"Is what I say not true, my Commodore?"
"Oregon is ours, my lady, by occupation. Doctor Whitman and his missionaries live in that country; are Christianizing the Indians, and drawing settlers from beyond the Mississippi. Oregon is ours, I say, by right of occupation."
"A hundred years before your Whitman saw light missionaries from French Canada lived among those same tribes. England succeeded to the rights of France. Oregon, then, is England's by this right of occupation of which you speak."
"But, the rifles of the American settlers in Oregon! They will speak, and speak strongly, my lady."
"But the rifles of the Spanish hacenderos in California, my Commodore! Can they not speak? Commodore Billings, a shot in California will echo around the world!"
She leaned toward him and placed her hand on the arm of his chair. "A few months ago I saw Doctor McLoughlin, head of the Hudson Bay Company, at Vancouver. He knows of the work of your missionary Whitman. My Commodore, twenty British ships-of-war are in the Pacific waters. I saw them, one and all, on my journey to the North. They are not far from here."
"So many, Señora Valentino?"
"That many."
"I did not think Admiral Fairbanks——"
She waited for him to continue. As he did not she went on: