Rezanov Part 7

"Madre de Dios! The water! I cannot!" she muttered. But Santiago took her firmly by one elbow, Sturgis by the other, Davidov caught up the children with a rea.s.suring laugh, and in a moment she was trembling in the middle of the canoe. Concha had already leaped into the second and waved a careless little salutation to the Juno. Her eyes sparkled.

Her nostrils fluttered. She felt indifferent to everything but the certain pleasure of the day. Rezanov was sure to be charming. What mattered the morrow, and possible nights of doubt, despair, hatred of life and wondering self-contempt?

Rezanov awaited the canoes in the prow of the ship. He wore undress uniform and a cap instead of the c.o.c.ked hat of ceremony which had excited their awe. He too tingled with a sense of youthful gaiety and adventure. As he helped his guests up the side of the vessel and listened to the delightful laughter of the girls, saw the dancing eyes of even the haughty and reserved Santiago, he also dismissed the morrow from his thoughts.

As Dona Ignacia was hauled to the deck, uttering embarra.s.sed apologies for bringing the two little girls, Rezanov protested that he adored children, patted their heads and told off a young sailor to amuse them.

Four tables on the deck were set with coffee, chocolate, Russian tea, and strange sweets that the cook had fashioned from ingredients to which his skilful fingers had long been strangers.

Dona Ignacia sat beside the host, and when she had tried both the tea and the coffee and had demanded the recipe of the sweets, he said casually: "After breakfast I shall ask you to go down to the cabin for a few moments. I bought the cargo with the Juno, and find there are several articles which I shall beg as a great favor to present to my kindest hostesses and the young girls she has been good enough to bring to my ship. Shawls and ells of cotton and all that sort of thing are of no use to a bachelor, and I hope you will rid me of some of them."

Dona Ignacia lost all interest in the breakfast, and presently, murmuring an excuse, was escorted by Langsdorff down to the cabin.

When the light repast was over, Rezanov made a signal to several sailors who awaited commands, and they sprang to the anchor and sails.

"We are going to have a cruise," announced the host to his guests.

"The bay is very smooth, there is a fine breeze, we shall neither be becalmed nor otherwise the sport of inclement waters. I know that most of you have never seen this beautiful bay and that you will enjoy its scenery as much as I shall."

He moved to Concha's side and dropped his voice. "This is for you, senorita," he said. "You want change, variety, and I have planned to give you all that I can in one day. I expect you to be happy."

"I shall be," she said dryly, "if only in watching a diplomat get his way. You will see every corner of our bay, and I shall have the delightful sensation of doing something for which I cannot be held responsible."

He laughed. "I am quite willing that you should understand me," he said. "But it is true that I thought as much of you as of myself."

In a few moments the ship was under way. Santiago and Sturgis had gone down to the cabin to rea.s.sure Dona Ignacia, who uttered a loud cry as the Juno gave a preliminary lurch. Gervasio and Rivera had opened their eyes as Rezanov abruptly unfolded his plan, but dropped them sleepily before the delight of the girls. After all, it was none of their affair, and what was a bay? If they requested him, as a point of honor, to refrain from examining the battery of Yerba Buena with his gla.s.s, their consciences would be as light as their hearts.

As Rezanov stood alone with Concha in the prow of the ship and alternately cast softened eyes on her intense, rapt face, and shrewd glances on the ramifications of the bay, he congratulated himself upon his precipitate action and the collusion of nature. They were sailing east, and would turn to the north in a moment. The mountain range bent abruptly at the entrance to the bay, encircling the immense sheet of water in a chain of every alt.i.tude and form: a long hard undulating line against the bright blue sky; smooth and dimpled slopes as round as cones, bare but for the green of their gra.s.ses; lofty ridges tapering to hills in the curve at the north but with blue peaks multiplying beyond. There were dense forests in deep canyons on the mountainside, bare and jagged heights, the graceful sweep of valleys, promontories leaping out from the mainland like mammoth crocodiles guarding the bay.

The view of the main waters was broken by the largest of the islands, but far away were the hills of the east and the soft blue peaks behind.

And over all, hills and valley and canyon and mountain, was a bright opalescent mist. Green, pink, and other pale colors gleamed as behind a thin layer of crystal. Where the sun shone through a low white cloud upon a distant slope there might have been a great globe of iridescent gla.s.s illuminated within. The water was a light, soft, filmy yet translucent blue. Concha gazed with parted lips.

"I never knew before how wonderful it was," she murmured. "I have been taught to believe that only the south is beautiful, and when we had to come here again from Santa Barbara it was exile. But now I am glad I was born in the north."

"I have watched the light on these hills and islands, and what I could see of the fine lines of the mountains ever since I came, and were there but villas and castles, these waters would be far more beautiful than the Lake of Como or the Bay of Naples. But I am glad to see trees again. From our anchorage I had but a bare glimpse of two or three.

