garden,—­here he had looked forward to peace with the passing of the ship,—­and now?  The sound of voices and laughter suddenly grated upon his ear.  He had heard those voices before.  Their distinctness startled him until he became aware that he was standing before a broken, half-rotting door that permitted a glimpse of the courtyard of the neighboring house.  He glided quickly past it without pausing, but in that glimpse beheld Mrs. Brimmer and Miss Chubb half reclining in the corridor—­in the attitude he had often seen them on the deck of the ship—­talking and laughing with a group of Mexican gallants.  A feeling of inconceivable loathing and aversion took possession of him.  Was it to this he was returning after his despairing search for oblivion?  Their empty, idle laughter seemed to ring mockingly in his ears as he hurried on, scarce knowing whither, until he paused before the broken cactus hedge and crumbling wall that faced the Embarcadero.  A glance over the hedge showed him that the strip of beach was deserted.  He looked up the narrow street; it was empty.  A few rapid strides across it gained him the shadow of the sea-wall of the Presidio, unchecked and unhindered.  The ebbing tide had left a foot or two of narrow shingle between the sea and the wall.  He crept along this until, a hundred yards distant, the sea-wall reentered inland around a bastion at the entrance of a moat half filled at high tide by the waters of the bay, but now a ditch of shallow pools, sand, and debris.  He leaned against the bastion, and looked over the softly darkening water.

How quiet it looked, and, under that vaporous veil, how profound and inscrutable!  How easy to slip into its all-embracing arms, and sink into its yielding bosom, leaving behind no stain, trace, or record!  A surer oblivion than the Church, which could not absolve memory, grant forgetfulness, nor even hide the ghastly footprints of its occupants.  Here was obliteration.  But was he sure of that?  He thought of the body of the murdered Peruvian, laid out at the feet of the Council by this same fickle and uncertain sea; he thought of his own distorted face subjected to the cold curiosity of these aliens or the contemptuous pity of his countrymen.  But that could be avoided.  It was easy for him—­a good swimmer—­to reach a point far enough out in the channel for the ebbing tides to carry him past that barrier of fog into the open and obliterating ocean.  And then, at least, it might seem as if he had attempted to escape—­indeed, if he cared, he might be able to keep afloat until he was picked up by some passing vessel, bound to a distant land!  The self-delusion pleased him, and seemed to add the clinching argument to his resolution.  It was not suicide; it was escape—­certainly no more than escape—­he intended!  And this miserable sophism of self-apology, the last flashes of expiring conscience, helped to light up his pale, determined face with satisfaction.  He began coolly to divest himself of his coat.