Bret Harte
Under the Redwoods
A week of ominous silence regarding the festival succeeded in Santa Ana. The local paper gave the fullest particulars of the opening of the hotel, but contented itself with saying: “The entertainment concluded with a dance.” Mr. Brooks, who felt himself compelled to call upon his late charming partner twice during the week, characteristically soothed her anxieties as to the result. “The fact of it is, Mrs. Wade, there’s really nobody in particular to blame—and that’s what gets them. They’re all mixed up in it, deacons and Sunday-school teachers; and when old Johnson tried to be nasty the other evening and hoped you hadn’t suffered from your exertions that night, I told him you hadn’t quite recovered yet from the physical shock of having been run into by him and Mrs. Stubbs, but that, you being a lady, you didn’t tell just how you felt at the exhibition he and she made of themselves. That shut him up.”
“But you shouldn’t have said that,” said Mrs. Wade with a frightened little smile.
“No matter,” returned Brooks cheerfully. “I’ll take the blame of it with the others. You see they’ll have to have a scapegoat—and I’m just the man, for I got up the dance! And as I’m going away, I suppose I shall bear off the sin with me into the wilderness.”
“You’re going away?” repeated Mrs. Wade in more genuine concern.
“Not for long,” returned Brooks laughingly. “I came here to look up a mill site, and I’ve found it. Meantime I think I’ve opened their eyes.”
“You have opened mine,” said the widow with timid frankness.
They were soft pretty eyes when opened, in spite of their heavy red lids, and Mr. Brooks thought that Santa Ana would be no worse if they remained open. Possibly he looked it, for Mrs. Wade said hurriedly, “I mean—that is—I’ve been thinking that life needn’t ALWAYS be as gloomy as we make it here. And even HERE, you know, Mr. Brooks, we have six months’ sunshine—though we always forget it in the rainy season.”
“That’s so,” said Brooks cheerfully. “I once lost a heap of money through my own foolishness, and I’ve managed to forget it, and I even reckon to get it back again out of Santa Ana if my mill speculation holds good. So good-by, Mrs. Wade—but not for long.” He shook her hand frankly and departed, leaving the widow conscious of a certain sympathetic confidence and a little grateful for—she knew not what.
This feeling remained with her most of the afternoon, and even imparted a certain gayety to her spirits, to the extent of causing her to hum softly to herself; the air being oddly enough the Julien Waltz. And when, later in the day, the shadows were closing in with the rain, word was brought to her that a stranger wished to see her in the sitting-room, she carried a less mournful mind to this function of her existence. For Mrs. Wade was accustomed to give audience to traveling agents, tradesmen, working-hands and servants, as chatelaine of her ranch, and the occasion was not novel. Yet on entering the room, which she used partly as an office, she found some difficulty in classifying the stranger, who at first glance reminded her of the tramping miner she had seen that night from her window. He was rather incongruously dressed, some articles of his apparel being finer than others; he wore a diamond pin in a scarf folded over a rough “hickory” shirt; his light trousers were tucked in common mining boots that bore stains of travel and a suggestion that he had slept in his clothes. What she could see of his unshaven face in that uncertain light expressed a kind of dogged concentration, overlaid by an assumption of ease. He got up as she came in, and with a slight “How do, ma’am,” shut the door behind her and glanced furtively around the room.
“What I’ve got to say to ye, Mrs. Wade,—as I reckon you be,—is strictly private and confidential! Why, ye’ll see afore I get through. But I thought I might just as well caution ye agin our being disturbed.”
Overcoming a slight instinct of repulsion, Mrs. Wade returned, “You can speak to me here; no one will interrupt you—unless I call them,” she added with a little feminine caution.
“And I reckon ye won’t do that,” he said with a grim smile. “You are the widow o’ Pulaski Wade, late o’ Heavy Tree Hill, I reckon?”
“I am,” said Mrs. Wade.
“And your husband’s buried up thar in the graveyard, with a monument over him setting forth his virtues ez a Christian and a square man and a high-minded citizen? And that he was foully murdered by highwaymen?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Wade, “that is the inscription.”
“Well, ma’am, a bigger pack o’ lies never was cut on stone!”
Mrs. Wade rose, half in indignation, half in terror.
“Keep your sittin’,” said the stranger, with a warning wave of his hand. “Wait till I’m through, and then you call in the hull State o’ Californy, ef ye want.”
