"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.