to her movements. Again he sauntered
down towards the point with apparent carelessness, but with a beating
heart. San Francisco was to be his first destination; and beyond that
golden gate lay the great world, and home, and children, and an
honourable life. The boat was coming, manned by three men; and he
stepped proudly and resolutely to meet them on the shore. To be sure
there was, somewhere behind him, one miserable constable with his
miserable musket, but he had no doubt of being able to dispose of that
difficulty with the aid of his allies, the boatmen. The boat could not
get quite close to the beach, because they had to run her into a kind of
cove where the water was calm and unencumbered with large tangled weeds.
O'Brien, when he reached the beach, plunged into the water to prevent
delay, and struggled through the thick matted seaweed to the boat. The
water was deeper than he expected, and when he came to the boat he
needed the aid of the boatmen to climb over the gunwale. Instead of
giving him this aid the rascals allowed him to flounder there, and kept
looking to the shore, where the constable had by this time appeared with
his musket. The moment he showed himself, the three boatmen cried out
together, 'We surrender!' and invited him on board; where he instantly
took up a hatchet--no doubt provided by the ship for that purpose, and
stove the boat. O'Brien saw he was betrayed, and on being ordered to
move along with the constable and boatmen towards the station, he
refused to stir--hoping, in fact, by his resistance, to provoke the
constable to shoot him. However, the three boatmen seized on him, and
lifted him up from the ground, and carried him wherever the constable
ordered. His custody was thereafter made more rigorous, and he was
shortly after removed from Maria Island to Port Arthur station."

To this brief narrative the following "note" is appended in the work
from which we have just quoted:--

"Ellis, the captain of the schooner, was some months after seized at San
Francisco by Mr. M'Manus and others, brought by night out of his ship,
and carried into the country to undergo his trial under a tree,
whereupon, if found guilty, he was destined to swing. M'Manus set out
his indictment; and it proves how much Judge Lynch's method of
administering justice in those early days of California excelled
anything we know of law or justice in Ireland--that Ellis, for want of
sufficient and satisfactory evidence then