The stranger’s manner was so doggedly confident that Mrs. Wade sank back tremblingly in her chair. The man put his slouch hat on his knee, twirled it round once or twice, and then said with the same stubborn deliberation:—
“The highwayman in that business was your husband—Pulaski Wade—and his gang, and he was killed by one o’ the men he was robbin’. Ye see, ma’am, it used to be your husband’s little game to rope in three or four strangers in a poker deal at Spanish Jim’s saloon—I see you’ve heard o’ the place,” he interpolated as Mrs. Wade drew back suddenly—“and when he couldn’t clean ‘em out in that way, or they showed a little more money than they played, he’d lay for ‘em with his gang in a lone part of the trail, and go through them like any road agent. That’s what he did that night—and that’s how he got killed.”
“How do you know this?” said Mrs. Wade, with quivering lips.
“I was one o’ the men he went through before he was killed. And I’d hev got my money back, but the rest o’ the gang came up, and I got away jest in time to save my life and nothin’ else. Ye might remember thar was one man got away and giv’ the alarm, but he was goin’ on to the States by the overland coach that night and couldn’t stay to be a witness. I was that man. I had paid my passage through, and I couldn’t lose THAT too with my other money, so I went.”
Mrs. Wade sat stunned. She remembered the missing witness, and how she had longed to see the man who was last with her husband; she remembered Spanish Jim’s saloon—his well-known haunt; his frequent and unaccountable absences, the sudden influx of money which he always said he had won at cards; the diamond ring he had given her as the result of “a bet;” the forgotten recurrence of other robberies by a secret masked gang; a hundred other things that had worried her, instinctively, vaguely. She knew now, too, the meaning of the unrest that had driven her from Heavy Tree Hill—the strange unformulated fears that had haunted her even here. Yet with all this she felt, too, her present weakness—knew that this man had taken her at a disadvantage, that she ought to indignantly assert herself, deny everything, demand proof, and brand him a slanderer!
“How did—you—know it was my husband?” she stammered.
“His mask fell off in the fight; you know another mask was found—it was HIS. I saw him as plainly as I see him there!” he pointed to a daguerreotype of her husband which stood upon her desk.
Mrs. Wade could only stare vacantly, hopelessly. After a pause the man continued in a less aggressive manner and more confidential tone, which, however, only increased her terror. “I ain’t sayin’ that YOU knowed anything about this, ma’am, and whatever other folks might say when THEY know of it, I’ll allers say that you didn’t.”
“What, then, did you come here for?” said the widow desperately.
“What do I come here for?” repeated the man grimly, looking around the room; “what did I come to this yer comfortable home—this yer big ranch and to a rich woman like yourself for? Well, Mrs. Wade, I come to get the six hundred dollars your husband robbed me of, that’s all! I ain’t askin’ more! I ain’t askin’ interest! I ain’t askin’ compensation for havin’ to run for my life—and,” again looking grimly round the walls, “I ain’t askin’ more than you will give—or is my rights.”
“But this house never was his; it was my father’s,” gasped Mrs. Wade; “you have no right”—
“Mebbe ‘yes’ and mebbe ‘no,’ Mrs. Wade,” interrupted the man, with a wave of his hat; “but how about them two checks to bearer for two hundred dollars each found among your husband’s effects, and collected by your lawyer for you—MY CHECKS, Mrs. Wade?”
A wave of dreadful recollection overwhelmed her. She remembered the checks found upon her husband’s body, known only to her and her lawyer, believed to be gambling gains, and collected at once under his legal advice. Yet she made one more desperate effort in spite of the instinct that told her he was speaking the truth.
“But you shall have to prove it—before witnesses.”
“Do you WANT me to prove it before witnesses?” said the man, coming nearer her. “Do you want to take my word and keep it between ourselves, or do you want to call in your superintendent and his men, and all Santy Any, to hear me prove your husband was a highwayman, thief, and murderer? Do you want to knock over that monument on Heavy Tree Hill, and upset your standing here among the deacons and elders? Do you want to do all this and be forced, even by your neighbors, to pay me in the end, as you will? Ef you do, call in your witnesses now and let’s have it over. Mebbe it would look better ef I got the money out of YOUR FRIENDS than ye—a woman! P’raps you’re right!”
He made a step towards the door, but she stopped him.
“No! no! wait! It’s a large sum—I haven’t it with me,” she stammered, thoroughly beaten.
“Ye kin get it.”
