That was a woeful night on the fog-shrouded Pacific. In less than ten minutes from the moment of the crash the Idaho's stern was lifted high, then down she dove for her final berth, untold fathoms underneath—her steadfast captain standing to his post till the last soul left the doomed and deserted wreck. It was God's mercy that limited the passenger list to a mere dozen in the first cabin and less than twenty in the second. The boat, with all the women, was pushed off from the side, the first officer taking charge. Through the fog they could dimly see the others lowered, then manned and laden. Discipline had been restored. Water and bread and blankets had been hastily passed to the longboat. The purser had found time to dive into his safe, and to load up with some, at least, of the valuable contents. There was even a faint cheer when the steamer took the final plunge. Huddled together, many of the women were weeping, all were pale with dread, but Loring and the ship's officer bade them be of good cheer. Even if they were not found by the Santiago they were but a few miles from shore. The sea, though rolling heavily, was not dangerous. They were sure of making land by morning. But there were women who could not be comforted. Their husbands or brothers were in the two smaller boats, perhaps paddling about in the darkness in vain search for the steamer that cut them down. For awhile there were answering shouts across the heaving waters. Then for half an hour the boat with the second officer, crammed with male passengers and members of the crew, kept close alongside—too close, for some of the former scrambled into the bigger craft and others tried to follow; so close that its young commander could mutter to his mate: "The captain's boat is even fuller than mine. Can't you take off half a dozen?"

But the first officer shook his head: "If the worst comes, they've got life preservers and can swim," said he. "These women would be helpless except for what we can do for 'em."

For a time they shouted in hopes of being heard aboard the Santiago, but only those who have tried it know that it is a matter of merest luck when a steamer rounding to in a fog succeeds in finding or even coming anywhere near the spot where she was in collision not ten minutes before. The Santiago's captain swore stoutly that, though badly damaged and compelled to put back to San Francisco, for three mortal hours they cruised about the scene, setting off rockets, firing guns, sounding the whistle, listening intently with lowered boats, but never heard a sound from the wreck, never until two days after knew the fate of the vessel they had cut down. At last the first officer, fearful for his precious freight, bade his four oarsmen to pull for shore, his little pocket compass pointing the way. At dawn they heard the signals of a steamer through the dripping mist, and raised their voices in prolonged shout. An hour more and they were lifted, numb and wearied, but, oh, so thankful, to the deck of a coaster creeping up from Wilmington and Santa Barbara, and were comforted with chocolate and coffee, while for long, long hours the steamer cruised up and down, to and fro, seeking for their companions and never desisting until again the pall of night spread over the leaden sea. Late the following morning the fog rolled back before the waking breeze and the Broderick steamed hopefully on for the Golden Gate, and by nightfall was moored at her accustomed dock, there to be met by the tidings that, while the second officer managed to beach his boat in safety, the captain's overloaded craft was swamped in the breakers off Point Pinos, and that brave old Turnbull had lost his life, dragged under by drowning men. At Monterey the people thought the longboat too must have overturned, and that all the women had perished. The Santiago, nearly sinking, had only just reached port. The beach above Point Pinos was thronged with people searching in the surf for the bodies of the victims, and the captain of the Idaho was broken hearted, if not well-nigh crazed. The news of the safety of the women flew from street to street, fast as the papers could speed their extras. Loving friends came pouring down to meet and care for the survivors on the Broderick. The owners of the Idaho hastened to congratulate and commend their first officer and praise his seamanship and wisdom. The women were conveyed in carriages to the homes of friends or cared for by the company, and after a brief handclasp and parting word with Pancha, whose pathetic eyes haunted him for days, Mr. Loring took a cab and drove alone to headquarters. Evidently the story of the panic and its prompt suppression had not yet been told.

And then for at least five days the papers teemed with details of that marine disaster, and public-spirited citizens started a subscription for a presentation to the first officer, through whose heroism and determination was checked what promised to be a mad scene of disorder and dismay, such as ensued when the Arctic went down and that "stern, brave mate, Gourlay, whom the sailors were wont to obey" was not there to check the undisciplined rush to the boats. For forty-eight hours and thereafter the first officer modestly declared he had merely done his duty, sir, and no good seaman would have done less. The public dinner to be given in his honor, however, languished as a project on the later arrival of survivors from Monterey, and then inquiries began to be made for Lieutenant Loring and new stories to appear in papers that had not already committed themselves to other versions of the affair, and then it transpired that something had gone amiss at Department Headquarters. Lieutenant Loring, after an interview with the commanding general, had hastened to Monterey in search of the captain and purser. The former he found there prostrate and actually flighty, so much so that he could give no coherent answer to questions propounded to him. In the marine hospital, suffering from a gunshot wound, was the huge sailor who had felled the commander to the deck in the rush for the remaining boats, a rush in which he was ringleader, and a piteous tale he told—that he had been shot by a passenger whom he was trying to prevent from getting into the boat they were holding for the women. The gallant little second officer had gone to his wife and children in the southern part of the State, and was not there to tell the truth. The captain was almost delirious. The first officer in San Francisco had been tacitly posing as a marine lion, and could not well be expected to volunteer information that might rob him of his laurels. The survivors among the passengers were scattered by this time, and the purser, whose testimony might be of great value, had disappeared. "Must be in 'Frisco," said the agent who had been sent down to see that every man was furnished with clothing and money at the company's expense, and sent on his way measurably comforted. "Traynor had a desperate squeak for life," said the agent. "He was in the captain's boat when she sunk and was weighed down with his money packages, belted about him underneath his coat, and was hauled ashore more dead than alive, and some of his valuables were lost—he couldn't tell how much."

