If she talked to him, he scarcely heard her words, and did not realize

their meaning. If it was indeed true that she kissed his cheek, he thought
it was because she wanted rescue and would thank any one for it. She was,
as he understood her, like a pet animal, who licks the face of any friend
in need, though a stranger. Never mind; he loved her just the same as if
she were not selfish; he would serve her just the same as if she were
still his. He unloosed her arms from his shoulders, wondering that they
should be there, and crawling with difficulty to the cabin locker, groped
in it for life-preservers. There was only one in the vessel; that one he
buckled around Clara.

"Oh, my darling!" she exclaimed; "what do you mean?"

"My darling!" he echoed, "bear it bravely. There is great danger; but
don't be afraid--I will save you."

He had no doubts in making this promise; it seemed to him that he could
overcome the billows for her sake--that he could make himself stronger
than the powers of nature.

"Where did you come from? from another vessel?" she asked, stretching out
her arms to him again.

"I was here," he said, taking and kissing her hands; "I was here, watching
over you. But there is no time to lose. Let me carry you."

"They must be saved," returned Clara, pointing to the staterooms. "Garcia
and Coronado are there."

Should he try to deliver those enemies from death? He did not hesitate a
moment about it, but bursting open the doors of the two rooms he shouted,
"On deck with you! Into the boats! We are sinking!"

Next he set Clara down, passed his left arm around her waist, clung to
things with his right hand, dragged her up the companionway to the
quarter-deck, and lashed her to the weather shrouds, with her feet on the
wooden leader. Not a word was spoken during the five minutes occupied by
this short journey. Even while Clara was crossing the deck a frothing
comber deluged her to her waist, and Thurstane had all he could do to keep
her from being flung into the lee scuppers. But once he had her fast and
temporarily safe, he made a great effort to smile cheerfully, and said,
"Never fear; I won't leave you."

"Oh! to meet to die!" she sobbed, for the strength of the water and the
rage of the surrounding sea had frightened her. "Oh, it is cruel!"

Presently she smothered her crying, and implored, "Come up here and tie
yourself by my side; I want to hold your hand."

He wondered whether she loved him again, now that she saw him; and in
spite of the chilling seas and the death at hand, he thrilled warm at the
thought. He was about to obey her when Coronado and Garcia appeared, pale
as two ghosts, clinging to each other, tottering and helpless. Thurstane
went to them, got the old man lashed to one of the backstays, and helped
Coronado to secure himself to another. Garcia was jabbering prayers and
crying aloud like a scared child, his jaws shaking as if in a palsy.
Coronado, although seeming resolved to bear himself like an hidalgo and
maintain a grim silence, his face was wilted and seamed with anxiety, as
if he had become an old man in the night. It was rather a fine sight to
see him looking into the face of the storm with an air of defying death
and all that it might bring; and perhaps he would have been helpful, and
would have shown himself one of the bravest of the brave, had he not been
prostrated by sickness. As it was, he took little interest in the fate of
others, hardly noticing Thurstane as he resumed his post beside Clara, and
only addressing the girl with one word: "Patience!"

Clara and Thurstane, side by side and hand in hand, were also for the most
part silent, now looking around them upon their fate, and then at each
other for strength to bear it.

Meantime part of the crew had tried the pumps, and been washed away from
them twice by seas, floating helplessly about the main deck, and clutching
at rigging to save themselves, but nevertheless discovering that the brig
was filling but slowly, and would have full time to strike before she
could founder.

"'Vast there!" called the captain; "'vast the pumps! All hands stand by to
launch the boats!"

"Long boat's stove!" shouted the mate, putting his hands to his mouth so
as to be heard through the gale.

"All hands aft!" was the next order. "Stand by to launch the
quarter-boats!"

So the entire remaining crew--two mates and eight men, including the
steward--splashed and clambered on to the quarter-deck and took station by
the boat-falls, hanging on as they could.

"Can I do anything?" asked Thurstane.

"Not yet," answered the captain; "you are doing what's right; take care of
the lady."

"What are the chances?" the lieutenant ventured now to inquire.

With fate upon him, and seemingly irresistible, the skipper had dropped
his grim air of conflict and become gentle, almost resigned. His voice was
friendly, sympathetic, and quite calm, as he stepped up by Thurstane's
side and said, "We shall have a tough time of it. The land is only about
ten miles away. At this rate we shall strike it inside of three hours. I
don't see how it can be helped."

