"What means this black devil imprinted here on stone?"
"It is the Scarabaeus, the symbol of Pthah and the emblem of creative power, inscribed on a tablet, supported by Serapis and Anubis."
"Fiend take me, father chaplain, if I understand all this!" said the admiral, testily; "yet it may be all true as Barton's logbook, for aught that I know to the contrary. But were these persons you name demons like he who dwells at the Cape of Storms, and by one puff of his sulphurous breath blew old Barty Diaz on his beam-ends? or like the sea-ape—that scaly monster which hath the voice and figure of a man, yet is, after all, but a fish? or like the great sea-serpent whose yawning causes the whirlpool of Lofoden?"
"Nay," said the king, "they were the false gods of the pagan Egyptians."
"Well, I do not like having their trumpery on board the Yellow Frigate," replied the admiral. "Do they not smell of witchcraft?"
"Nay," replied the chaplain, angrily, "not half so much as these two books behind you."
The admiral turned abruptly, and perceived two gigantic volumes, bound in vellum and clasped with iron; they lay upon the stock of a large brass culverin, which, as the port was closed, was lashed alongside the gun-wall, or, as it is now named, gunnel.
"And what may they be anent?" he asked.
"The writings of Joannes de Sacro Bosco, De Sphæra Mundi, and the magic book of Kirani, King of Persia, with the four treatises of Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie, De Secretis Naturæ; his tracts on the transmutation of metals, chiromancy, and astrology."
"Priest, I do not understand all this," said the admiral, growing quite angry. "Gadzooks! to me it would seem that thou speakest very much like a sorcerer, and all this place must be well swabbed out, for it hath a devilish odour of necromancy. But the gunner to his lintstock, the steersman to his helm, and the cook——"