"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.