"And the Yankee commodore flies his flag over Monterey, appending the province to Yankeedom. Blast it all! I'd give a kingdom——" He paused.
"'For a horse,' does your Shakespeare say?" smiling a little. "There is only one thing left. If the mountain does not come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain."
"Señora, put out in a small boat to the flagship, you mean? It would be futile, and surely end in death. Now, let us go to the top of the hill."
A bluff thickly wooded with scrub oak had sheltered them. Their sure-footed horses nimbly climbed a precipitous path zigzagging to the summit.
"See, señora. Look, if you can."
They were on Point Lobos crest, overhanging San Francisco Bay, with Yerba Buena village straggling along the harbor line.
Grit and sand whistled through the air, biting the skin, choking the throat and stinging the eyes. With arched backs and drooping heads their mounts met the storm. A hundred invisible angry hands buffeted the man and woman thus inquisitively breasting the humor of the elements.
The wind lessened, as wearied by too great exertion. The spiteful sand-drive ceased. Dimly at first, then plainly, yellow dunes hummocked into sight. Speaking the fury of a half hemisphere of water rose the crescendo of the surf.
Through the thinning haze they peered toward the west. There was the sea. Miles away, under bare poles, save here and there a strip of canvas, struggled the English fleet, each ship face to the gale, the spyglass showed them, now rising on beam end; now sliding prow downward; then teetering and dancing.
"Señora, Fairbanks dares not enter the harbor. It is equally impossible for me to get out to him. The storm is rising again. We must return to the village."