Rezanov awaited the canoes in the prow of the ship. He wore undress uniform and a cap instead of the cocked 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 embarrassed 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 de-manded 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 re-sponsible."
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. San-tiago and Sturgis had gone down to the cabin to reassure 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 glass, their con-sciences 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 rami-fications 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 altitude 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 grasses; 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 col-ors 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 glass 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 mass 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 mass 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."