“Give me time!” she implored. “Look! I’ll give you a hundred down now,—all I have here,—the rest another time!” She nervously opened a drawer of her desk and taking out a buckskin bag of gold thrust it in his hand. “There! go away now!” She lifted her thin hands despairingly to her head. “Go! do!”
The man seemed struck by her manner. “I don’t want to be hard on a woman,” he said slowly. “I’ll go now and come back again at nine to-night. You can git the money, or what’s as good, a check to bearer, by then. And ef ye’ll take my advice, you won’t ask no advice from others, ef you want to keep your secret. Just now it’s safe with me; I’m a square man, ef I seem to be a hard one.” He made a gesture as if to take her hand, but as she drew shrinkingly away, he changed it to an awkward bow, and the next moment was gone.
She started to her feet, but the unwonted strain upon her nerves and frail body had been greater than she knew. She made a step forward, felt the room whirl round her and then seem to collapse beneath her feet, and, clutching at her chair, sank back into it, fainting.
How long she lay there she never knew. She was at last conscious of some one bending over her, and a voice—the voice of Mr. Brooks—in her ear, saying, “I beg your pardon; you seem ill. Shall I call some one?”
“No!” she gasped, quickly recovering herself with an effort, and staring round her. “Where is—when did you come in?”
“Only this moment. I was leaving tonight, sooner than I expected, and thought I’d say good-by. They told me that you had been engaged with a stranger, but he had just gone. I beg your pardon—I see you are ill. I won’t detain you any longer.”
“No! no! don’t go! I am better—better,” she said feverishly. As she glanced at his strong and sympathetic face a wild idea seized her. He was a stranger here, an alien to these people, like herself. The advice that she dare not seek from others, from her half-estranged religious friends, from even her superintendent and his wife, dare she ask from him? Perhaps he saw this frightened doubt, this imploring appeal, in her eyes, for he said gently, “Is it anything I can do for you?”
“Yes,” she said, with the sudden desperation of weakness; “I want you to keep a secret.”
“Yours?—yes!” he said promptly.
Whereat poor Mrs. Wade instantly burst into tears. Then, amidst her sobs, she told him of the stranger’s visit, of his terrible accusations, of his demands, his expected return, and her own utter helplessness. To her terror, as she went on she saw a singular change in his kind face; he was following her with hard, eager intensity. She had half hoped, even through her fateful instincts, that he might have laughed, manlike, at her fears, or pooh-poohed the whole thing. But he did not. “You say he positively recognized your husband?” he repeated quickly.
“Yes, yes!” sobbed the widow, “and knew that daguerreotype!” she pointed to the desk.
Brooks turned quickly in that direction. Luckily his back was towards her, and she could not see his face, and the quick, startled look that came into his eyes. But when they again met hers, it was gone, and even their eager intensity had changed to a gentle commiseration. “You have only his word for it, Mrs. Wade,” he said gently, “and in telling your secret to another, you have shorn the rascal of half his power over you. And he knew it. Now, dismiss the matter from your mind and leave it all to me. I will be here a few minutes before nine—AND ALONE IN THIS ROOM. Let your visitor be shown in here, and don’t let us be disturbed. Don’t be alarmed,” he added with a faint twinkle in his eye, “there will be no fuss and no exposure!”
It lacked a few minutes of nine when Mr. Brooks was ushered into the sitting-room. As soon as he was alone he quietly examined the door and the windows, and having satisfied himself, took his seat in a chair casually placed behind the door. Presently he heard the sound of voices and a heavy footstep in the passage. He lightly felt his waistcoat pocket—it contained a pretty little weapon of power and precision, with a barrel scarcely two inches long.
The door opened, and the person outside entered the room. In an instant Brooks had shut the door and locked it behind him. The man turned fiercely, but was faced by Brooks quietly, with one finger calmly hooked in his waistcoat pocket. The man slightly recoiled from him—not as much from fear as from some vague stupefaction. “What’s that for? What’s your little game?” he said half contemptuously.
“No game at all,” returned Brooks coolly. “You came here to sell a secret. I don’t propose to have it given away first to any listener.”
“YOU don’t—who are YOU?”
“That’s a queer question to ask of the man you are trying to personate—but I don’t wonder! You’re doing it d–d badly.”
“Personate—YOU?” said the stranger, with staring eyes.
“Yes, ME,” said Brooks quietly. “I am the only man who escaped from the robbery that night at Heavy Tree Hill and who went home by the Overland Coach.”
The stranger stared, but recovered himself with a coarse laugh. “Oh, well! we’re on the same lay, it appears! Both after the widow—afore we show up her husband.”
