Todos Santos

: The Crusade Of The Excelsior

It was evident that the two strangers represented some exalted

military and ecclesiastical authority. This was shown in their dress--a

long-forgotten, half mediaeval costume, that to the imaginative

spectator was perfectly in keeping with their mysterious advent, and

to the more practical as startling as a masquerade. The foremost figure

wore a broad-brimmed hat of soft felt, with tarnished gold lace, and a

dark feathe
tucked in its recurved flap; a short cloak of fine black

cloth thrown over one shoulder left a buff leathern jacket and breeches,

ornamented with large round silver buttons, exposed until they were met

by high boots of untanned yellow buckskin that reached halfway up the

thigh. A broad baldric of green silk hung from his shoulder across his

breast, and supported at his side a long sword with an enormous

basket hilt, through which somewhat coquettishly peeped a white

lace handkerchief. Tall and erect, in spite of the grizzled hair and

iron-gray moustaches and wrinkled face of a man of sixty, he suddenly

halted on the deck with a military precision that made the jingling

chains and bits of silver on his enormous spurs ring again. He was

followed by an ecclesiastic of apparently his own age, but smoothly

shaven, clad in a black silk sotana and sash, and wearing the

old-fashioned oblong, curl-brimmed hat sacred to "Don Basilo," of the

modern opera. Behind him appeared the genial face of Senor Perkins,

shining with the benignant courtesy of a master of ceremonies.



"If this is a fair sample of the circus ashore, I'll take two tickets,"

whispered Crosby, who had recovered his audacity.



"I have the inexpressible honor," said Senor Perkins to Captain Bunker,

with a gracious wave of his hand towards the extraordinary figures, "to

present you to the illustrious Don Miguel Briones, Comandante of the

Presidio of Todos Santos, at present hidden in the fog, and the very

reverend and pious Padre Esteban, of the Mission of Todos Santos,

likewise invisible. When I state to you," he continued, with a slight

lifting of his voice, so as to include the curious passengers in

his explanation, "that, with very few exceptions, this is the usual

condition of the atmosphere at the entrance to the Mission and Presidio

of Todos Santos, and that the last exception took place thirty-five

years ago, when a ship entered the harbor, you will understand why these

distinguished gentlemen have been willing to waive the formality of your

waiting upon them first, and have taken the initiative. The illustrious

Comandante has been generous to exempt you from the usual port

regulations, and to permit you to wood and to water"--



"What port regulation is he talking of?" asked Captain Bunker testily.



"The Mexican regulations forbidding any foreign vessel to communicate

with the shore," returned Senor Perkins deprecatingly.



"Never heard of 'em. When were they given?"



The Senor turned and addressed a few words to the commander, who stood

apart in silent dignity.



"In 1792."



"In what?--Is he mad?" said Bunker. "Does he know what year this is?"



"The illustrious commander believes it to be the year of grace 1854,"

answered Senor Perkins quietly. "In the case of the only two vessels who

have touched here since 1792 the order was not carried out because they

were Mexican coasters. The illustrious Comandante explains that

the order he speaks of as on record distinctly referred to the ship

'Columbia, which belonged to the General Washington.'"



"General Washington!" echoed Bunker, angrily staring at the Senor.

"What's this stuff? Do you mean to say they don't know any history later

than our old Revolutionary War? Haven't they heard of the United States

among them? Nor California--that we took from them during the late war?"



"Nor how we licked 'em out of their boots, and that's saying a good

deal," whispered Crosby, glancing at the Comandante's feet.



Senor Perkins raised a gentle, deprecating hand.



