"Yerba--Buena--to-morrow," Farquharson muttered, anger clinching his teeth, as his horse, under a vicious jab of the spur, dashed forward and into the town, unceremoniously leaving Brown. "Signaling, hey? Them cannons were boomers, all right. I've been noticing that smoke, back up on the hills, all the time I was talkin' to the Cap', and I expected to see or hear somethin' answer back." He walked leisurely through the plaza and reached the city just in time to see Farquharson and Señora Valentino ride away in hurried gallop. "Ah, ah! Simon J. Brown, get to work yourself. Find a horse and light out for the north." CHAPTER XXVI BRAVING THE STORM "A hurricane in midsummer in the temperate zone. A raging ocean, named Pacific. A non-combatant admiral commanding a fighting fleet. What a diabolical combination!" "Add, the hurricane is piling water on the swelling tides at Half Moon Bay. Soon, the Cyane, willy, nilly, deserts her sand-banks," was Señora Valentino's doleful contribution. "And the Yankee commodore flies his flag over Monterey, appending the province to Yankeedom. Blast it all! I'd give a kingdom----" He paused. "'For a horse,' does your Shakespeare say?" smiling a little. "There is only one thing left. If the mountain does not come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain." "Señora, put out in a small boat to the flagship, you mean? It would be futile, and surely end in death. Now, let us go to the top of the hill." A bluff thickly wooded with scrub oak had sheltered them. Their sure-footed horses nimbly climbed a precipitous path zigzagging to the summit. "See, señora. Look, if you can." They were on Point Lobos crest, overhanging San Francisco Bay, with Yerba Buena village straggling along the harbor line. Grit and sand whistled through the air, biting the skin, choking the throat and stinging the eyes. With arched backs and drooping heads their mounts met the storm. A hundred invisible angry hands buffeted the man and woman thus inquisitively breasting the humor of the elements. The wind lessened, as wearied by too great exertion. The spiteful sand-drive ceased. Dimly at first, then plainly, yellow dunes hummocked into sight. Speaking the fury of a half hemisphere of water rose the crescendo of the surf. Through the thinning haze they peered toward the west. There was the sea. Miles away, under bare poles, save here and there a strip of canvas, struggled the English fleet, each ship face to the gale, the spyglass showed them, now rising on beam end; now sliding prow downward; then teetering and dancing. "Señora, Fairbanks dares not enter the harbor. It is equally impossible for me to get out to him. The storm is rising again. We must return to the village." Gusts of wind pursued them as they hastened over yielding sand and wild strawberry-plot, or broke through scrub-brush and tree-growth. Pitiless dust-clouds drove them again from the open to the protection of a bluff.