“Not exactly,” said Brooks, with his eyes fixed intently on the stranger. “You are here to denounce a highwayman who is DEAD and escaped justice. I am here to denounce one who is LIVING!—Stop! drop your hand; it’s no use. You thought you had to deal only with a woman to-night, and your revolver isn’t quite handy enough. There! down!—down! So! That’ll do.”
“You can’t prove it,” said the man hoarsely.
“Fool! In your story to that woman you have given yourself away. There were but two travelers attacked by the highwaymen. One was killed—I am the other. Where do YOU come in? What witness can you be—except as the highwayman that you are? Who is left to identify Wade but—his accomplice!”
The man’s suddenly whitened face made his unshaven beard seem to bristle over his face like some wild animal’s. “Well, ef you kalkilate to blow me, you’ve got to blow Wade and his widder too. Jest you remember that,” he said whiningly.
“I’ve thought of that,” said Brooks coolly, “and I calculate that to prevent it is worth about that hundred dollars you got from that poor woman—and no more! Now, sit down at that table, and write as I dictate.”
The man looked at him in wonder, but obeyed.
“Write,” said Brooks, “‘I hereby certify that my accusations against the late Pulaski Wade of Heavy Tree Hill are erroneous and groundless, and the result of mistaken identity, especially in regard to any complicity of his in the robbery of John Stubbs, deceased, and Henry Brooks, at Heavy Tree Hill, on the night of the 13th August, 1854.’”
The man looked up with a repulsive smile. “Who’s the fool now, Cap’n? What’s become of your hold on the widder, now?”
“Write!” said Brooks fiercely.
The sound of a pen hurriedly scratching paper followed this first outburst of the quiet Brooks.
“Sign it,” said Brooks.
The man signed it.
“Now go,” said Brooks, unlocking the door, “but remember, if you should ever be inclined to revisit Santa Ana, you will find ME living here also.”
The man slunk out of the door and into the passage like a wild animal returning to the night and darkness. Brooks took up the paper, rejoined Mrs. Wade in the parlor, and laid it before her.
“But,” said the widow, trembling even in her joy, “do you—do you think he was REALLY mistaken?”
“Positive,” said Brooks coolly. “It’s true, it’s a mistake that has cost you a hundred dollars, but there are some mistakes that are worth that to be kept quiet.”
They were married a year later; but there is no record that in after years of conjugal relations with a weak, charming, but sometimes trying woman, Henry Brooks was ever tempted to tell her the whole truth of the robbery of Heavy Tree Hill.
THE MERMAID OF LIGHTHOUSE POINT
Some forty years ago, on the northern coast of California, near the Golden Gate, stood a lighthouse. Of a primitive class, since superseded by a building more in keeping with the growing magnitude of the adjacent port, it attracted little attention from the desolate shore, and, it was alleged, still less from the desolate sea beyond. A gray structure of timber, stone, and glass, it was buffeted and harried by the constant trade winds, baked by the unclouded six months’ sun, lost for a few hours in the afternoon sea-fog, and laughed over by circling guillemots from the Farallones. It was kept by a recluse—a preoccupied man of scientific tastes, who, in shameless contrast to his fellow immigrants, had applied to the government for this scarcely lucrative position as a means of securing the seclusion he valued more than gold. Some believed that he was the victim of an early disappointment in love—a view charitably taken by those who also believed that the government would not have appointed “a crank” to a position of responsibility. Howbeit, he fulfilled his duties, and, with the assistance of an Indian, even cultivated a small patch of ground beside the lighthouse. His isolation was complete! There was little to attract wanderers here: the nearest mines were fifty miles away; the virgin forest on the mountains inland were penetrated only by sawmills and woodmen from the Bay settlements, equally remote. Although by the shore-line the lights of the great port were sometimes plainly visible, yet the solitude around him was peopled only by Indians,—a branch of the great northern tribe of “root-diggers,”—peaceful and simple in their habits, as yet undisturbed by the white man, nor stirred into antagonism by aggression. Civilization only touched him at stated intervals, and then by the more expeditious sea from the government boat that brought him supplies. But for his contiguity to the perpetual turmoil of wind and sea, he might have passed a restful Arcadian life in his surroundings; for even his solitude was sometimes haunted by this faint reminder of the great port hard by that pulsated with an equal unrest. Nevertheless, the sands before his door and the rocks behind him seemed to have been untrodden by any other white man’s foot since their upheaval from the ocean. It was true that the little bay beside him was marked on the map as “Sir Francis Drake’s Bay,” tradition having located it as the spot where that ingenious pirate and empire-maker had once landed his vessels and scraped the barnacles from his adventurous keels. But of this Edgar Pomfrey—or “Captain Pomfrey,” as he was called by virtue of his half-nautical office—had thought little.
