"Look, now, Sir Andrew," said he.
The admiral bent his eyes over it, and lo! an unknown world of little monsters were crawling there!
"Now, by Our Lady of Pittenweem, there is sorcery here!" said he, aghast, as he flung the water on the deck, and rubbed his hand on his trunk hose, and examined it again and again, to see whether all were gone.
"Nay, nay," said the king, with one of his sad smiles, "thou wrongest our good friend; for I assure thee, admiral, there is nought of sorcery here. This will show thee, Sir Andrew, how unsafe it is to laugh at anything merely because we do not understand it."
"Your majesty is right," said the chaplain, beginning to screw and unscrew the mirrors of his warlike machine; "thus the admiral laughs at me, because he knows not the theory of light, or the principles of its production. Why do decayed wood and dead fish emit a light? You know not; yet Pliny, who lived fourteen centuries ago, knew and wrote of these things. Every earthly body will emit light when heated, for the particles on their surfaces shine by attrition, and light is the first principle of fire. Ah," continued the learned projector, setting all the little mirrors in motion, and making them flash and glitter in a very alarming manner, "if Heaven give me grace, I may yet achieve much by my burning-glasses."
"Father Zuill," said James III., who had been reflecting that this poor priest, in his realm of strange inventions and abstruse study, was much happier than a King of Scotland and the Isles, "thou mightest achieve more by striving to develop the use of the magnifying-glass. Dost remember what Seneca says of a crystal convexity?"
"Yes; and of a glass globe filled with water, which maketh letters appear larger and brighter when viewed through it."
"I pray your majesty to excuse me," said the admiral, bowing; "for, gadzooks, if this goes on for another ten minutes, he will give me a fit of apoplexy. By the sound on deck, I think the wind is dead off-shore; and as we have not a king under our pennon every day, I beg leave to retire to the deck, and see how the land bears."