"For fifty years the Presidio and the Mission of Todos Santos have had

but this communication with the outer world," he said blandly. "Hidden

by impenetrable fogs from the ocean pathway at their door, cut off by

burning and sterile deserts from the surrounding country, they have

preserved a trust and propagated a faith in enforced but not unhappy

seclusion. The wars that have shaken mankind, the dissensions that have

even disturbed the serenity of their own nation on the mainland,

have never reached them here. Left to themselves, they have created

a blameless Arcadia and an ideal community within an extent of twenty

square leagues. Why should we disturb their innocent complacency and

tranquil enjoyment by information which cannot increase and might impair

their present felicity? Why should we dwell upon a late political and

international episode which, while it has been a benefit to us, has been

a humiliation to them as a nation, and which might not only imperil our

position as guests, but interrupt our practical relations to the wood

and water, with which the country abounds?"



He paused, and before the captain could speak, turned to the silent

Commander, addressed him in a dozen phrases of fluent and courteous

Spanish, and once more turned to Captain Bunker.



"I have told him you are touched to the heart with his courtesy, which

you recognize as coming from the fit representative of the great Mexican

nation. He reciprocates your fraternal emotion, and begs you to consider

the Presidio and all that it contains, at your disposition and the

disposition of your friends--the passengers, particularly those fair

ladies," said Senor Perkins, turning with graceful promptitude towards

the group of lady passengers, and slightly elevating himself on the tips

of his neat boots, "whose white hands he kisses, and at whose feet he

lays the devotion of a Mexican caballero and officer."



He waved his hand towards the Comandante, who, stepping forward,

swept the deck with his plumed hat before each of the ladies in solemn

succession. Recovering himself, he bowed more stiffly to the male

passengers, picked his handkerchief out of the hilt of his sword,

gracefully wiped his lips, pulled the end of his long gray moustache,

and became again rigid.



"The reverend father," continued Senor Perkins, turning towards the

priest, "regrets that the rules of his order prevent his extending the

same courtesy to these ladies at the Mission. But he hopes to meet them

at the Presidio, and they will avail themselves of his aid and counsel

there and everywhere."



Father Esteban, following the speaker's words with a gracious and ready

smile, at once moved forward among the passengers, offering an antique

snuff-box to the gentlemen, or passing before the ladies with slightly

uplifted benedictory palms and a caressing paternal gesture. Mrs.

Brimmer, having essayed a French sentence, was delighted and half

frightened to receive a response from the ecclesiastic, and speedily

monopolized him until he was summoned by the Commander to the returning

boat.



"A most accomplished man, my dear," said Mrs. Brimmer, as the

Excelsior's cannon again thundered after the retiring oars, "like all of

his order. He says, although Don Miguel does not speak French, that

his secretary does; and we shall have no difficulty in making ourselves

understood."



"Then you really intend to go ashore?" said Miss Keene timidly.



"Decidedly," returned Mrs. Brimmer potentially. "It would be most

unpolite, not to say insulting, if we did not accept the invitation.

You have no idea of the strictness of Spanish etiquette. Besides, he may

have heard of Mr. Brimmer."



"As his last information was only up to 1792, he might have forgotten

it," said Crosby gravely. "So perhaps it would be safer to go on the

general invitation."



"As Mr. Brimmer's ancestors came over on the Mayflower, long before

1792, it doesn't seem so very impossible, if it comes to that," said

Mrs. Brimmer, with her usual unanswerable naivete; "provided always that

you are not joking, Mr. Crosby. One never knows when you are serious."



"Mrs. Brimmer is quite right; we must all go. This is no mere

formality," said Senor Perkins, who had returned to the ladies. "Indeed,

I have myself promised the Comandante to bring YOU," he turned towards

Miss Keene, "if you will permit Mrs. Markham and myself to act as your

escort. It was Don Miguel's express request."



A slight flush of pride suffused the cheek of the young girl, but the

next moment she turned diffidently towards Mrs. Brimmer.



"We must all go together," she said; "shall we not?"



"You see your triumphs have begun already," said Brace, with a nervous

smile. "You need no longer laugh at me for predicting your fate in San

Francisco."