They seem to hide from the western winds. Are they so strong, then?"

"We have terrible winds, senor. I do not wonder the trees crouch to the east. But I must tell you our names." She pointed to the largest of the islands, a great bare ma.s.s that looked as had it been, when viscid, flung out in long folds from a central peak, concaving here and there with its own weight. Its southern point was on a line with a point of mainland far to the west, and its northern, from their vantage looking to be but a continuation of the curve of the mainland, finished an arc of almost perfect proportions, whose deep curve was a tumbled ma.s.s of hills and one great mountain. "That is Nuestra Senora de los Angeles, and it opens a triple jaw, Luis has told me, at Point Tiburon--you will soon see the straits between. The big rock over there is Alcatraz, and farther away still is Yerba Buena--that looks like a camel on its knees."

But Rezanov was examining the scene before him. The lines of this bay within a bay were superb, and in its wide embrace, slanting from Point Tiburon toward an inner point two miles opposite was another island, as steep as Alcatraz, but long and waving of outline, with a glimpse of trees on its crest. Rezanov, while he lost nothing of the picturesque beauty surrounding him, was more deeply interested in noting the many foundations, sheltered and solid, for fortifications that would hold these rich lands against the fleets of the world. Never had he seen so many strategic advantages on one sheet of water. The islands farther south he had examined through his gla.s.s from the deck of the Juno until he knew every convolution they turned to the west.

Concha was directing his attention to the tremendous angular peak rising above the tumbled hills. "That is Mount Tamalpais--the mountain of peace. It was named by the Indians, not by us. Sometimes it is like a great purple shadow, and at others the clouds fight about it like the ghosts of big sea gulls." They were sailing past the rounded end of the western inner point of the little bay. It was almost detached from the bare ridge behind and half covered with oaks and willow trees. "That is Point Sausalito. I have often looked at it through the gla.s.s and longed for a merienda in the deep shade." She turned to Rezanov with lips apart. "Could we not--oh, senor!--have our dinner on sh.o.r.e?"

"It is only for you to select the spot. We can sail many miles before it is time for dinner, and you may find a place even more to your liking. I fancy we can not go far here. It looks swampy and shallow.

Nothing could be less romantic than to stick in the mud."

"May I ask," said Concha demurely, "how you dare to run the risks of an unknown sheet of water? I have heard it said that there is more than one rock and shoal in this bay."

"I am not as rash as I may appear," replied Rezanov dryly, but smiling.

"In 1789 there was a chart of this bay, taken from a Spanish MSS., published in London; and I bought it there when I ran up from the Nadeshda--anch.o.r.ed at Falmouth--three years ago. Davidov, who, you may observe, is steering, oblivious to the charms of even Dona Carolina, knows every sounding by heart."

"Oh!" Concha shrugged her shoulders. "The Governor, too, is very clever. It will be a drawn battle. Perhaps I shall remain neutral after all. It would be more amusing." The ship was turning, and she waved her hand to the island between the deep arc of the hilly coast.

"I have heard so much of the beauty of that island," she said, "that I have called it La Bellissima, but I never hoped to see anything but the back of its head, from which the wind has blown all the hair. And now I shall. How kind of you, senor!"

"How easily you are made happy!" he said, with a sigh. "You look like a child."

"To-day I shall be one; and you the kind fairy G.o.d-father," she added, with some malice. "How old are you, senor?"

"Forty-two."

"That is twenty-six years older than myself. But your excellency might pa.s.s for thirty-five," she added politely. "We have all said it. And now that you are not so pale you will soon look younger--and even more triumphant than when you came."

"I have never felt so triumphant as on this morning, dear senorita. I had not hoped to give you so much pleasure."

Her cheeks were as pink as her reboso, her great black eyes were dancing. Her hands strained at the railing. "I shall see La Bellissima! La Bellissima!" she cried.

They rounded the low broken point of the island, sailed through the racing currents between the lower end of La Bellissima and "Our Lady of the Angels," more slowly past what looked to be a perpendicular forest.

From water to crest the gulches and converging spurs of this hillside in the sea were a dense ma.s.s of oaks, bays, underbrush; here and there a tall slender tree with a bark like red kid and a flirting polished leaf, at which Concha clapped her hands as at sight of an old friend and called "El Madrono." It was a primeval bit of nature, but sweet and silent and peaceful; there was no suggestion either of gloom or of discourteous beast.

"We shall have our dinner here, Excellency. There on that little beach; and afterward we shall climb to the top. See, there are trails! The Indians have been here."

