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Updated: April 30, 2025
Poor little princess, how very hard she worked to serve him! "It takes a long time, Wildenai," he observed, "dost thou try it often?" "Never for myself," she answered gravely. "I have no need. But I do it gladly for you." She smiled brightly back at him, then rose and moved swiftly to the doorway. "Another thing I do for you today. Wait!"
"Can'st tell me of a Spaniard, one Cabrillo, son to that arch pirate of Spain, who, since his father's death, still sails upon these waters? To him I bear a message," again he paused while the heart of Wildenai beat in sudden panic beneath her fawnskin tunic; but Torquam's face remained blank as a page unwritten, "a message from our queen," added Drake.
In shadowed niches of the canyons lilies waited to fill with light their gleaming ivory cups. Spring in very truth was there. And looking down upon it from her cavern bower high above the beach, watched the Princess Wildenai. Kneeling there, the light of dawn shining on her long black hair, she was, herself, the sweetest blossom of the spring.
On the beach below, squatted within the opened flap of his tepee, Torquam, mighty chief of the Mariposa, smoked his evening pipe. A wonderful pipe it was, long and delicately fashioned, inlaid with iridescent fragments of shell. Yet instantly he laid it aside as the slender form of his daughter darkened the doorway. "Ah, Wildenai, little wild rose, welcome art thou as sunshine after rain!"
"Don't you think that was clever of me, Wildenai?" "I would rather you did not call me that," she told him coldly, "It sounds irreverent." And she dropped her eyes, which had filled again miserably, to the film of white in her lap. Then, with a pitiful attempt to hurt him in return: "Of course you realize that I really don't know much about you.
If any interests lived for her among the dark-skinned people beneath the cliffs, for the moment at least she gave no sign. Then, suddenly, above the ordinary din of the Indian village, rose the hoarse shouting of men. Wildenai lifted her eyes, eyes that widened first with wonder, then with fear.
But now from the shadows below the white man called once more. "Attempt it not, oh Wildenai! 'Tis death to leap from there!" But without waiting even to reply, the Indian girl sprang into the waves. An instant later and he saw her arms gleam in the moonlight as, with the strong slow strokes of an experienced swimmer, she struck out for the boat.
Having once begun he stumbled on, but half aware of how each word he uttered hurt her, eager only to have done with the whole sorry scene. "Thou art but a little wild flower. Thou couldst not live away from this, thy sunny island. Can'st thou not understand, my Wildenai?" He paused, waiting for a reply; but the maiden answered nothing.
Intent to show him all her treasures, Wildenai guided him to a quiet stretch of water lying close to shore within the shadow of tall cliffs which rose at that point with precipitous abruptness from the sea itself. "Here are my gardens that grow under the water," she explained, as they glided above the spot. "Look well at them. They are most beautiful."
And gazing down at her command through the clear green into the luminous depths below, he caught glimpses of these gardens of the sea where goldfish darted like tropical birds among the branches of tall tree-like stalks of swaying seaweed, and strange shapes of jade and blue floated in the shadows. "Is it not wonderful?" she asked. "It is indeed, my Wildenai," he answered earnestly.
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