And this was the man Mr. Loring most needed to see. There had come to Department Headquarters a person representing himself as the San Francisco agent of the Escalante brothers, presenting a written order for a valuable package which had been given the purser for safe keeping—had been locked by him in his safe, and which now could be found nowhere. Mr. Traynor had declared to the owners that after getting the women aboard the boat he had taken all the money from the safe and such packages as it was possible to carry, and tossed three or four to Loring as he stood balancing himself on a thwart and clinging to the fall, and that he was sure one of them was that of the SeÑorita Pancha, for she was at the moment clasping Loring's knees and imploring him to sit down. The boat was alternately lifting high and sinking deep as the great waves rolled by, and Traynor, while admitting haste and excitement, declared that he could almost swear that Loring received three packages and one of them must have been that now demanded by the Escalante's agent. Hence the visit of that somber person to headquarters and his importunate appeals to Loring, who told him the whole story was absurd.

But then this agent had appealed to the general, and that officer, whose manner the day of Loring's return to duty had been marked by odd constraint, sent for the Engineer and required of him a statement as to the truth or falsity of these allegations, and when Loring, startled and indignant, answered "False, of course, sir," and demanded what further accusation there was, the chief tossed aside the paper folder he was nervously fingering, sprang up and began to pace the floor, a favorite method, said those who long had known him, of working off steam when he was much excited.

"I can't—discuss this painful matter, Mr. Loring," said he, testily. "You'll have to see Colonel Strain, the adjutant-general. This deplorable loss of Colonel Turnbull has upset everybody."

So Loring went to Colonel Strain, a man to whom he was but slightly known, and then it was developed that a young lady wearing mourning, a very lovely girl, so every one described her, had called no less than three times to inquire if Mr. Loring were not returned. Once only had the general seen her, but Strain was three times her listener, and a patient one he proved, and a most assiduous friend and sympathizer for several days, until, as it subsequently transpired, in some way matters reached the ears of Mrs. Strain. The colonel very pointedly told the engineer lieutenant that the lady claimed to have received letters proving that he was still in possession of the Nevins jewels while sojourning at Fort Yuma, had endeavored to compromise the matter by the tender of a check for two hundred dollars, which in her destitute condition her sister had felt compelled to accept until she could have legal advice, "and this," said Colonel Strain, "followed now by the claim of this Mexican agent, has created such a scandal in the general's eyes that you cannot too speedily take steps to assure him of your innocence, which of course you should have no difficulty in doing unless—unless—" and the colonel coughed dubiously.

For a moment Loring stood there like one in a daze. Good God! Geraldine Allyn his accuser! The girl who had wronged him so bitterly before! The girl whom he had sought to aid when he found her well-nigh destitute! Gradually the whole force of the situation dawned upon him. With Turnbull dead, the captain daft and Traynor telling the strange story of his (Loring's) eagerness to examine the Escalante packet early on the voyage, and now declaring that he had given it into Loring's keeping! Who in the name of Heaven was left to speak for him? Loring had come a stranger to this distant station. He had chosen to be sent at once to duty in a desert land. He was personally as little known to his superiors here at San Francisco as though they had never met. Even as the men began about the steamship offices and on the streets and in the hotels whither the Idaho's few passengers had told the tale, to speak of Walter Loring as the man who really quelled the panic, if not a mutiny, and saved the lives of a score of helpless men and women, that officer stood accused before his comrades of the army of breach of trust, of mean embezzlement, of low-down theft and trickery, and not a man could he name to help to prove him innocent. Blake, to be sure, was at Yuma, but what could he establish save that the stage had been attacked, Loring left alone, and when the cavalry returned there lay the Engineer apparently unconscious, the empty saddle-bag beside him. Blake had seen no robbers. Blake suspected Sancho of every villainy, but could convict him of none. Traynor, the purser, whether he believed or disbelieved his own story that he had passed that packet down to Loring, could truthfully declare that Loring had displayed most mysterious and unaccountable interest in it. One talk with Pancha, it seems, had banished Loring's intention of confiding his suspicion and the whole story, in fact, to Mr. Traynor. And so there was no friend to whom he could turn. Five days after his arrival in San Francisco Loring found himself facing charges of the gravest nature, for Traynor, being sent for, told his story to the general in person, and Loring stood alone.