Miss Keene cast a hurried glance around her, in the faint hope--she

scarcely knew why--that Mr. Hurlstone had overheard the Senor's

invitation; nor could she tell why she was disappointed at not seeing

him. But he had not appeared on deck during the presence of their

strange visitors; nor was he in the boat which half an hour later

conveyed her to the shore. He must have either gone in one of the other

boats, or fulfilled his strange threat of remaining on the ship.



The boats pulled away together towards the invisible shore, piloted by

Captain Bunker, the first officer, and Senor Perkins in the foremost

boat. It had grown warmer, and the fog that stole softly over them

touched their faces with the tenderness of caressing fingers. Miss

Keene, wrapped up in the stern sheets of the boat, gave way to the

dreamy influence of this weird procession through the water, retaining

only perception enough to be conscious of the singular illusions of the

mist that alternately thickened and lightened before their bow. At times

it seemed as if they were driving full upon a vast pier or breakwater of

cold gray granite, that, opening to let the foremost boat pass, closed

again before them; at times it seemed as if they had diverged from their

course, and were once more upon the open sea, the horizon a far-off

line of vanishing color; at times, faint lights seemed to pierce the

gathering darkness, or to move like will-o'-wisps across the smooth

surface, when suddenly the keel grated on the sand. A narrow but

perfectly well defined strip of palpable strand appeared before them;

they could faintly discern the moving lower limbs of figures whose

bodies were still hidden in the mist; then they were lifted from the

boats; the first few steps on dry land carried them out of the fog that

seemed to rise like a sloping roof from the water's edge, leaving them

under its canopy in the full light of actual torches held by a group of

picturesquely dressed people before the vista of a faintly lit, narrow,

ascending street. The dim twilight of the closing day lingered under

this roof of fog, which seemed to hang scarcely a hundred feet above

them, and showed a wall or rampart of brown adobe on their right that

extended nearly to the water; to the left, at the distance of a few

hundred yards, another low brown wall appeared; above it rose a fringe

of foliage, and, more distant and indistinct, two white towers, that

were lost in the nebulous gray.



One of the figures dressed in green jackets, who seemed to be in

authority, now advanced, and, after a moment's parley with Senor Perkins

while the Excelsior's passengers were being collected from the different

boats, courteously led the way along the wall of the fortification.

Presently a low opening or gateway appeared, followed by the challenge

of a green-jacketed sentry, and the sentence, "Dios y Libertad" It

was repeated in the interior of a dusky courtyard, surrounded by a

low corridor, where a dozen green-jacketed men of aboriginal type and

complexion, carrying antique flintlocks, were drawn up as a guard of

honor.



"The Comandante," said Senor Perkins, "directs me to extend his

apologies to the Senor Capitano Bunker for withholding the salute which

is due alike to his country, himself, and his fair company; but fifty

years of uninterrupted peace and fog have left his cannon inadequate to

polite emergencies, and firmly fixed the tampion of his saluting gun.

But he places the Presidio at your disposition; you will be pleased to

make its acquaintance while it is still light; and he will await you in

the guard-room."



Left to themselves, the party dispersed like dismissed school-children

through the courtyard and corridors, and in the enjoyment of their

release from a month's confinement on shipboard stretched their cramped

limbs over the ditches, walls, and parapets, to the edge of the glacis.



Everywhere a ruin that was picturesque, a decay that was refined and

gentle, a neglect that was graceful, met the eye; the sharp exterior and

reentering angles were softly rounded and obliterated by overgrowths

of semitropical creepers; the abatis was filled by a natural brake of

scrub-oak and manzanita; the clematis flung its long scaling ladders

over the escarpment, until Nature, slowly but securely investing

the doomed fortress, had lifted a victorious banner of palm from the

conquered summit of the citadel! Some strange convulsions of the earth

had completed the victory; the barbette guns of carved and antique

bronze commemorating fruitless and long-forgotten triumphs were

dismounted; one turned in the cheeks of its carriage had a trunnion

raised piteously in the air like an amputated stump; another, sinking

through its rotting chassis, had buried itself to its chase in the

crumbling adobe wall. But above and beyond this gentle chaos of defense

stretched the real ramparts and escarpments of Todos Santos--the

impenetrable and unassailable fog! Corroding its brass and iron with

saline breath, rotting its wood with unending shadow, sapping its

adobe walls with perpetual moisture, and nourishing the obliterating

vegetation with its quickening blood, as if laughing to scorn the puny

embattlements of men--it still bent around the crumbling ruins the

tender grace of an invisible but all-encompassing arm.



