leu_."

"It seems that you love the sea."

"Oh, certainly. I have thought that we islanders were like those Chinese
who live in great _tanka_-boats on the rivers; only our boat rides at
anchor. To climb up on the highest land, and see yourself girt with
fields of azure enamelled in sheets of sunshine and fleets of sails, and
lifted against the horizon, deep, crystalline, and translucent as a
gem,--that makes one feel strong in isolation, and produces keen races.
Don't you think so?"

"I think that isolation causes either vivid characteristics or idiocy,
seldom strong or healthy ones; and I do not value race."

"Because you came from America!"--with an air of disgust,--"where there
is yet no race, and the population is still too fluctuating for the
mould of one."

"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