Glasses searched sky and water line, but in vain. Colonel Barcelo went from bastion to bastion calling to his side the gunners of each piece of artillery. Chance sentences which had fallen here and there now thickened into connected conversation, as little groups were formed. "Your words stirred up my brother-in-law this morning," Señora Valentino said in quick aside to Captain Farquharson, who had accompanied the consuls to the castle. "It was the eleventh hour. He asked me a blunt question and I could do nothing but give him a plain answer. He cannot harm us." "Fairbanks is not keen on this prize, Captain," moving her head thoughtfully. Señora Barcelo came to her sister's side. "Silvia, look through this spyglass--over that ledge, then to where that thin scroll of fog dips down to the water." Conversation ceased, and a dozen glasses scanned the spot. A strip of white rose into sight, glanced in the sun, darkened, then gleamed like a sunflash on ice. To the left was another, then another. Suddenly, four more projected into plain view on the right. "The fleet! The fleet!" chorused every side. Breezes of late forenoon freshened over the harbor. Headland and sky line cleared of feathery mist. The seven ships, every sail set, hove into full sight. Captain Farquharson, resting his hands on a parapet, scrutinized eagerly the nearing men-of-war. His wish framed a thought which he believed Fairbanks's coming vitalized. Thirty years ago Spain's nerveless hand fell from the Californias, leaving them to Mexico. Mexico's hold, feeble always, year by year had loosened. To-day would see the end. His daydream grew. The pushing, restless Saxon of Atlantic America, after overflowing the valley of the Mississippi, would not bring his civilization to the farthest West. Ford rivers, traverse deserts, fell forests as he might, at last he would meet a difficulty he could not surmount, the backfiring line of a civilization, virile as his own, wrought by the hand of his English cousin, and this day begun in the capital, Monterey. Another empire was about to come under Great Britain's sway. "Señors!" Comandante Barcelo's voice, low and tense, broke the stillness. Farquharson started from his reverie. With bellying sails the fleet came scudding on, the dark hulls scarcely touching the water. Fairbanks's flagship was in the lead, her commander's pennant flinging from the foremast, the union jack streaming above. Back from the leader, in triangular spread, as wild fowl move, followed the others, three on a side. "Señors, attention!" again from Barcelo. "Let us have understanding right here and now. You people have come here to-day to see a province pass from hand to hand, but," pointing to the cannon, "straight words from the throats of these jolly boys here shall speak a salute the aspiring English little expect. You, men of the consulate, go, tell your nations, California scorns any yoke."