"Where shall we strike?"

"Smack into the Bay of Monterey, between the town and Point Pinos.'

"Can I do anything?"

"Do just what you've got in hand. Take care of the lady. See that she gets
into the biggest boat--if we try the boats."

Clara overheard, gave the skipper a kind look, and said, "Thank you,
captain."

"You're fit to be capm of a liner, miss," returned the sailor. "You're one
of the best sort."

For some time longer, while waiting for the final catastrophe, nothing was
done but to hold fast and gaze. The voyagers were like condemned men who
are preceded, followed, accompanied, jostled, and hurried to the place of
death by a vindictive people. The giants of the sea were coming in
multitudes to this execution which they had ordained; all the windward
ocean was full of rising and falling billows, which seemed to trample one
another down in their savage haste. There was no mercy in the formless
faces which grimaced around the doomed ones, nor in the tempestuous voices
which deafened them with threatenings and insult. The breakers seemed to
signal to each other; they were cruelly eloquent with menacing gestures.
There was but one sentence among them, and that sentence was a thousand
times repeated, and it was always DEATH.

To paint the shifting sublimity of the tempest is as difficult as it was
to paint the steadfast sublimity of the Great Canon. The waves were in
furious movement, continual change, and almost incessant death. They
destroyed themselves and each other by their violence. Scarcely did one
become eminent before it was torn to pieces by its comrades, or perished
of its own rage. They were like barbarous hordes, exterminating one
another or falling into dissolution, while devastating everything in their
course.

There was a frantic revelry, an indescribable pandemonium of
transformations. Lofty plumes of foam fell into hoary, flattened sheets;
curling and howling cataracts became suddenly deep hollows. The indigo
slopes were marbled with white, but not one of these mottlings retained
the same shape for an instant; it was broad, deep, and creamy when the eye
first beheld it; in the next breath it was waving, shallow, and narrow; in
the next it was gone. A thousand eddies, whirls, and ebullitions of all
magnitudes appeared only to disappear. Great and little jets of froth
struggled from the agitated centres toward the surface, and never reached
it. Every one of the hundred waves which made up each billow rapidly
tossed and wallowed itself to death.

Yet there was no diminution in the spectacle, no relaxation in the combat.
In the place of what vanished there was immediately something else. Out of
the quick grave of one surge rose the white plume of another. Marbling
followed marbling, and cataract overstrode cataract. Even to their bases
the oceanic ranges and peaks were full of power, activity, and, as it
were, explosions. It seemed as if endless multitudes of transformations
boiled up through them from their abodes in sea-deep caves. There was no
exhausting this reproductiveness of form and power. At every glance a
thousand worlds of waters had perished, and a thousand worlds of waters
had been created. And all these worlds, the new even more than the old,
were full of malignity toward the wreck, and bent on its destruction.

The wind, though invisible, was not less wonderful. It surpassed the ocean
in strength, for it chased, gashed, and deformed the ocean. It inflicted
upon it countless wounds, slashing fresh ones as fast as others healed. It
not only tore off the hoary scalps of the billows and flung them through
the air, but it wrenched out and hurled large masses of water, scattering
them in rain and mist, the blood of the sea. Now and then it made all the
air dense with spray, causing the Pacific to resemble the Sahara in a
simoom. At other times it levelled the tops of scores of waves at once,
crushing and kneading them by the immense force that lay in its swiftness.

It would not be looked in the face; it blinded the eyes that strove to
search it; it seemed to flap and beat them with harsh, churlish wings; it
was as full of insult as the billows. Its cry was not multitudinous like
that of the sea, but one and incessant and invariable, a long scream that
almost hissed. On reaching the wreck, however, this shriek became hoarse
with rage, and howled as it shook the rigging. It used the shrouds and
stays of the still upright mainmast as an aeolian harp from which to draw
horrible music. It made the tense ropes tremble and thrill, and tortured
the spars until they wailed a death-song. Its force as felt by the
shipwrecked ones was astonishing; it beat them about as if it were a sea,
and bruised them against the shrouds and bulwarks; it asserted its mastery
over them with the long-drawn cruelty of a tiger.

