The boat started with a strong breeze and a very large sail, was watched from the deck until she was out of sight, and has never been heard of since.  There was, of coarse, much speculation as to their fate, some contending that the boat must have been capsized in San Pablo Bay, and that all were lost; others contending that the crew had murdered the officers for the money, and then escaped; but, so far as I know, not a man of that crew has ever been seen or heard of since.  When at last the boat was ready for us, we started, leaving all hands, save the commodore, impressed with the belief that we were going on some errand connected with the loss of the missing boat and crew of the St. Mary.  We sailed directly north, up the bay and across San Pablo, reached the month of Sonoma Creek about dark, and during the night worked up the creek some twelve miles by means of the tide, to a landing called the Embarcadero.  To maintain the secrecy which the commodore had enjoined on us, McLane and I agreed to keep up the delusion by pretending to be on a marketing expedition to pick up chickens, pigs, etc., for the mess of the Columbus, soon to depart for home.

Leaving the midshipman and four sailors to guard the boat, we started on foot with the other four for Sonoma Town, which we soon reached.  It was a simple open square, around which were some adobe-houses, that of General Vallejo occupying one side.  On another was an unfinished two-story adobe building, occupied as a barrack by Bracken’s company.  We soon found Captain Brackett, and I told him that I intended to take Nash a prisoner and convey him back to Monterey to answer for his mutinous behavior.  I got an old sergeant of his company, whom I had known in the Third Artillery, quietly to ascertain the whereabouts of Nash, who was a bachelor, stopping with the family of a lawyer named Green.  The sergeant soon returned, saying that Nash had gone over to Napa, but would be back that evening; so McLane and I went up to a farm of some pretensions, occupied by one Andreas Hoepner, with a pretty Sitka wife, who lived a couple of miles above Sonoma, and we bought of him some chickens, pigs, etc.  We then visited Governor Boggs’s family and that of General Vallejo, who was then, as now, one of the most prominent and influential natives of California.  About dark I learned that Nash had come back, and then, giving Brackett orders to have a cart ready at the corner of the plaza, McLane and I went to the house of Green.  Posting an armed sailor on each side of the house, we knocked at the door and walked in.  We found Green, Nash, and two women, at supper.  I inquired if Nash were in, and was first answered “No,” but one of the women soon pointed to him, and he rose.  We were armed with pistols, and the family was evidently alarmed.  I walked up to him and took his arm, and told him to come along with me.  He asked me, “Where?” and I said, “Monterey.”  “Why?” I would explain that more at leisure.  Green