In
our bedroom, the stove would not burn, though it would smoke; and
while one window would not open, the other would not shut. There
was a view on a bit of empty road, a few dark houses, a donkey
wandering with its shadow on a slope, and a blink of sea, with a
tall ship lying anchored in the moonlight. All about that dreary
inn frogs sang their ungainly chorus.
Early the next morning we mounted the hill along a wooden footway,
bridging one marish spot after another. Here and there, as we
ascended, we passed a house embowered in white roses. More of the
bay became apparent, and soon the blue peak of Tamalpais rose above
the green level of the island opposite. It told us we were still
but a little way from the city of the Golden Gates, already, at
that hour, beginning to awake among the sand-hills. It called to
us over the waters as with the voice of a bird. Its stately head,
blue as a sapphire on the paler azure of the sky, spoke to us of
wider outlooks and the bright Pacific. For Tamalpais stands
sentry, like a lighthouse, over the Golden Gates, between the bay
and the open ocean, and looks down indifferently on both. Even as
we saw and hailed it from Vallejo, seamen, far out at sea, were
scanning it with shaded eyes; and, as if to answer to the thought,
one of the great ships below began silently to clothe herself with
white sails, homeward bound for England.
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