body asked if the child could not talk German or
Italian.

--"Italiano? No!" said Feliu, shaking his head.... One of his
luggermen, Gioachino Sparicio, who, though a Sicilian, could speak
several Italian idioms besides his own, had already essayed.

--"She speaks something or other," answered the captain--"but no
English. I couldn't make her understand me; and Feliu, who talks
nearly all the infernal languages spoken down this way, says he can't
make her understand him. Suppose some of you who know French talk to
her a bit ... Laroussel, why don't you try?"

The young man addressed did not at first seem to notice the captain's
suggestion. He was a tall, lithe fellow, with a dark, positive face:
he had never removed his black gaze from the child since the moment of
her appearance. Her eyes, too, seemed to be all for him--to return his
scrutiny with a sort of vague pleasure, a half savage confidence ...
Was it the first embryonic feeling of race-affinity quickening in the
little brain?--some intuitive, inexplicable sense of kindred? She
shrank from Doctor Hecker, who addressed her in German, shook her head
at Lawyer Solari, who tried to make her answer in Italian; and her look
always went back plaintively to the dark, sinister face of
Laroussel,--Laroussel who had calmly taken a human life, a wicked human
life, only the evening before.

--"Laroussel, you're the only Creole in this crowd," said the captain;
"talk to her! Talk gumbo to her! ... I've no doubt this child knows
German very well, and Italian too,"--he added, maliciously--"but not in
the way you gentlemen pronounce it!"

Laroussel handed his rifle to a friend, crouched down before the little
girl, and looked into her face, and smiled. Her great sweet orbs shone
into his one moment, seriously, as if searching; and then ... she
returned his smile. It seemed to touch something latent within the
man, something rare; for his whole expression changed; and there was a
caress in his look and voice none of the men could have believed
possible--as he exclaimed:--

--"Fais moin bo, piti."

She pouted up her pretty lips and kissed his black moustache.

He spoke to her again:--

--"Dis moin to nom, piti;--dis moin to nom, chere."

Then, for the first time, she spoke, answering in her argent treble:

--"Zouzoune."

All held their breath. Captain Harris lifted his finger to his lips to
command silence.

--"Zouzoune? Zouzoune qui, chere?"

--"Zouzou