Just around the wreck the tumult of both wind and sea was of course more
horrible than anywhere else. These enemies were infuriated by the
sluggishness of the disabled hulk; they treated it as Indians treat a
captive who cannot keep up with their march; they belabored it with blows
and insulted it with howls. The brig, constantly tossed and dropped and
shoved, was never still for an instant. It rolled heavily and somewhat
slowly, but with perpetual jerks and jars, shuddering at every concussion.
Its only regularity of movement lay in this, that the force of the wind
and direction of the waves kept it larboard side on, drifting steadily
toward the land.

One moment it was on a lofty crest, seeming as if it would be hurled into
air. The next it was rolling in the trough of the sea, between a wave
which hoarsely threatened to engulf it, and another which rushed seething
and hissing from beneath the keel. The deck stood mostly at a steep angle,
the weather bulwarks being at a considerable elevation, and the lee ones
dipping the surges. Against this helpless and partially water-logged mass
the combers rushed incessantly, hiding it every few seconds with sheets of
spray, and often sweeping it with deluges. Around the stern and bow the
rush of bubbling, roaring whirls was uninterrupted.

The motion was sickly and dismaying, like the throes of one who is dying.
It could not be trusted; it dropped away under the feet traitorously;
then, by an insolent surprise, it violently stopped or lifted. It was made
the more uncertain and distressing by the swaying of the water which had
entered the hull. Sometimes, too, the under boiling of a crushed billow
caused a great lurch to windward; and after each of these struggles came a
reel to leeward which threatened to turn the wreck bottom up; the breakers
meantime leaping aboard with loud stampings as if resolved to beat through
the deck.

During hours of this tossing and plunging, this tearing of the wind and
battering of the sea, no one was lost. The sailors were clustered around
the boats, some clinging to the davits and others lashed to belaying pins,
exhausted by long labor, want of sleep, and constant soakings, but ready
to fight for life to the last. Coronado and Garcia were still fast to the
backstays, the former a good deal wilted by his hardships, and the latter
whimpering. Thurstane had literally seized up Clara to the outside of the
weather shrouds, so that, although she was terribly jammed by the wind,
she could not be carried away by it, while she was above the heaviest
pounding of the seas. His own position was alongside of her, secured in
like manner by ends of cordage.

Sometimes he held her hand, and sometimes her waist. She could lean her
shoulder against his, and she did so nearly all the while. Her eyes were
fixed as often on his face as on the breakers which threatened her life.
The few words that she spoke were more likely to be confessions of love
than of terror. Now and then, when a billow of unusual size had slipped
harmlessly by, he gratefully and almost joyously drew her close to him,
uttering a few syllables of cheer. She thanked him by sending all her
affectionate heart through her eyes into his.

Although there had been no explanations as to the past, they understood
each other's present feelings. It could not be, he was sure, that she
clung to him thus and looked at him thus merely because she wanted him to
save her life. She had been detached from him by others, he said; she had
been drawn away from thinking of him during his absence; she had been
brought to judge, perhaps wisely, that she ought not to marry a poor man;
but now that she saw him again she loved him as of old, and, standing at
death's door, she felt at liberty to confess it. Thus did he translate to
himself a past that had no existence. He still believed that she had
dismissed him, and that she had done it with cruel harshness. But he could
not resent her conduct; he believed what he did and forgave her; he
believed it, and loved her.

There were moments when it was delightful for them to be as they were. As
they held fast to each other, though drenched and exhausted and in mortal
peril, they had a sensation as if they were warm. The hearts were beating
hotly clean through the wet frames and the dripping clothing.

"Oh, my love!" was a phrase which Clara repeated many times with an air of
deep content.

Once she said, "My love, I never thought to die so easily. How horrible it
would have been without you!"

Again she murmured, "I have prayed many, many times to have you. I did not
know how the answer would come. But this is it."

"My darling, I have had visions about you," was another of these
confessions. "When I had been praying for you nearly all one night, there
was a great light came into the room. It was some promise for you. I knew
it was then; something told me so. Oh, how happy I was!"

Presently she added, "My dear love, we shall be just as happy as that. We
shall live in great light together. God will be pleased to see plainly how
we love each other."

Her only complaints were a patient "Isn't it hard?" when a new billow had
covered her from head to foot, crushed her pitilessly against the shrouds,
and nearly smothered her.

The next words would perhaps be, "I am so sorry for you, my darling. I
wish for your sake that you had not come. But oh, how you help me!"

