"He wouldn't have bothered his head about a Moor, anyway. The yacht was idle, and Madame wanted a voyage. That's reason enough for the likes of us."
"All coloured men are not Moors, you old Elizabethan seadog. This is a brown heathen Melanesian, not a Musulman Turk. Ching, I tell you that I am uneasy. My brain is buzzing with queer thoughts. It sticks in my mind that when that Willatopy told us the name of his father, our pretty Madame wasn't nearly so surprised as she sought to make me think she was. She seemed to my mind to be expecting it."
"You've got too much mind, Ewing. That is what's the matter with you. You keep to your engine-room and I will keep to my bridge. The ways of the gentry have nowt to do with us."
At about the same time Marie was brushing out the red gold mane which flowed in splendid waves over Madame's broad back. There was nothing grudged when Madame was designed and built. Beauty and power went hand in hand at her fashioning. She could have crumpled up Marie, the sinuous French girl, in her strong hands, and stuffed her body through a port-hole. Their talk was carried on in vivid French; I will do my best to render its purport in pale English.
"Did you ever see such eyes?" sighed Marie. "They go through me like swords. And his feet and hands. Quite small, Madame. It is easy to see that his blood is of the brightest azure. Did you say his father was an English Lord?"
"Marie," said Madame, crossly. "You are disgustingly promiscuous. I have allowed you two deck officers and two engineers. All fine handsome white men. Yet you must now be googling at a coffee-coloured savage. I won't have it, Marie."
"He is not a savage; he is most intellectual. His English is perfect—much better than mine. And he knows a few words, they are certainly but a few, of our French tongue. He is aristocrat. Is he not a cousin of the rich Sir John Toppys?"
"It is a cousinship which the aristocracy do not usually recognise," observed Madame drily. "Willatopy is in my charge, and I won't have him played with. Especially by an old campaigner like you. Do what you please with the officers, I give them to you, but leave Willatopy alone. These half-castes are dangerous to meddle with. Remember, if I have any reason to suspect that you are up to your usual tricks, I will send you straight back to France."
Marie shuddered, and promised that she would be cold as an icicle. She shivered as if her blood had been physically chilled, for there were grave reasons, the very gravest of reasons, why Marie Lambert did not desire to be sent back to France.