he had been promoted—returned to Europe. Events which shook the world were stirring there. As an eagle flies to the rescue of its eyrie so hastened the descendant of the valiant Mendozas to the Spain of his fathers, to do battle for its safety.
The figure of Napoleon loomed ominously against Europe's peace. His ambitious hand was reaching for the crown of Spain, as, indeed, for all other crowns.
Into the awful carnage plunged Mendoza. A hundred blows he struck at the terrible Corsican, even though, often enough, the recoil threw him and his command reeling backward in defeat. Nevertheless, did he right nobly add honor and renown to the spotless banner of his house.
Only when Napoleon was exiled to Elba did he leave the field. Then, in command of his regiment, as colonel, he returned to Madrid.
His elder brother, rich in titles and wealth, influential at the Cortes, united his personal petition with the strong voice of the colonel's service in the field, to obtain for the younger man place and emolument.
The vast region of Alta California was then coming into great and favorable notice. Need there would surely be, in the Californias, of men of mettle and of wisdom to hold that province and its riches secure to Spanish rule.
Accordingly, large parcels of land in the valley of Santa Clara, fairest and most fertile in all that western Eden, California, were conferred by letters-patent on the soldier, Mendoza.
He loved a lady fair—Romalda. What man of his family had not? Every knight of La Mancha had his Dulcinea, and Jesus Maria y José was true to his descent, even to the very finger-tips. The old crusader Mendozas, whose faces were carved in marble or painted on canvas in the ancestral home in Castile, had not been more chivalrous and romantic than was this now famous colonel.