“Alla-hoa, Wildenai!”

Up the stony trail leading to her cavern scrambled an Indian runner, a lithe youth who flung himself breathless at her feet.

“Thy father, oh princess, sends me to summon thee to his lodge.  Strangers, — paleface strangers, — enemies, who can tell, are coming.  See, — the ship!” With dark forefinger he pointed toward the sea.  “Torquam would have thee hide with the rest of the women in the cave at the Great Rock.  There Kathah-galwa wilt keep thee safe, he says.  Make haste, oh Wildenai!”

“And am I not as safe up here?” returned the princess, calmly.  “Be not so lost in thy terror, oh Norqua.  I, too, have seen the ship and I fear not.  Yet will I obey if so my father bids,” she added quickly.  “Go thou ahead.  I follow.”  And hastily gathering together some reeds and colored grasses lying on the ledge, parts of an unfinished basket upon which, evidently, she had during some previous visit been at work, she flung them into a corner of the cavern and ran lightly down the narrow path leading to the village.

Here all by this time was tense excitement, the dramatic, ungoverned excitement of children.  While with shrill cries two or three of the women gathered the little ones together, the rest pulled frantically at the poles holding each tepee in place.  Still apparently quite unmoved, Wildenai sought first her father standing surprised but unafraid in the doorway of his lodge.  Tall and spare and stern he looked, straight as some lonely pine on the slopes of distant San Jacinto.  Yet even in the stress of such a moment a tender light stole into his eyes as they rested upon his motherless daughter.

Wildenai made obeisance and for a brief moment the two surveyed each other in silence.  Then,

“It is well thou art come, my beloved one,” spoke the chief.  “Stranger pale-faces will soon be amongst us.”

“Wildenai feels no fear, my father,” quietly answered the girl.

“If they come in friendship,” quickly Torquam replied, “then indeed may all be well.  But the ship is not of the Senor’s fleet, and if so be that we must fight, thou wert better hidden in the cave.  We shall see.”

Bending her head in mute acquiescence the girl moved away to join the group of women now almost ready to depart.

Meantime the vessel’s long boat, driven onward by the stout arms of three strong sailors, steadily approached the bay.

“What think’st thou then, Rufus Broadmead, of this fool’s errand to the savages?” inquired one of these, resting upon his oars for a moment that he might the better listen to the tumult on the shore.  “Wot ye not that if water had been the only boon he craves the captain had fared much better on the mainland?  Besides, did not I myself overhear the Apache only yesterday tell him of a certainty that the tribes over there were away on the warpath?  But no, by the mass, here must we risk our precious scalps to row into the very teeth of the heathen, and that to humor the whim of as obstinate an Englishman as ever sailed aboard Her Majesty’s fleets!” and without awaiting any reply he lowered his oars in disgust.