tar, shouting and carousing in
riotous wassail. Their coarse red shirts were flung back from hairy
chests, their faces were distorted with rum and sacrilegious delight.
Every station, every candlestick, had been hurled to the floor and
trampled upon. The crucifix stood on its head. Sitting high on the
altar, reeling and waving a communion goblet, was the drunken chief,
singing a blasphemous song of the pirate seas. The voices rumbled
strangely down the hollow body of the church; to perfect the scene
flames should have leaped among the swinging arms and bounding forms.

"Come," said Estenega. He spurred his horse, and together they
galloped down the stone pavement of the edifice. The men turned at
the loud sound of horses' hoofs; but the riders were in their
midst, scattering them right and left, before they realized what was
happening.

The horses were brought to sudden halt. Estenega rose in his stirrups,
his fine bold face looking down impassively upon the demoniacal gang
who could have rent him apart, but who stood silent and startled,
gazing from him to the beautiful woman, whose white gown looked part
of the white horse she rode. Estenega raised his hand and pointed to
Chonita.

"The Virgin," he said, in a hollow, impressive voice. "The Mother of
God. She has come to defend her church. Go."

Chonita's face blanched to the lips, but she looked at the
sacrilegists sternly. Fortune favored the audacity of Estenega. The
sunlight, drifting through the star-window above the doors at the
lower end of the church, smote the uplifted golden head of Chonita,
wreathing it with a halo, gifting the face with unearthly beauty.

"Go!" repeated Estenega, "lest she weep. With every tear a heart will
cease to beat."

The chief scrambled down from the altar and ran like a rat past
Chonita, his swollen mouth dropping. The others crouched and followed,
stumbling one over the other, their dark evil faces bloodless, their
knees knocking together with superstitious terror. They fled from
the church and down to the bay, and swam to their craft. Estenega and
Chonita rode out. They watched the ugly vessel scurry around Point
Lobos; then Chonita spoke for the first time.

"Blasphemer!" she exclaimed. "Mother of God, wilt thou ever forgive
me?"

"Why not call me a Jesuit? It was a case where mind or matter must
triumph. And you can confess your enforced sin, say a hundred aves or
so, and be whiter than snow again; whereas, had our Mi