For the first six months he had thoroughly enjoyed his seclusion. In the company of his books, of which he had brought such a fair store that their shelves lined his snug corners to the exclusion of more comfortable furniture, he found his principal recreation. Even his unwonted manual labor, the trimming of his lamp and cleaning of his reflectors, and his personal housekeeping, in which his Indian help at times assisted, he found a novel and interesting occupation. For outdoor exercise, a ramble on the sands, a climb to the rocky upland, or a pull in the lighthouse boat, amply sufficed him. “Crank” as he was supposed to be, he was sane enough to guard against any of those early lapses into barbarism which marked the lives of some solitary gold-miners. His own taste, as well as the duty of his office, kept his person and habitation sweet and clean, and his habits regular. Even the little cultivated patch of ground on the lee side of the tower was symmetrical and well ordered. Thus the outward light of Captain Pomfrey shone forth over the wilderness of shore and wave, even like his beacon, whatever his inward illumination may have been.
It was a bright summer morning, remarkable even in the monotonous excellence of the season, with a slight touch of warmth which the invincible Northwest Trades had not yet chilled. There was still a faint haze off the coast, as if last night’s fog had been caught in the quick sunshine, and the shining sands were hot, but without the usual dazzling glare. A faint perfume from a quaint lilac-colored beach-flower, whose clustering heads dotted the sand like bits of blown spume, took the place of that smell of the sea which the odorless Pacific lacked. A few rocks, half a mile away, lifted themselves above the ebb tide at varying heights as they lay on the trough of the swell, were crested with foam by a striking surge, or cleanly erased in the full sweep of the sea. Beside, and partly upon one of the higher rocks, a singular object was moving.
Pomfrey was interested but not startled. He had once or twice seen seals disporting on these rocks, and on one occasion a sea-lion,—an estray from the familiar rocks on the other side of the Golden Gate. But he ceased work in his garden patch, and coming to his house, exchanged his hoe for a telescope. When he got the mystery in focus he suddenly stopped and rubbed the object-glass with his handkerchief. But even when he applied the glass to his eye for a second time, he could scarcely believe his eyesight. For the object seemed to be a WOMAN, the lower part of her figure submerged in the sea, her long hair depending over her shoulders and waist. There was nothing in her attitude to suggest terror or that she was the victim of some accident. She moved slowly and complacently with the sea, and even—a more staggering suggestion—appeared to be combing out the strands of her long hair with her fingers. With her body half concealed she might have been a mermaid!
He swept the foreshore and horizon with his glass; there was neither boat nor ship—nor anything that moved, except the long swell of the Pacific. She could have come only from the sea; for to reach the rocks by land she would have had to pass before the lighthouse, while the narrow strip of shore which curved northward beyond his range of view he knew was inhabited only by Indians. But the woman was unhesitatingly and appallingly WHITE, and her hair light even to a golden gleam in the sunshine.
Pomfrey was a gentleman, and as such was amazed, dismayed, and cruelly embarrassed. If she was a simple bather from some vicinity hitherto unknown and unsuspected by him, it was clearly his business to shut up his glass and go back to his garden patch—although the propinquity of himself and the lighthouse must have been as plainly visible to her as she was to him. On the other hand, if she was the survivor of some wreck and in distress—or, as he even fancied from her reckless manner, bereft of her senses, his duty to rescue her was equally clear. In his dilemma he determined upon a compromise and ran to his boat. He would pull out to sea, pass between the rocks and the curving sand-spit, and examine the sands and sea more closely for signs of wreckage, or some overlooked waiting boat near the shore. He would be within hail if she needed him, or she could escape to her boat if she had one.