Senor Perkins, who had acted as cicerone to the party, pointed out these

various mutations with no change from his usual optimism.



"Protected by their peculiar isolation during the late war, there was

no necessity for any real fortification of the place. Nevertheless, it

affords some occupation and position for our kind friend, Don Miguel,

and so serves a beneficial purpose. This little gun," he continued,

stopping to attentively examine a small but beautifully carved bronze

six-pounder, which showed indications of better care than the others,

"seems to be the saluting-gun Don Miguel spoke of. For the last fifty

years it has spoken only the language of politeness and courtesy, and

yet through want of care the tampion, as you see, has become swollen and

choked in its mouth."



"How true in a larger sense," murmured Mrs. Markham, "the habit of

courtesy alone preserves the fluency of the heart."



"I know you two are saying something very clever," said Mrs. Brimmer,

whose small French slippers and silk stockings were beginning to show

their inadequacy to a twilight ramble in the fog; "but I am so slow, and

I never catch the point. Do repeat it slowly."



"The Senor was only showing us how they managed to shut up a smooth bore

in this country," said Crosby gravely. "I wonder when we're going

to have dinner. I suppose old Don Quixote will trot out some of his

Senoritas. I want to see those choir girls that sang so stunningly a

while ago."



"I suppose you mean the boys--for they're all boys in the Catholic

choirs--but then, perhaps you are joking again. Do tell me if you are,

for this is really amusing. I may laugh--mayn't I?" As the discomfited

humorist fell again to the rear amidst the laughter of the others, Mrs.

Brimmer continued naively to Senor Perkins,--"Of course, as Don Miguel

is a widower, there must be daughters or sisters-in-law who will meet

us. Why, the priest, you know--even he--must have nieces. Really, it's

a serious question--if we are to accept his hospitality in a social

way. Why don't you ask HIM?" she said, pointing to the green-jacketed

subaltern who was accompanying them.



Senor Perkins looked half embarrassed.



"Repeat your question, my dear lady, and I will translate it."



"Ask him if there are any women at the Presidio."



Senor Perkins drew the subaltern aside. Presently he turned to Mrs.

Brimmer.



"He says there are four: the wife of the baker, the wife of the saddler,

the daughter of the trumpeter, and the niece of the cook."



"Good heavens! we can't meet THEM," said Mrs. Brimmer.



Senor Perkins hesitated.



"Perhaps I ought to have told you," he said blandly, "that the old

Spanish notions of etiquette are very strict. The wives of the officials

and higher classes do not meet strangers on a first visit, unless they

are well known."



"That isn't it," said Winslow, joining them excitedly. "I've heard the

whole story. It's a good joke. Banks has been bragging about us all, and

saying that these ladies had husbands who were great merchants, and, as

these chaps consider that all trade is vulgar, you know, they believe

we are not fit to associate with their women, don't you see? All, except

one--Miss Keene. She's considered all right. She's to be introduced to

the Commander's women, and to the sister of the Alcalde."



"She will do nothing of the kind," said Miss Keene indignantly. "If

these ladies are not to be received with me, we'll all go back to the

ship together."



She spoke with a quick and perfectly unexpected resolution and

independence, so foreign to her usual childlike half dependent

character, that her hearers were astounded. Senor Perkins gazed at

her thoughtfully; Brace, Crosby, and Winslow admiringly; her sister

passengers with doubt and apprehension.



"There must be some mistake," said Senor Perkins gently. "I will

inquire."



