brown earth, then abruptly thrust up in cliffs of granite against a hard blue sky like none she had ever seen before. What rain there was Andrew pointed out to her—a vaporous curtain in the deep distance that often didn’t reach all the way from the cloud to the earth. The endless deserts of Nevada were succeeded by their opposite, the pine-clad Sierras by way of the Donner Pass, which were just as daunting. Andrew, in his sonorous way, spent the journey detailing the geology of every region, and then the various stages by which the Donner Party came to grief and later was rescued. Margaret had never heard of the Donner Party, but by the time they got to Sacramento, she knew more about them (“Almost all of the women survived. What do you make of that, my dear?”) than she cared to. From Sacramento to Fairfield, while they sat in the dining car and shared a plate of chicken and potatoes, she thought unwillingly of the Donner Party and stared out at the darkness. California seemed forbidding and self-contained, just as Mr. Dana had described it. At Vallejo, it took them almost two hours to sort their baggage and then make their way, by wagon, from the station through the town and down to the bay, then by ferry across to the island. In the fog, she saw only dim shapes and sudden lights reflected back to her. When they got to their little house, brought in their baggage, and sat down for a rest, it turned out that Andrew had not yet purchased a bed large enough for both of them—it was as if, until he saw both of them in the room, the need for such a bed had not occurred to him. Thinking of Beatrice’s warnings and advice, Margaret was relieved; thinking of Elizabeth’s more reticent but entirely positive reports, she was disappointed.
It was only gradually that she came to realize that she was truly in California. First, there were the facts—Mare Island was the naval shipyard for the West Coast, an island and an entire world, self-contained and busy and dedicated to everything naval. Andrew was in charge of the small observatory on the base, where he maintained the chronometer. Every day, just before noon, a couple of sailors raised the time ball to the top of the mast on building 51, which was visible from all around the harbor. At precisely noon, upon orders from Andrew, the time ball was dropped, and officers in ships all around the harbor adjusted their clocks, which they called “chronometers.” The shipbuilding factories ran in a long noisy row south along the harbor to the drydocks, where the parts of the ships built in the factories were, by means of huge cranes, joined together (or, in the case of decommissioned or salvaged ships, taken apart) and, eventually, floated (or not). Day and night, men were busy in these factories, which were breathlessly, ear-shatteringly noisy, but all around the noise, people bustled back and forth, laughing and giving orders and chatting about this and that.
West of the factories, their street of houses looked rather like any other street of houses, and their little house, Quarters P, was pleasant. She had seen similar houses back in Missouri, a single story with a front parlor and a bay window, a dining room, back kitchen, and two bedrooms. The house to their north was yet smaller, but the house to their south (across a little side street) was the first in a row of houses that were as grand as any she had ever seen in St. Louis. There were four of them, and then another, even grander one, with fat columns and a deep awning, where the Commandant of the Base lived; after that, five more of the first type. Past those, at the end of the street, was a small brick chapel, nondenominational. West of this row of houses, but out of sight, were the barracks for the seamen. Not far away, there was a powder magazine. Margaret had never imagined such a busy place, so simultaneously insulated and cosmopolitan, where everyone spoke of “Tangiers” and “Buenos Aires” and “Lisbon” with less self-consciousness than people in Missouri spoke of St. Louis and Chicago.
Andrew’s observatory, on Dublin Hill, had a five-inch telescope and a retractable roof. He took her there on their second night, once they had recovered from their train journey. It was a small brick building, chilly and