march upon the Government, and by night would be in possession. It was
perhaps an evidence of her newly awakened and larger comprehension that
she took no thought of her loss of home and property,--perhaps there was
little to draw her to it now,--but was conscious only of a more terrible
catastrophe--a catastrophe to which she was partly accessory, of
which any other woman would have warned her husband--or at least those
officers of the Fort whose business it was to--Ah, yes! the officers of
the Fort--only just opposite to her! She trembled, and yet flushed with
an inspiration. It was not too late yet--why not warn them NOW?

But how? A message sent by Saucelito and the steamboat to San
Francisco--the usual way--would not reach them tonight. To go herself,
rowing directly across in the dingey, would be the only security of
success. If she could do it? It was a long pull--the sea was getting
up--but she would try.

She waited until the last man had stepped into the boat, in nervous
dread of some one remaining. Then, when the boat had vanished round
the Point again, she ran back to the cottage, arrayed herself in her
husband's pilot coat, hat, and boots, and launched the dingey. It was a
heavy, slow, but luckily a stanch and seaworthy boat. It was not until
she was well off shore that she began to feel the full fury of the wind
and waves, and knew the difficulty and danger of her undertaking. She
had decided that her shortest and most direct course was within a few
points of the wind, but the quartering of the waves on the broad bluff
bows of the boat tended to throw it to leeward, a movement that, while
it retarded her forward progress, no doubt saved the little craft from
swamping. Again, the feebleness and shortness of her stroke, which never
impelled her through a rising wave, but rather lifted her half way up
its face, prevented the boat from taking much water, while her steadfast