He was absent but a few moments. When he returned, his face was beaming.



"It's a ridiculous misapprehension. Our practical friend Banks, in his

zealous attempts to impress the Comandante's secretary, who knows a

little English, with the importance of Mr. Brimmer's position as a large

commission merchant, has, I fear, conveyed only the idea that he was a

kind of pawnbroker; while Mr. Markham's trade in hides has established

him as a tanner; and Mr. Banks' own flour speculations, of which he

is justly proud, have been misinterpreted by him as the work of a

successful baker!"



"And what idea did he convey about YOU?" asked Crosby audaciously; "it

might be interesting to us to know, for our own satisfaction."



"I fear they did not do me the honor to inquire," replied Senor Perkins,

with imperturbable good-humor; "there are some persons, you know, who

carry all their worldly possessions palpably about with them. I am one

of them. Call me a citizen of the world, with a strong leniency towards

young and struggling nationalities; a traveler, at home anywhere; a

delighted observer of all things, an admirer of brave men, the devoted

slave of charming women--and you have, in one word, a passenger of the

good ship Excelsior."



For the first time, Miss Keene noticed a slight irony in Senor Perkins'

superabundant fluency, and that he did not conceal his preoccupation

over the silent saluting gun he was still admiring. The approach of Don

Miguel and Padre Esteban with a small bevy of ladies, however, quickly

changed her thoughts, and detached the Senor from her side. Her first

swift feminine impression of the fair strangers was that they were plain

and dowdy, an impression fully shared by the other lady passengers.

But her second observation, that they were more gentle, fascinating,

child-like, and feminine than her own countrywomen, was purely her own.

Their loose, undulating figures, guiltless of stays; their extravagance

of short, white, heavily flounced skirt, which looked like a petticoat;

their lightly wrapped, formless, and hooded shoulders and heads, lent a

suggestion of dishabille that Mrs. Brimmer at once resented.



"They might, at least, have dressed themselves," she whispered to Mrs.

Markham.



"I really believe," returned Mrs. Markham, "they've got no bodices on!"



The introductions over, a polyglot conversation ensued in French by the

Padre and Mrs. Brimmer, and in broken English by Miss Chubb, Miss Keene,

and the other passengers with the Commander's secretary, varied by

occasional scraps of college Latin from Mr. Crosby, the whole aided by

occasional appeals to Senor Perkins. The darkness increasing, the

party reentered the courtyard, and, passing through the low-studded

guard-room, entered another corridor, which looked upon a second

court, enclosed on three sides, the fourth opening upon a broad plaza,

evidently the public resort of the little town. Encompassing this open

space, a few red-tiled roofs could be faintly seen in the gathering

gloom. Chocolate and thin spiced cakes were served in the veranda,

pending the preparations for a more formal banquet. Already Miss Keene

had been singled out from her companions for the special attentions of

her hosts, male and female, to her embarrassment and confusion. Already

Dona Isabel, the sister of the Alcalde, had drawn her aside, and, with

caressing frankness, had begun to question her in broken English,--



"But Miss Keene is no name. The Dona Keene is of nothing."



"Well, you may call me Eleanor, if you like," said Miss Keene, smiling.



"Dona Leonor--so; that is good," said Dona Isabel, clapping her hands

like a child. "But how are you?"



"I beg your pardon," said Miss Keene, greatly amused, "but I don't

understand."



"Ah, Caramba! What are you, little one?" Seeing that her guest still

looked puzzled, she continued,--"Ah! Mother of God! Why are your friends

so polite to you? Why does every one love you so?"



"Do they? Well," stammered Miss Keene, with one of her rare, dazzling

smiles, and her cheeks girlishly rosy with naive embarrassment, "I

suppose they think I am pretty."



"Pretty! Ah, yes, you are!" said Dona Isabel, gazing at her curiously.

"But it is not all that."



"What is it, then?" asked Miss Keene demurely.



"You are a--a--Dama de Grandeza!"



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