I know not if Peleg kept his word with his host.  It is said that the holy fathers at the Mission that night heard a loud chanting in the plaza, as of the heathens singing psalms through their noses; that for many days after an odor of salt codfish prevailed in the settlement; that a dozen hard nutmegs, which were unfit for spice or seed, were found in the possession of the wife of the baker, and that several bushels of shoe pegs, which bore a pleasing resemblance to oats, but were quite inadequate to the purposes of provender, were discovered in the stable of the blacksmith.  But when the reader reflects upon the sacredness of a Yankee trader’s word, the stringent discipline of the Spanish port regulations, and the proverbial indisposition of my countrymen to impose upon the confidence of a simple people, he will at once reject this part of the story.

A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798, awoke the Commander.  The sun was shining brightly, and the storm had ceased.  He sat up in bed, and through the force of habit rubbed his left eye.  As the remembrance of the previous night came back to him, he jumped from his couch and ran to the window.  There was no ship in the bay.  A sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he rubbed both of his eyes.  Not content with this, he consulted the metallic mirror which hung beside his crucifix.  There was no mistake; the Commander had a visible second eye—­a right one—­as good, save for the purposes of vision, as the left.

Whatever might have been the true secret of this transformation, but one opinion prevailed at San Carlos.  It was one of those rare miracles vouchsafed a pious Catholic community as an evidence to the heathen, through the intercession of the blessed San Carlos himself.  That their beloved Commander, the temporal defender of the Faith, should be the recipient of this miraculous manifestation was most fit and seemly.  The Commander himself was reticent; he could not tell a falsehood—­he dared not tell the truth.  After all, if the good folk of San Carlos believed that the powers of his right eye were actually restored, was it wise and discreet for him to undeceive them?  For the first time in his life the Commander thought of policy—­for the first time he quoted that text which has been the lure of so many well-meaning but easy Christians, of being “all things to all men.”  Infeliz Hermenegildo Salvatierra!

For by degrees an ominous whisper crept though the little settlement.  The Right Eye of the Commander, although miraculous, seemed to exercise a baleful effect upon the beholder.  No one could look at it without winking.  It was cold, hard, relentless, and unflinching.  More than that, it seemed to be endowed with a dreadful prescience—­a faculty of seeing through and into the inarticulate thoughts of those it looked upon.  The soldiers of the garrison obeyed the eye rather than the voice of their commander, and answered his glance rather than his lips in questioning.  The servants could