In the course of an hour the governor made his appearance, and as it was beginning to grow dark, we all climbed once more to the summit of the bluff to take a last look at the ship before she should be hidden from sight.  There was no appearance of activity on board, and the lateness of the hour made it improbable that Arnold and Robinson would return before morning.  We went back therefore to the empty government house, or “kazarm,” and spent half the night in fruitless conjectures as to the cause of the vessel’s late arrival and the nature of the news which she would bring.

With the earliest morning twilight, Dodd and I clambered again to the crest of the bluff, to assure ourselves by actual observation that the ship had not vanished like the Flying Dutchman under cover of darkness, and left us to mourn another disappointment.  There was little ground for fear.  Not only was the bark still in the position which she had previously occupied, but there had been another arrival during the night.  A large three-masted steamer, of apparently 2000 tons, was lying in the offing, and three small boats could be seen a few miles distant pulling swiftly toward the mouth of the river.  Great was the excitement which this discovery produced.  Dodd rushed furiously down the hill to the kazarm, shouting to the Major that there was a steamer in the gulf, and that boats were within five miles of the lighthouse.  In a few moments we were all gathered in a group on the highest point of the bluff, speculating upon the character of the mysterious steamer which had thus taken us by surprise, and watching the approach of the boats.  The largest of these was now within three miles, and our glasses enabled us to distinguish in the long, regular sweep of its oars, the practised stroke of a man-of-war’s crew, and in its stem-sheets the peculiar shoulder-straps of Russian officers.  The steamer was evidently a large war-ship, but what had, brought her to that remote, unfrequented part of the world we could not conjecture.

In half an hour more, two of the boats were abreast of lighthouse bluff, and we descended to the landing-place to meet them in a state of excitement not easily imagined.  Fourteen months had elapsed since we had heard from home, and the prospect of receiving letters and of getting once more to work was a sufficient excuse for unusual excitement.  The smallest boat was the first to reach the shore, and as it grated on the sandy beach an officer in blue naval uniform sprang out and introduced himself as Captain Sutton, of the Russian-American Telegraph Company’s bark Clara Bell, two months from San Francisco, with men and material for the construction of the line.  “Where have you been all summer?” demanded the Major as he shook hands with the captain; “we have been looking for you ever since June, and had about come to the conclusion that the work was abandoned.”  Captain Sutton replied that all of the Company’s