“I had two men who fought through a voyage. They had sailed together before and fought throughout. ‘They will fight while they meet on earth,’ said the boatswain of the ship to me, ‘and they will fight if they catch sight of each other at the Resurrection.’” He puffed a cloud of smoke upon the wind and looked round the sea. “I am unsettled in my faith,” said he, “I am troubled by doubts. I believe I am almost Roman Catholic, but lack sufficient credulity to enable me to bring up in that faith. I will tell you what I mean to believe in,” continued he, halting in his walk, compelling me to stand, and looking me full in the face; “I am going to believe in the transmigration of souls.” “Oh, you’ll wish to choose your next body before deciding, won’t you?” said I. “You wouldn’t be a flea or a cockroach?” “The flea and perhaps the cockroach have short lives,” said he gravely, “and the next entry might be into something noble. But stop till I tell you why I am going to believe in the transmigration of souls. I had a dream a few nights since. I dreamt that I was a Jewess. I beheld my face in a glass and admired it vastly. My eyes flashed and were full of fire; my lips were scarlet. I wore something white about my head. I knew that I was a Jewess. Shadowy faces of many races of people approached, looked me close in the eye, felt my face with their hands, accosted me, and I could not speak. I was suffocated with the want of speech. But on a sudden I obtained relief. I opened my mouth and spoke, and the words I spoke were Hebrew.” “D’ye know Hebrew?” said I. “A stupid question to ask a sailor.” “How do you know you spoke in Hebrew?” “Because it wasn’t Greek; because it wasn’t Welsh; because--because--man, it was just Hebrew.” “And how does transmigration offer here?” said I. “I was my own soul, informing the body of a Jewess. My soul, of course, couldn’t utter itself, as it was fresh from the body of an Englishman, until it had filled up, as smoke might, every cranny and brain cell of the shape it possessed; until it had penetrated to the crypts and dark foundations of the woman’s heart. Then, seeking vent, my soul broke through the lips of the Jewess. In what tongue, d’ye ask? In what but the tongue of her nation?” “This,” thought I, “is the lady Aurora’s doing. She it is who’s the Jewess of my poor friend’s dream. The fiery eyes, if not the scarlet lips, are hers, and hers the arrest and suffocation of speech.” But I guessed it would anger him to put this; yet it grieved me to hear this nonsense in his mouth, and the more because his looks by the moon, that shone upon us while he discoursed, gave a gloomy accentuation of--what shall I call it? not yet madness; not yet craziness; let me rather speak of it as wildness--to his words.