"I come from India, where, if anywhere, there is race." "But, pshaw! that was not what we were talking about." "No, Mademoiselle, we were speaking of an element even more fluctuating than American population." "Of course I love the sea; but if the sea loves me, it is the way a cat loves the mouse." "It is always putting up a hand to snatch you?" "I suppose I am sent to Nineveh and persist in shipping for Tarshish. I never enter a boat without an accident. The Belle Voyageuse met shipwreck, and I on board. That was anticipated, though, by all the world; for the night before we set sail,--it was a very murk, hot night, --we were all called out to see the likeness of a large merchantman transfigured in flames upon the sky,--spars and ropes and hull one net and glare of fire." "A mirage, probably, from some burning ship at sea." "No, I would rather think it supernatural. Oh, it was frightful! Rather superb, though, to think of such a spectral craft rising to warn us with ghostly flames that the old Belle Voyageuse was riddled with rats!" "Did it burn blue?" asked Mr. Raleigh. "Oh, if you're going to make fun of me, I'll tell you nothing more!" As she spoke, Capua, who had considered himself, during the many years of wandering, both guiding and folding star to his master, came up, with his eyes rolling fearfully in a lively expansion of countenance, and muttered a few words in Mr. Raleigh's ear, lifting both hands in comical consternation the while. "Excuse me a moment," said Mr. Raleigh, following him, and, meeting Captain Tarbell at the companion-way, the three descended together. Mr. Raleigh was absent some fifteen minutes, at the end of that time rejoining Mademoiselle Le Blanc. "I did not mean to make fun of you," said he, resuming the conversation as if there had been no interruption. "I was watching the foam the Osprey makes in her speed, which certainly burns blue. See the flashing sparks! now that all the red fades from the west, they glow in the moon like broken amethysts." "What did you mean, then?" she asked, pettishly. "Oh, I wished to see if the idea of a burning ship was so terrifying." "Terrifying? No; I have no fear; I never was afraid. But it must, in reality, be dreadful. I cannot think of anything else so appalling." "Not at all timid?" "Mamma used to say, those that know nothing fear nothing." "Eminently your case. Then you cannot imagine a situation in which you would lose self-possession?" "Scarcely. Isn't it people of the finest organization, comprehensive, large-souled, that are capable of the extremes either of courage or fear? Now I am limited, so that, without rash daring or pale panic, I can generally preserve equilibrium." "How do you know all this of yourself?" he asked, with an amused air. "_Il se présentait des occasions_," she replied, briefly. "So I presumed," said he. "Ah? They have thrown out the log. See, we make progress. If this breeze holds!"