n 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 gre du vent_." "That would not be dancing well."

"It would