"Let me tell you, in the first place, that we shall probably make the port before our situation becomes apparently worse,--that we do not take to the boats, because we are twice too many to fill them, owing to the Belle Voyageuse, and because it might excite mutiny, and for several other becauses,--that every one is on deck, Capua consoling Ursule, the captain having told to each, personally, the possibility of escape"---- "_Allez au hut!_" "That the lights are closed, the hatches battened down, and by dint of excluding the air we can keep the flames in a smouldering state and sail into harbor a shell of safety over this core of burning coal." "Reducing the equation, the ship is on fire?" "Yes." She did not speak for a moment or two, and he saw that she was quite faint. Soon recovering herself,-- "And what do you think of the mirage now?" she asked. "Where is Ursule? I must go to her," she added suddenly, after a brief silence, starting to her feet. "Shall I accompany you?" "Oh, no." "She lies on a mattress there, behind that group,"--nodding in the implied direction; "and it would be well, if you could lie beside her and get an hour's rest." "Me? I couldn't sleep. I shall come back to you,--may I?" And she was gone. Mr. Raleigh still sat in the position in which she had left him, when, a half-hour afterward, she returned. "Where is your cloak?" he asked, rising to receive her. "I spread it over Ursule, she was so chilly." "You will not take cold?" "I? I am on fire myself." "Ah, I see; you have the Saturnalian spirit in you." "It is like the Revolution, the French, is it not?--drifting on before the wind of Fate, this ship full of fire and all red-hot raging turbulence. Just look up the long sparkling length of these white, full shrouds, swelling and curving like proud swans, in the gale,--and then imagine the devouring monster below in his den!" "_Don't_ imagine it. Be quiet and sit beside me. Half the night is gone." "I remember reading of some pirates once, who, driving forward to destruction on fearful breakers, drank and sang and died madly. I wish the whole ship's company would burst out in one mighty chorus now, or that we might rush together with tumultuous impulse and dance,--dance wildly into death and daylight." "We have nothing to do with death," said Mr. Raleigh. "Our foe is simply time. You dance, then?" "Oh, yes. I dance well,--like those white fluttering butterflies,--as if I were _au gré du vent_." "That would not be dancing well." "It would not be dancing well to _be_ at the will of the wind, but it is perfection to appear so." "The dance needs the expression of the dancer's will. It is breathing sculpture. It is mimic life beyond all other arts." "Then well I love to dance. And I do dance well. Wait,--you shall see." He detained her. "Be still, little maid!" he said, and again drew her beside him, though she still continued standing. At this moment the captain approached.