"I am glad to be here," firmly and honestly and passionately responded the
young man, raising her wet hand and covering it with kisses. "But you
shall not die."

He was bearing like a man and she like a woman. He was resolved to fight
his battle to the last; she was weak, resigned, gentle, and ready for
heaven.

The land, even to its minor features, was now distinctly visible, not more
than a mile to leeward. As they rose on the billows they could distinguish
the long beach, the grassy slopes, and wooded knolls beyond it, the green
lawn on which stood the village of Monterey, the whitewashed walls and
red-tiled roofs of the houses, and the groups of people who were watching
the oncoming tragedy.

"Are you not going to launch the boats?" shouted Thurstane after a glance
at the awful line of frothing breakers which careered back and forth
athwart the beach.

"They are both stove," returned the captain calmly. "We must go ashore as
we are."




CHAPTER XLI.


When Thurstane heard, or rather guessed from the captain's gestures, that
the boats were stove, he called, "Are we to do nothing?"

The captain shouted something in reply, but although he put his hands to
his mouth for a speaking trumpet, his words were inaudible, and he would
not have been understood had he not pointed aloft.

Thurstane looked upward, and saw for the first time that the main topmast
had broken off and been cut clear, probably hours ago when he was in the
cabin searching for Clara. The top still remained, however, and twisted
through its openings was one end of a hawser, the other end floating off
to leeward two hundred yards in advance of the wreck. Fastened to the
hawser by a large loop was a sling of cordage, from which a long halyard
trailed shoreward, while another connected it with the top. All this had
been done behind his back and without his knowledge, so deafening and
absorbing was the tempest. He saw at once what was meant and what he would
have to do. When the brig struck he must carry Clara into the top, secure
her in the sling, and send her ashore. Doubtless the crowd on the beach
would know enough to make the hawser fast and pull on the halyard.

The captain shouted again, and this time he could be understood: "When she
strikes hold hard."

"Did you hear him?" Thurstane asked, turning to Clara.

"Yes," she nodded, and smiled in his face, though faintly like one dying.
He passed one arm around the middle stay of the shrouds and around her
waist, passed the other in front of her, covering her chest; and so, with
every muscle set, he waited.

Surrounded, pursued, pushed, and hammered by the billows, the wreck
drifted, rising and falling, starting and wallowing toward the awful line
where the breakers plunged over the undertow and dashed themselves to
death on the resounding shore. There was a wide debatable ground between
land and water. One moment it belonged to earth, the next lofty curling
surges foamed howling over it; then the undertow was flying back in savage
torrents. Would the hawser reach across this flux and reflux of death?
Would the mast hold against the grounding shock? Would the sling work?

They lurched nearer; the shock was close at hand; every one set teeth and
tightened grip. Lifted on a monstrous billow, which was itself lifted by
the undertow and the shelving of the beach, the hulk seemed as if it were
held aloft by some demon in order that it might be dashed to pieces. But
the wave lost its hold, swept under the keel, staggered wildly up the
slope, broke in a huge white deafening roll, and rushed backward in
torrents. The brig was between two forces; it struck once, but not
heavily; then, raised by the incoming surge, it struck again; there was an
awful consciousness and uproar of beating and grinding; the next instant
it was on its beam ends and covered with cataracts.

Every one aboard was submerged. Thurstane and Clara were overwhelmed by
such a mass of water that they thought themselves at the bottom of the
sea. Two men who had not mounted the rigging, but tried to cling to the
boat davits, were hurled adrift and sent to agonize in the undertow. The
brig trembled as if it were on the point of breaking up and dissolving in
the horrible, furious yeast of breakers. Even to the people on shore the
moment and the spectacle were sublime and tremendous beyond description.
The vessel and the people on board disappeared for a time from their sight
under jets and cascades of surf. The spray rose in a dense sheet as high
as the maintopmast would have been had it stood upright.

When Thurstane came out of his state of temporary drowning, he was
conscious of two sailors clambering by him toward the top, and heard a
shout in his ears of "Cast loose."

It was the captain. He had sprung alongside of Clara, and was already
unwinding her lashings. Thrice before the job was done they were buried in
surf, and during the third trial they had to hold on with their hands, the
two men clasping the girl desperately and pressing her against the
rigging. It was a wonder that she and all of them were not disabled, for
the jamming of the water was enough to break bones.

