r the sun.

'Sure and if not, why did they make their obeisance to it all one as the
Persians in the big history-book Master Phelim had at school?'

'It's to the east they turn Lanty, not to the sun.'

'And what right have the haythen spalpeens to turn to the east like good
Christians?'

''Tis to their Prophet's tomb they look, at Mecca.'

'There, an' I tould you they were no better than haythens,' returned
Lanty, 'to be praying and knocking their heads on the bare boards--that
have as much sense as they have--to a dead man's tomb.'

Arthur's Scotch mind thought the Moors might have had the best of it in
argument when he recollected Lanty's trust in his scapulary.

They tried to hold a conversation with the Reis, between _lingua Franca_
and the Provencal of the renegade; and they came to the conclusion that
no one had the least idea where they were, or where they were going; the
ship's compass had been broken in the boarding, and there was no chart
more available than the little map in the beginning of Estelle's precious
copy of Telemaque. The Turkish Reis did not trouble himself about it,
but squatted himself down with his chibouque, abandoning all guidance of
the ship, and letting her drift at the will of wind and wave, or, as he
said, the will of Allah. When asked where he thought she was going, he
replied with solemn indifference, 'Kismet;' and all the survivors of the
crew--for one had been washed overboard--seemed to share his resignation.

The only thing he did seem to care for was that if the infidel woman
chose to persist in coming on deck, the canvas screen--which had been
washed overboard--should be restored. This was done, and Madame de
Bourke was assisted to a couch that had been prepared for her with
cloaks, where the air revived her a little; but she listened with a faint
smile to the assurances of Arthur, backed by Hebert, that this
abandonment to fate gave the best chance. They might either be picked up
by a Christian vessel or go ashore on a Christian coast; but Madame de
Bourke did not build much on these hopes. She knew too well what were
the habits of wreckers of all nations, to think that it would make much
difference whether they were driven on the coast of Sicily or of
Africa--'barring,' as Lanty said, 'that they should get Christian burial
in the former case.'

'We are in the hands of a good God. That at least we know,' said the
Countess. 'And He can hear us through, whether for