All our men were streaming after Henrico toward the lighthouse, where the enemy sullenly filed out and flung down their rifles. Seventeen I counted, all that remained of the strong command.
Presently the doctors arrived from the cruiser, and began their grim trade on a flat rock. But the most evil sight was to see the lighthouse, forgotten by all, unblinkingly staring into the face of the now open day.
But the night's work had not been wasted by us, for by sunset we were honored guests on the cruiser, with a passage home before us.
Chloe had brought off in her uncle's boat the odds and ends from our lodgings. The anchor cable was rattling on the deck, and at that we shook hands with her, and said good-by. She stood and looked at us, and we noticed she had put on her gala dress. Still she remained, till Gilbert suddenly cried: "Goodness, we've forgotten. But we'll send you our debt as soon as we get home to New York--never you fear, Chloe."
"No! never," she cried, "not that; no money owing." She turned, her red lips open and eyes brimming; she stooped, kissed Gilbert in her arms! swung round, kissed me full and fair, and was gone with a flutter of skirt and clicking of shoe heels on the brass ledges of the stair.
The last we saw of San José was a lonely boat and a woman waving and waving till she faded in the dusk and distance.
In the early days of cigar box manufacture in California, they were made almost exclusively of Spanish cedar. But that wood has become very scarce and high priced of late years, and other woods are taking its place to a certain extent.
And one of those woods is California redwood. In California at present the cigar box makers use about one-fourth redwood; the balance is composed of Spanish cedar and what is known to the trade as "imitation" lumber, which is nothing more than the common poplar and basswood of New England, sawed up, planed, and then stained in imitation of Spanish cedar, or veneered with Spanish cedar, because Spanish cedar is par excellence the real stuff for cigar boxes.
The gilt edge cigars all have to be packed in Spanish cedar, else there is a kick from the opulent and fastidious smoker, who claims that the natural aroma of the wood imparts an improved flavor to the cigars.