“Give me old blood in a woman. With old blood you associate all the elegances, all the graces and aromas in the bearing and conduct of human nature. Vulgarity makes a toad of beauty itself. Think of Venus saying ‘’Ave done,’ and bragging of her jewelry.” “What is a lady?” “I expected that question. Cannot you define what any chambermaid or boots can distinguish; what any shopman, waiter, poor sailor man like you or me, can instantly _recognize_? Marry, come up. What is more teasing than the question, ‘What is a gentleman?’ Cocky Mr. Macaroni, with his hat over his eye and his hair dressed in imitation of his betters, says, ‘Vat’s a gentleman?’ and the beast knows the thing every time he sees it.” “How is the pain in your side?” “Well, it makes me wince when I move as I did then. How strange,” said he, sinking his voice and looking at the island, “that I, who have been dreaming of galleons all my life, should, of the scores whose keels have cut these waters, be the one chosen to light upon yonder ship of dollars.” “Shall you fire her before sailing?” “No. We will leave her for the next man who may come along--for some poor devil to whom a few serons of cocoa and a thousand quintals of tin may be what the Cockney calls an ‘object.’” The sun was now low, and the west was on fire. The sea came like blood from the rim of the western line to midway the ocean plain, where the fierce light drained into thin blue that went darkening into melting violet eastward. The brig had drifted very nearly due south of the island, opening the reefs, and baring the harbor to our sight, and disclosing the verdure that clothed a portion of the northern rocks. The longboat lay alongside the beach, and the figures of her people came and went. I thought to myself, a pity if Yan Bol and his sweet and manly fellows don’t take a fancy to the derelict, agree among themselves to attempt to warp her afloat, and consent to remain on the island if Greaves will give them the boat; food enough they will find in the ship and on the beach. Though the island stood steeped in the red light of sunset, it reflected nothing of the western splendor. Grimy, melancholy, livid--an ocean cinder heap did it look in that fair evening radiance, a spadeful out of Neptune’s dust bin. I picked up the telescope to view the ship in the cave before the shadows closed the wondrous object out, and with the tracery of the spars and rigging, dim in the lens, I conceived myself on board. I imagined the hour of midnight, I heard in fancy the distant groan of surf, I heard the sobs of the black water within the cave, a faint creak from the heart of the sepulchered vessel; and I figured fear growing in me even unto the beholding of apparitions, until a shiver ran through me as chill as though it had come out of the cold hold of the ship herself. I put down the glass, meaning to laugh away my fancies to Greaves, and beheld the lady Aurora de la Cueva in the act of rising through the companion way.