They stood out through the straits between Point Tiburon and the Isle of the Angels, where the tide ran fast. Then, for the first time, was Rezanov able to form a definite idea of the size and shape of this great natural harbor. To the south it extended beyond the peninsula in an unbroken sheet for some forty English miles. Ten miles to the north there was a gateway between the lower hills which Luis had alluded to as leading into the bay of Saint Pablo, another large body of tidewater, but inferior in depth and beauty to the Bay of San Francisco.

The mist had dissolved. The greens were vivid where the sun shone on island and hill. The woods of Bellissima, the groves of Point Sausalito, the forests in the northern canyons, deepened to purple like that of the great bare sweep of Tamalpais. Only the farther peaks remained a pale misty blue, and were of an indescribable floating delicacy.

Concha pointed to the eastern double cone. "That is Monte del Diablo.

Once they say it spouted fire, but that was long ago, and all our volcanoes are dead. But perhaps not so long ago. The Indians tell the strange story that their grandfathers remembered when this bay was a valley covered with oak trees, and the rivers of the north flowed through and emptied into Lake Merced and a rift by the Fort. Then came a tremendous earthquake and rent the mountains apart where you came through--we call it the Mouth of the Gulf of the Farallones--the valley sank, the sea flowed in, only these hills that are islands now keeping their heads above the flood. Perhaps it is true, for Drake was close to this bay for a long while and never saw it, and it would have given him a better shelter than the little harbor he found a few miles higher on the coast. I believe it was not here. Madre de Dios, I hope California shakes no more. She would--is it not true, Excellency?--be the most perfect country in all the world did she not have the devil in her."

"Are you afraid of earthquakes?" asked Rezanov, who once more had transferred his comprehensive gaze from battery sites to her face.

"I cross myself. It is like feeling your grave turn over. But I fancy the poor old earth is like the people on her; she gets tired of being good and is all the naughtier for having been sober too long. Don Vincente Rivera is an example; he is cold, haughty, solemn, stern to others and himself, as you see him; but once in a while--Madre de Dios!

The Presidio does not sleep for three nights!"

Rezanov laughed heartily, then turned abruptly away. "Come," he said.

"I had almost forgotten. Will you ask the others to go to the cabin, while I give orders that dinner shall be served on your island?"

In the cabin, Concha forgot him for a few moments. Her mother, her eyes dwelling fondly upon several shawls she hoped were intended for herself alone, was hushing the baby to sleep in the deep chair of his excellency. Ana Paula was playing with an Alaskan doll she had appropriated without ceremony. Rezanov came in when his guests were a.s.sembled, and he had a gift for each; curious objects of Alaskan workmanship for the men, miniature totem poles and fur-bordered moccasins; but silk and cotton, linen, shawls, and find handkerchiefs for senora and maiden.

"They are trifles," he said, in response to an enthusiastic chorus.

"The cargo I was obliged to take over was a very large one. You must not protest. I shall never miss these things." And he knew that he had sown the seeds of a rapacity similar to that implanted in the worthy bosoms of the priests when they had paid him their promised visit. If the Governor were insensible to diplomacy he would have pressure brought to bear upon his official integrity from more quarters than one.

"There are also many of the presents rejected by the Mikado, somewhere," he added carelessly. "But I could not find them. They must have found their way to the bottom of the hold during one of the storms we encountered on our way from Sitka."

He certainly looked the fairy G.o.dfather, and quite impartial as he distributed his offerings with a chosen word to each; his memory for little characteristics was as remarkable as for names and faces. He had taken off his cap on deck, and the breeze had ruffled his thick fair hair, brought the blood to his thin cheeks. The lines of his face, cut by privation and anxiety and illness, had almost disappeared with the renewed elasticity of the flesh, and his blue eyes were wide open, and sparkling in sympathy with the pleasure of his guests and the success of his own strategy. These few insignificant Spaniards dislodged, a half-dozen forts in this harbor, and the combined navies of the world might be defied; while a great chain of hungry settlements fattened and prospered exceedingly on the beneficence of the most fertile land in all the Americas.

XII

The eastern mountains looked very close from the crest of La Bellissima and of a singular transparency and variety of hue. It was as if the white ma.s.ses of cloud sailing low overhead flung down great splashes of color from prismatic stores stolen from the sun. There was a vivid pale green on the long sweep of a rounding slope, deep violet and pale purple in dimple and hollow, red showing through green on a tongue of land running down from the north; and on the lower ridges and little islands, pale and dark blue, and the most exquisite fields of lavender.

This last tint was reflected in the water immediately below the ridge, and farther out there were lakelets of pale green, as if the islands, too, had the power to mirror themselves when the sea itself was gla.s.s.

Santiago, Davidov, Carolina Xime'no, Delfina Rivera, Concha and Rezanov, had climbed to the ridge. The other young people had given out halfway up the steep and tangled ascent and returned to the beach.