Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/323

Rh instincts of his ordinary humanity—it was no catastrophe involving loss of life, or even suffering to the subject or spectator. Such, at least, was Mr. Poinsett's analysis of his own mental condition on the receipt of Donna Maria's telegram. It was the cool self-examination of a man who believed himself cold-blooded and selfish, superior to the weakness of ordinary humanity, and yet was conscious of neither pride nor disgrace in the belief. Yet when he diverged from his direct road to the Mission, and turned his horse's head toward the home of Donna Dolores, he was conscious of a new impulse and anxiety that was stronger than his reason. Unable as he was to resist it, he took some satisfaction in believing that it was nearly akin to that feeling which, years before, had driven him back to Starvation Camp in quest of the survivors. Suddenly his horse recoiled with a bound that would have unseated a less skillful rider. Directly across his path stretched a chasm in the level plain—thirty feet broad and as many feet in depth, and at its bottom, in undistinguishable confusion, lay the wreck of the corral of the Blessed Trinity! Except for the enormous size and depth of this fissure, Arthur might have mistaken it for the characteristic cracks in the sun- burnt plain, which the long, dry summer had wrought upon its surface, some of which were so broad as to task the agility of his horse. But a second glance convinced him of the different character of the phenomenon. The earth had not cracked asunder nor separated, but had sunk. The width of the chasm below was nearly equal to the width above; the floor of this valley in miniature was carpeted by the same dry, brittle herbs and grasses which grew upon the plain around him.

In the preoccupation of the last hour he had forgotten the distance he had traversed. He had evidently ridden faster than he had imagined. But if this was really the corral, the walls of the Rancho should now be in sight at the base of the mountain! He turned in that direction. Nothing was to be seen! Only the monotonous plain stretched before him, vast and unbroken. Between the chasm where he stood and the falda of the first low foot-hills, neither roof nor wall nor ruin rose above the dull, dead level!

An ominous chill ran through his veins, and for an instant the reins slipped through his relaxed fingers. Good God! Could this have been what Donna Maria meant, or had there been a later convulsion of nature? He looked around him. The vast, far-stretching plain, desolate and trackless as the shining ocean beyond, took upon itself an awful likeness to that element! Standing on the brink of the revealed treachery of that yawning chasm, Arthur Poinsett read the fate of the Rancho. In the storm that had stirred the depths of this motionless level, the Rancho and its miserable inmates had foundered and gone down! Arthur's first impulse was to push on toward the scene of the disaster, in the vague hope of rendering some service. But the chasm before him was impassable, and seemed to continue to the sea beyond. Then he reflected that the catastrophe briefly told in Donna Maria's dispatch had happened twenty-four hours before, and help was perhaps useless now. He cursed the insane impulse that had brought him here, aimlessly and without guidance, and left him powerless even to reach the object of his quest. If he had only gone first to the Mission, asked the advice and assistance of Father Felipe, or learned at least the full details of the disaster! He uttered an oath, rare to his usual calm expression, and, wheeling his horse, galloped fiercely back toward the Mission. Night had deepened over the plain. With the going down of the sun, a fog that had been stealthily encompassing the coastline, stole with soft step across the shining beach, dulled its luster, and then moved slowly and solemnly upon the plain, blotting out the Point of Pines, at first salient with its sparkling Light-house, but now undistinguishable from the gray sea above and below, until it reached the galloping horse and its rider, and then, as it seemed to Arthur, isolated them from the rest of the world—from even the penciled outlines of the distant foot-hills—that it at last sponged from the blue gray slate before him. At times the far-off tolling of a fog-bell came faintly to his ear, but all sound seemed to be blotted out by the fog; even the rapid fall of his horse's hoofs was muffled and indistinct. By degrees the impression that he was riding in a dream overcame him, and was accepted by him without questioning or deliberation. It seemed to be a consistent part of the dream or vision when he rode—or, rather, as it seemed to him, was borne by the fog—into the outlying fields and lanes of the Mission. A few lights, with a nimbus of