They got her up a few ratlines; then came another surge, during which they
gripped hard; then there was a second ascent, and so on. The climbing was
the easier and the holding on the more difficult, because the mast was
depressed to a low angle, its summit being hardly ten feet higher than its
base. Even in the top there was a desperate struggle with the sea, and
even after Clara was in the sling she was half drowned by the surf.

Meantime the people on shore had made fast the hawser to a tree and manned
the halyard. Not a word was uttered by Clara or Thurstane when they
parted, for she was speechless with exhaustion and he with anxiety and
terror. The moment he let go of her he had to grip a loop of top-hamper
and hold on with all his might to save himself from being pitched into the
water by a fresh jerk of the mast and a fresh inundation of flying surge.
When he could look at her again she was far out on the hawser, rising and
falling in quick, violent, perilous swings, caught at by the toppling
breakers and howled at by the undertow. Another deluge blinded him; as
soon as he could he gazed shoreward again, and shrieked with joy; she was
being carefully lifted from the sling; she was saved--if she was not dead.

When the apparatus was hauled back to the top the captain said to
Thurstane, "Your turn now."

The young man hesitated, glanced around for Coronado and Garcia, and
replied, "Those first."

It was not merely humanity, and not at all good-will toward these two men,
which held him back from saving his life first; it was mainly that motto
of nobility, that phrase which has such a mighty influence in the army,
"_An officer and a gentleman_." He believed that he would disgrace his
profession and himself if he should quit the wreck while any civilian
remained upon it.

Coronado, leaving his uncle to the care of a sailor, had already climbed
the shrouds, and was now crawling through the lubber hole into the top.
For once his hardihood was beaten; he was pale, tremulous and obviously in
extreme terror; he clutched at the sling the moment he was pointed to it.
With the utmost care, and without even a look of reproach, Thurstane
helped secure him in the loops and launched him on his journey. Next came
the turn of Garcia. The old man seemed already dead. He was livid, his
lips blue, his hands helpless, his voice gone, his eyes glazed and set. It
was necessary to knot him into the sling as tightly as if he were a
corpse; and when he reached shore it could be seen that he was borne off
like a dead weight.

"Now then," said the captain to Thurstane. "We can't go till you do.
Passengers first."

Exhausted by his drenchings, and by a kind of labor to which he was not
accustomed, the lieutenant obeyed this order, took his place in the sling,
nodded good-by to the brave sailors, and was hurled out of the top by a
plunge of surf, as a criminal is pushed from the cart by the hangman.

No idea has been given, and no complete idea can be given, of the
difficulties, sufferings, and perils of this transit shoreward. Owing to
the rising and falling of the mast, the hawser now tautened with a jerk
which flung the voyager up against it or even over it, and now drooped in
a large bight which let him down into the seethe of water and foam that
had just rushed over the vessel, forcing it down on its beam ends.
Thurstane was four or five times tossed and as often submerged. The waves,
the wind, and the wreck played with him successively or all together. It
was an outrage and a torment which surpassed some of the tortures of the
Inquisition. First came a quick and breathless plunge; then he was
imbedded in the rushing, swirling waters, drumming in his ears and
stifling his breath; then he was dragged swiftly upward, the sling turning
him out of it. It seemed to him that the breath would depart from his body
before the transit was over. When at last he landed and was detached from
the cordage, he was so bruised, so nearly drowned, so every way exhausted,
that he could not stand. He lay for quite a while motionless, his head
swimming, his legs and arms twitching convulsively, every joint and muscle
sore, catching his breath with painful gasps, almost fainting, and feeling
much as if he were dying.

He had meant to help save the captain and sailors. But there was no more
work in him, and he just had strength to walk up to the village, a citizen
holding him by either arm. As soon as he could speak so as to be
understood, he asked, first in English and then in Spanish, "How is the
lady?"

"She is insensible," was the reply--a reply of unmeant cruelty.

Remembering how he had suffered, Thurstane feared lest Clara had received
her death-stroke in the slings, and he tottered forward eagerly, saying,
"Take me to her."

Arrived at the house where she lay, he insisted upon seeing her, and had
his way. He was led into a room; he did not see and could never remember
what sort of a room it was; but there she was in bed, her face pale and
her eyes closed; he thought she was dead, and he nearly fell. But a
pitying womanly voice murmured to him, "She lives," with other words that
he did not understand, or could not afterward recall. Trusting that this
unconsciousness was a sleep, he suffered himself to be drawn away by
helping hands, and presently was himself in a bed, not knowing how he got
there.