In another moment his boat was lifting on the swell towards the rocks. He pulled quickly, occasionally turning to note that the strange figure, whose movements were quite discernible to the naked eye, was still there, but gazing more earnestly towards the nearest shore for any sign of life or occupation. In ten minutes he had reached the curve where the trend opened northward, and the long line of shore stretched before him. He swept it eagerly with a single searching glance. Sea and shore were empty. He turned quickly to the rock, scarcely a hundred yards on his beam. It was empty too! Forgetting his previous scruples, he pulled directly for it until his keel grated on its submerged base. There was nothing there but the rock, slippery with the yellow-green slime of seaweed and kelp—neither trace nor sign of the figure that had occupied it a moment ago. He pulled around it; there was no cleft or hiding-place. For an instant his heart leaped at the sight of something white, caught in a jagged tooth of the outlying reef, but it was only the bleached fragment of a bamboo orange-crate, cast from the deck of some South Sea trader, such as often strewed the beach. He lay off the rock, keeping way in the swell, and scrutinizing the glittering sea. At last he pulled back to the lighthouse, perplexed and discomfited.
Was it simply a sporting seal, transformed by some trick of his vision? But he had seen it through his glass, and now remembered such details as the face and features framed in their contour of golden hair, and believed he could even have identified them. He examined the rock again with his glass, and was surprised to see how clearly it was outlined now in its barren loneliness. Yet he must have been mistaken. His scientific and accurate mind allowed of no errant fancy, and he had always sneered at the marvelous as the result of hasty or superficial observation. He was a little worried at this lapse of his healthy accuracy,—fearing that it might be the result of his seclusion and loneliness,—akin to the visions of the recluse and solitary. It was strange, too, that it should take the shape of a woman; for Edgar Pomfrey had a story—the usual old and foolish one.
Then his thoughts took a lighter phase, and he turned to the memory of his books, and finally to the books themselves. From a shelf he picked out a volume of old voyages, and turned to a remembered passage: “In other seas doe abound marvells soche as Sea Spyders of the bigness of a pinnace, the wich they have been known to attack and destroy; Sea Vypers which reach to the top of a goodly maste, whereby they are able to draw marinners from the rigging by the suction of their breathes; and Devill Fyshe, which vomit fire by night which makyth the sea to shine prodigiously, and mermaydes. They are half fyshe and half mayde of grate Beauty, and have been seen of divers godly and creditable witnesses swymming beside rocks, hidden to their waist in the sea, combing of their hayres, to the help of whych they carry a small mirrore of the bigness of their fingers.” Pomfrey laid the book aside with a faint smile. To even this credulity he might come!
Nevertheless, he used the telescope again that day. But there was no repetition of the incident, and he was forced to believe that he had been the victim of some extraordinary illusion. The next morning, however, with his calmer judgment doubts began to visit him. There was no one of whom he could make inquiries but his Indian helper, and their conversation had usually been restricted to the language of signs or the use of a few words he had picked up. He contrived, however, to ask if there was a “waugee” (white) woman in the neighborhood. The Indian shook his head in surprise. There was no “waugee” nearer than the remote mountain-ridge to which he pointed. Pomfrey was obliged to be content with this. Even had his vocabulary been larger, he would as soon have thought of revealing the embarrassing secret of this woman, whom he believed to be of his own race, to a mere barbarian as he would of asking him to verify his own impressions by allowing him to look at her that morning. The next day, however, something happened which forced him to resume his inquiries. He was rowing around the curving spot when he saw a number of black objects on the northern sands moving in and out of the surf, which he presently made out as Indians. A nearer approach satisfied him that they were wading squaws and children gathering seaweed and shells. He would have pushed his acquaintance still nearer, but as his boat rounded the point, with one accord they all scuttled away like frightened sandpipers. Pomfrey, on his return, asked his Indian retainer if they could swim. “Oh, yes!” “As far as the rock?” “Yes.” Yet Pomfrey was not satisfied. The color of his strange apparition remained unaccounted for, and it was not that of an Indian woman.
Trifling events linger long in a monotonous existence, and it was nearly a week before Pomfrey gave up his daily telescopic inspection of the rock. Then he fell back upon his books again, and, oddly enough, upon another volume of voyages, and so chanced upon the account of Sir Francis Drake’s occupation of the bay before him. He had always thought it strange that the great adventurer had left no trace or sign of his sojourn there; still stranger that he should have overlooked the presence of gold, known even to the Indians themselves, and have lost a discovery far beyond his wildest dreams and a treasure to which the cargoes of those Philippine galleons he had more or less successfully intercepted were trifles. Had the restless explorer been content to pace those dreary sands during three weeks of inactivity, with no thought of penetrating the inland forests behind the range, or of even entering the nobler bay beyond? Or was the location of the spot a mere tradition as wild and unsupported as the “marvells” of the other volume? Pomfrey had the skepticism of the scientific, inquiring mind.
