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 of dreaming."

Concha shrugged her shoulders and made no reply at the moment. As they
sailed toward the east before turning south again, she pointed across
the great silvery sheet of water melting into the misty southern
horizon, to a high ridge of mountains that looked to be a continuation
of the San Bruno range behind the Mission, but slanting farther west
with the coast line.

"Those are behind our rancho, senor--Rancho El Pilar, or Las Pulgas, as
some prefer. Perhaps my father will take you there. I hope so, for we
love to go, and may not too often; my father i