Meantime the tragedy of the wreck was being acted out. The sling broke
once, the sailor who was in it falling into the undertow, and perishing
there in spite of a rush of the townspeople. One of the two men who were
washed overboard at the first shock was also drowned. The rest escaped,
including the heroic captain, who was the last to come ashore.

When Thurstane was again permitted to see Clara, it was, to his great
astonishment, the morning of the following day. He had slept like the
dead; if any one had sought to awaken him, it would have been almost
impossible; there was no strength left in body or spirt but for sleep.
Clara's story had been much the same: insensibility, then swoons, then
slumber; twelve hours of utter unconsciousness. On waking the first words
of each were to ask for the other. Thurstane put on his scarcely dried
uniform and hurried to the girl's room. She received him at the door, for
she had heard his step although it was on tiptoe, and she knew his knock
although as light as the beating of a bird's wing.

It was another of those interviews which cannot be described, and perhaps
should not be. They were uninterrupted, for the ladies of the house had
learned from Clara that this was her betrothed, and they had woman's sense
of the sacredness of such meetings. Presents came, and were not sent in:
Coronado called and was not admitted. The two were alone for two hours,
and the two hours passed like two minutes. Of course all the ugly past was
explained.

"A letter dismissing you!" exclaimed Clara with tears. "Oh! how could you
think that I would write such a letter? Never--never! Oh, I never could.
My hand should drop off first. I should die in trying to write such
wickedness. What! don't you know me better? Don't you know that I am true
to you? Oh, how could you believe it of me? My darling, how could you?"

"Forgive me," begged the humbled young fellow, trembling with joy in his
humility. "It was weak and wicked in me. I deserved to be punished as I
have been. And, oh, I did not deserve this happiness. But, my little girl,
how could I help being deceived? There was your handwriting and your
signature."

"Ah! I know who it was," broke out Clara. "It has been he all through. He
shall pay for this, and for all," she added, her Spanish blood rising in
her cheeks, and her soft eyes sparkling angrily for a minute.

"I have saved his life for the last time," returned Thurstane. "I have
spared it for the last time. Hereafter--"

"My darling, my darling!" begged Clara, alarmed by his blackening brow.
"Oh, my darling, I don't love to see you angry. Just now, when we have
just been spared to each other, don't let us be angry. I spoke angrily
first. Forgive me."

"Let him keep out of my way," muttered Thurstane, only in part pacified.

"Yes," answered Clara, thinking that she would herself send Coronado off,
so that there might be no duel between him and this dear one.

Presently the lover added one thing which he had felt all the time ought
to have been said at first.

"The letter--it was right. Although _he_ wrote it, it was right. I have no
claim to marry a rich woman, and you have no right to marry a poor man."

He uttered this in profound misery, and yet with a firm resolution. Clara
turned pale and stared at him with anxious eyes, her lips parted as though
to speak, but saying nothing. Knowing his fastidious sense of honor, she
guessed the full force with which this scruple weighed upon him, and she
did not know how to drag it off his soul.

"You are worth a million," he went on, in a broken-hearted sort of voice
which to us may seem laughable, but which brought the tears into Clara's
eyes.

The next instant she brightened; she knew, or thought she knew, that she
was not worth a million; so she smiled like a sunburst and caught him
gayly by the wrists.

"A million!" she scoffed, laughingly. "Do you believe all Coronado tells
you?"

"What! isn't it true?" exclaimed Thurstane, reddening with joy. "Then you
are not heir to your grandfather's fortune? It was one of _his_ lies? Oh,
my little girl, I am forever happy."

She had not meant all this; but how could she undeceive him? The tempting
thought came into her mind that she would marry him while he was in this
ignorance, and so relieve him of his noble scruples about taking an
heiress. It was one of those white lies which, it seems to us, must fade
out of themselves from the record book, without even needing to be blotted
by the tear of an angel.

"Are you glad?" she smiled, though anxious at heart, for deception alarmed
her. "Really glad to find me poor?"

His only response was to cover her hands, and hair, and forehead with
kisses.

At last came the question, When? Clara hesitated; her face and neck
bloomed with blushes as dewy as flowers; she looked at him once piteously,
and then her gaze fell in beautiful shame.

