"The writings of Joannes de Sacro Bosco, _De Sphæra Mundi_, and the magic book of Kirani, King of Persia, with the four treatises of Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie, _De Secretis Naturæ_; his tracts on the transmutation of metals, chiromancy, and astrology." "Priest, I do not understand all this," said the admiral, growing quite angry. "Gadzooks! to me it would seem that thou speakest very much like a sorcerer, and all this place must be well swabbed out, for it hath a devilish odour of necromancy. But the gunner to his lintstock, the steersman to his helm, and the cook----" "Sorcery!" interrupted the poor chaplain; "Heaven forbid! Dost think, if these relics of the olden time had aught to do with sorcery, they would lie side by side with this holy volume?" he added, opening an oak-bound tome, containing St. Gregory's Homilies on the Four Gospels. "Nay, this amber bead and this hieroglyphical tablet would then explode like a bursting cannon." The admiral craved pardon, but mentally resolved that, in the first gale of wind, he would contrive to have the ship lightened of all these strange and mysterious wares. "Dost thou speak Latin, admiral?" asked the chaplain. "Latin," reiterated the seaman, angrily, "how should I speak Latin?" "With your tongue," replied the chaplain, simply. "Thou laughest at me, Father Zuill; dost take me for a puling student or a smock-faced friar, that I should know Latin? Nay, when such drones as thee were at the grammar schule, and trembling like a wet dog under a pedant's ferule, I was a bold sailor-lad, learning to hand, reef, and steer, and being made a man of, even while my chin was smooth as a lady's hand." "Father Zuill was merely about to refer to a certain learned writer, who wrote of the secrets with which Nature is filled," replied the king, in a conciliatory tone. "Was it not so?" "Exactly, please your grace; for with all his seamanship, he hath much yet to learn. Now, admiral, with what is the water filled?" "Fish," was the laconic reply. The chaplain smiled, and pouring a drop into the palm of the admiral's hand, placed a magnifying glass above it. "Look, now, Sir Andrew," said he. The admiral bent his eyes over it, and lo! an unknown world of little monsters were crawling there! "Now, by Our Lady of Pittenweem, there _is_ sorcery here!" said he, aghast, as he flung the water on the deck, and rubbed his hand on his trunk hose, and examined it again and again, to see whether all were gone. "Nay, nay," said the king, with one of his sad smiles, "thou wrongest our good friend; for I assure thee, admiral, there is nought of sorcery here. This will show thee, Sir Andrew, how unsafe it is to laugh at anything merely because we do not understand it."