e quarters
than one.

"There are also many of the presents rejected by the Mikado,
somewhere," he added carelessly. "But I could not find them. They
must have found their way to the bottom of the hold during one of the
storms we encountered on our way from Sitka."

He certainly looked the fairy godfather, and quite impartial as he
distributed his offerings with a chosen word to each; his memory for
little characteristics was as remarkable as for names and faces. He had
taken off his cap on deck, and the breeze had ruffled his thick fair
hair, brought the blood to his thin cheeks. The lines of his face, cut
by privation and anxiety and illness, had almost disappeared with the
renewed elasticity of the flesh, and his blue eyes were wide open, and
sparkling in sympathy with the pleasure of his guests and the success
of his own strategy. These few insignificant Spaniards dislodged, a
half-dozen forts in this harbor, and the combined navies of the world
might be defied; while a great chain of hungry settlements fattened and
prospered exceedingly on the beneficence of the most fertile land in
all the Americas.

XII

The eastern mountains looked very close from the crest of La Bellissima
and of a singular transparency and variety of hue. It was as if the
white masses of cloud sailing low overhead flung down great splashes of
color from prismatic stores stolen from the sun. There was a vivid
pale green on the long sweep of a rounding slope, deep violet and pale
purple in dimple and hollow, red showing through green on a tongue of
land running down from the north; and on the lower ridges and little
islands, pale and dark blue, and the most exquisite fields of lavender.
This last tint was reflected in the water immediately below the ridge,
and farther out there were lakelets of pale green, as if the islands,
too, had the power to mirror themselves when the sea itself was glass.

Santiago, Davidov, Carolina Xime'no, Delfina Rivera, Concha and
Rezanov, had climbed to the ridge. The other young people had given out
halfway up the steep and tangled ascent and returned to the beach.
Dona Ignacia immediately after dinner had frankly asked her host for
the hospitality of his stateroom. She and her little ones must have
their siesta, and the good lady was convinced that so high and mighty a
personage as the Russian Chamberlain was all the chaperon the
proprieties demanded.

Four of the party strayed along the crest in