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Updated: June 28, 2025
The Pacific binds the hills of California in a sapphire zone, unflecked by a single sail in sight, save the retreating trader, which is flitting around "Punta de los Pinos." It is July, 1840. The Mexican ensign flutters in the plaza of Monterey, the capital of Alta California. Miguel Peralta dismounts and crosses himself, murmuring, "Sea por Dios y la Santissima Virgen." His duty is done.
Overhead the vault of heaven was unflecked by a single cloud, though far away on the eastern sea-rim a faintly curling bank gave promise of a breeze before the sun rose much higher. At a signal from Oliver the second mate pulled up, and he, Harvey, and the chief mate again held a brief consultation.
Overhead was a tunefully unflecked sky and into the shadows crept a richness of furtively underlying color and echoes of color. It was all vivid and beautiful and the girl standing there seemed to dominate its vividness and its beauty.
But if you see a ship of that sort running before you, against the wind, that is very bad! It means that all on board will be drowned. The luminous blankness circling us continued to remain unflecked for less than an hour. Then out of the horizon toward which we steamed, a small grey vagueness began to grow. It lengthened fast, and seemed a cloud.
Every day the veil of morning mist rose lightly from the woods, uncurtaining the wintry spectacle, and melting into the brilliant azure of an unflecked sky; every night the moon rose without a breath of wind, without a cloud; and all the branch-work of the trees, where they stood in the open fields, lay reflected clean and sharp on the whitened ground.
Not a breath of air moved. The green expanse about him swept upward like a wave but unflecked, motionless, except for the big Pine which, that far away, looked like a bit of green spray, spouting on its very crest. "Old man," he muttered, "you know you know." And as to a brother he climbed toward it.
He looked up into a blue unflecked sky. The tireless hum of insects made murmurous music all about him. The air was vocal with the notes of nesting birds. His eyes closed drowsily. When he opened them again, the sun was high in the heavens. He saddled and took the trail. Within the hour he knew that he was lost.
The sky overhead was of veiled blue, growing gradually more toneless as the light faded, and was unflecked by any cloud, except where, high in the zenith, a fleece of rosy vapour still caught the light of the sunken sun, and flamed with the soft radiance of some snow-summit.
That ghost of evening's twilight, the sad gray of dawn, had retreated, but not before the crimson rays of sunrise. The unflecked arc above was a hard and steely blue. It looked as if marsh lights would play over its horrid surface presently, and then come crashing down as the pillars of the earth gave way. Alexina was a child of California and knew what was coming.
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, but not in these Maurice River marshes.
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