Chapter 12 - Page 2

"God forbid. And do not remind me of ennui and disillusions. I have forgotten both in California. Perhaps, after all, I shall not return to St. Petersburg. There is a vast empire here--"

"But it is not yours or Russia's to rule, Excellency," she interrupted him softly.

He did not color nor start, but met her eyes with his deep amused glance. "I, too, can dream, senorita. Of a great and wonderful kingdom--that never will exist, perhaps. I have always been called a dreamer, but the habit has grown since I came to this lovely unreal land of yours."

"Have you the intention to take it from us, Excellency?" she asked quietly.

"Would you betray me if you thought I had?"

Her eyes responded for a moment to the magnetism of his, and then she drew herself up.

"No, senor, I could not betray a man who had been our guest, and Spain needs no assistance from a weak girl to hold her own against Russia."

"Well said! I kiss your hands, as they say in Vienna. But we must sail again. I told them to be ready at three o'clock."

Dalliance with the most alluring girl he had ever known was all very well, but the day's work was not yet done. When they returned to the ship he deliberately engaged all the Spaniards in a game of cards, ordered cigarettes and a bowl of punch for their refreshment, and then the Juno steered south.

They sailed swiftly past Nuestra Senorita de los Angeles and the eastern side of Alcatraz, Rezanov sweeping every inch with his glass; more slowly past the peninsula where it came down in a succession of rough hills almost in a straight line from the Presidio, ascending to a high outpost of solid rock, whence it turned abruptly to the south in a waving line of steep irregular cliffs, harsh, barren, intersected with gullies. Then the land became suddenly as flat as the sea, save for the shifting dunes: the desert porch of the great fertile valley hidden from the water by the waves of sand, but indicated by its rampart of mountains. The shallow water curved abruptly inward between the rocky mass on the right and a gentler incline and point two miles below. At its head was the "Battery of Yerba Buena," facing the island from which it took its name. Rezanov scrupulously kept his word and did not raise his glass, but one contemptuous glance satisfied his curiosity. His eye rolled over the steep hills that were designed to bristle with forts, and, as sometimes happened, when he spoke again to Concha, whom he kept close to his side, for the other girls bored him, his words did not express the workings of his mind.

"Athens has no finer site than this," he said. "I should like to see a white marble city on these hills, and on that plain, when all the sand dunes are leveled. Not in our time, perhaps! But, as I told you, I have surrendered myself to the habit