CHAPTER I.

A crusader and A sign.

It was the 4th of August, 1854, off Cape Corrientes.  Morning was breaking over a heavy sea, and the closely-reefed topsails of a barque that ran before it bearing down upon the faint outline of the Mexican coast.  Already the white peak of Colima showed, ghost-like, in the east; already the long sweep of the Pacific was gathering strength and volume as it swept uninterruptedly into the opening Gulf of California.

As the cold light increased, it could be seen that the vessel showed evidence of a long voyage and stress of weather.  She had lost one of her spars, and her starboard davits rolled emptily.  Nevertheless, her rigging was taut and ship-shape, and her decks scrupulously clean.  Indeed, in that uncertain light, the only moving figure besides the two motionless shadows at the wheel was engaged in scrubbing the quarter-deck—­which, with its grated settees and stacked camp-chairs, seemed to indicate the presence of cabin passengers.  For the barque Excelsior, from New York to San Francisco, had discharged the bulk of her cargo at Callao, and had extended her liberal cabin accommodation to swell the feverish Californian immigration, still in its height.

Suddenly there was a slight commotion on deck.  An order, issued from some invisible depth of the cabin, was so unexpected that it had to be repeated sternly and peremptorily.  A bustle forward ensued, two or three other shadows sprang up by the bulwarks, then the two men bent over the wheel, the Excelsior slowly swung round on her heel, and, with a parting salutation to the coast, bore away to the northwest and the open sea again.

“What’s up now?” growled one of the men at the wheel to his companion, as they slowly eased up on the helm.

“’Tain’t the skipper’s, for he’s drunk as a biled owl, and ain’t stirred out of his bunk since eight bells,” said the other.  “It’s the first mate’s orders; but, I reckon, it’s the Senor’s idea.”

“Then we ain’t goin’ on to Mazatlan?”

“Not this trip, I reckon,” said the third mate, joining them.

“Why?”

The third mate turned and pointed to leeward.  The line of coast had already sunk enough to permit the faint silhouette of a trail of smoke to define the horizon line of sky.

“Steamer goin’ in, eh?”

“Yes.  D’ye see—­it might be too hot, in there!”

“Then the jig’s up?”

“No.  Suthin’s to be done—­north of St. Lucas.  Hush!”

He made a gesture of silence, although the conversation, since he had joined them, had been carried on in a continuous whisper.  A figure, evidently a passenger, had appeared on deck.  One or two of the foreign-looking crew who had drawn near the group, with a certain undue and irregular familiarity, now slunk away again.

The passenger was a shrewd, exact, rectangular-looking man, who had evidently never entirely succumbed to the freedom of the sea either in his appearance or habits.  He had not even his sea legs yet; and as the barque, with the full swell of the Pacific now on her weather bow, was plunging uncomfortably, he was fain to cling to the stanchions.  This did not, however, prevent him from noticing the change in her position, and captiously resenting it.