"When would you like?" she at last found breath to whisper.

"Now--here," was the answer, holding both her hands and begging with his
blue-black eyes, as soft then as a woman's.

"Yes, at once," he continued to implore. "It is best everyway. It will
save you from persecutions. My love, is it not best?"

Under the circumstances we cannot wonder that this should be just as she
desired.

"Yes--it is--best," she murmured, hiding her face against his shoulder.
"What you say is true. It will save me trouble."

After a short heaven of silence he added, "I will go and see what is
needed. I must find a priest."

As he was departing she caught him; it seemed to her just then that she
could not be a wife so soon; but the result was that after another silence
and a faint sobbing, she let him go.

Meantime Coronado, that persevering and audacious but unlucky conspirator,
was in treble trouble. He was afraid that he would lose Clara; afraid that
his plottings had been brought to light, and that he would be punished;
afraid that his uncle would die and thus deprive him of all chance of
succeeding to any part of the estate of Munoz. Garcia had been brought
ashore apparently at his last gasp, and he had not yet come out of his
insensibility. For a time Coronado hoped that he was in one of his fits;
but after eighteen hours he gave up that feeble consolation; he became
terribly anxious about the old man; he felt as though he loved him. The
people of Monterey universally admitted that they had never before known
such an affectionate nephew and tender-hearted Christian as Coronado.

He tried to see Clara, meaning to make the most with her of Garcia's
condition, and hoping that thus he could divert her a little from
Thurstane. But somehow all his messages failed; the little house which
held her repelled him as if it had been a nunnery; nor could he get a word
or even a note from her. The truth is that Clara, fearing lest Coronado
should tell more stories about her million to Thurstane, had taken the
women of the family into her confidence and easily got them to lay a sly
embargo on callers and correspondents.

On the second day Garcia came to himself for a few minutes, and struggled
hard to say something to his nephew, but could give forth only a feeble
jabber, after which he turned blank again. Coronado, in the extreme of
anxiety, now made another effort to get at Clara. Reaching her house, he
learned from a bystander that she had gone out to walk with the Americano,
and then he thought he discovered them entering the distant church.

He set off at once in pursuit, asking himself with an anxiety which almost
made him faint, "Are they to be married?"




CHAPTER XLII.


In those days the hymeneal laws of California were as easy as old shoes,
and people could espouse each other about as rapidly as they might want
to.

The consequence was that, although Ralph Thurstane and Clara Van Diemen
had only been two days in Monterey and had gone through no forms of
publication, they were actually being married when Coronado reached the
village church.

Leaning against the wall, with eyes as fixed and face as livid as if he
were a corpse from the neighboring cemetery, he silently witnessed a
ceremony which it would have been useless for him to interrupt, and then,
stepping softly out of a side door, lurked away.

He walked a quarter of a mile very fast, ran nearly another quarter of a
mile, turned into a by-road, sought its thickest underbrush, threw himself
on the ground, and growled. For once he had a heavier burden upon him than
he could bear in human presence, or bear quietly anywhere. He must be
alone; also he must weep and curse. He was in a state to tear his hair and
to beat his head against the earth. Refined as Coronado usually was,
admirably as he could imitate the tranquil gentleman of modern
civilization, he still had in him enough of the natural man to rave. For a
while he was as simple and as violent in his grief as ever was any
Celtiberian cave-dweller of the stone age.

Jealousy, disappointed love, disappointed greed, plans balked, labor lost,
perils incurred in vain! All the calamities that he could most dread
seemed to have fallen upon him together; he was like a man sucked by the
arms of a polypus, dying in one moment many deaths. We must, however, do
him the justice to believe that the wound which tore the sharpest was that
which lacerated his heart. At this time, when he realized that he had
altogether and forever lost Clara, he found that he loved her as he had
never yet believed himself capable of loving. Considering the nobility of
this passion, we must grant some sympathy to Coronado.

Unfortunate as he was, another misfortune awaited him. When he returned to
the house where Garcia lay, he found that the old man, his sole relative
and sole friend, had expired. To Coronado this dead body was the carcass
of all remaining hope. The exciting drama of struggle and expectation
which had so violently occupied him for the last six months, and which had
seemed to promise such great success, was over. Even if he could have
resolved to kill Clara, there was no longer anything to be gained by it,
for her money would not descend to Coronado. Even if he should kill