“However, the chief appeared to be pretty confident, and our plans being settled, after drinking a glass or two of Muscadene, I made my salaam and went on deck. The night was as hot as usual, the land-wind blowing like a fire-blast, or as the captain—who had been in the Brazils, and who soon followed me up—said, like the breath of an _engenho_, during crop-time. In fact, in the silence of the harbor, the dim wall of rocks on either side of the passage seemed glowing with heat, until one almost fancied that he saw the very lights on shore dancing in the tremulous motion of the air, just as he had seemed to see the stones and bushes at noon; while every now and then, a bat, as large as a pigeon, wheeled past your ear, and some sort of sand-piper, common on that coast, sent up its whistle, in two mellow, plaintive notes, as if it were too hot for even the birds to sleep. Whether it was fancy or not, the place seemed to smell like a vast charnel-house, still as it was at that hour—the disease still spreading in the town, and having even boarded one or two of the Arab craft, as I knew. However, Catherton, I must say, appeared to stand it easily enough, sitting under the awning on the poop, with his broad breast bare, and a sheroot in his teeth. Boats were passing from the English frigate to the town, which was out of sight from where we lay, and after some remarks about her going to sea the next day, Catherton quietly asked me, if I had ever heard an opinion expressed on shore, respecting the beauty of Zuma, the Circassian. “‘She is uncommonly handsome, I suppose,’ said he, seeing that I hesitated to answer his question. “‘So report says,’ I replied; ‘though, as you may suppose, few can boast of having seen her face.’ “‘They say,’ continued he, pursuing the subject, ‘that she cost the sultan a round sum; for she is not his wife, as I understand from the old Parsee, but only his favorite slave. It is natural enough for her to hate him, as they say he has four wives already.’ “‘Why,’ said I, getting into a gossiping strain myself, to relieve my mind of more serious thoughts, as it were, ‘Syed Ben Seeyd is too strong-minded, and has too keen a sense of his own interests, to suffer any fair face of them all to make a fool of him. His last wife, the daughter of the Shah of Persia, he married, of course, purely from policy, though it is well known that he has no issue by any of the rest.’ “‘However,’ said Catherton, ‘he is likely to make short work with Zuma, if she should be caught in _flagrante delicto_, as the lawyers say; the sack, or the bowstring, or the scimetar, I suppose. But, do you your part in bringing her off, and I’ll hide her from the eunuch, even if his eyes were sharp as the wise old Greek’s, when he found out Achilles beneath his petticoats.’