Mr. Raleigh shut up the note-book in which he had been writing, and restored it to his pocket.  She turned about and broke off her song.

“There is the moon on the other side,” she said, “floating up like a great bubble of light.  She and the sun are the scales of a balance, I think; as one ascends, the other sinks.”

“There is a richness in the atmosphere, when sunset melts into moonrise, that makes one fancy it enveloping the earth like the bloom on a plum.”

“And see how it has powdered the sea!  The waters look like the wings of the papillon bleu.”

“It seems that you love the sea.”

“Oh, certainly.  I have thought that we islanders were like those Chinese who live in great tanka-boats on the rivers; only our boat rides at anchor.  To climb up on the highest land, and see yourself girt with fields of azure enamelled in sheets of sunshine and fleets of sails, and lifted against the horizon, deep, crystalline, and translucent as a gem,—­that makes one feel strong in isolation, and produces keen races.  Don’t you think so?”

“I think that isolation causes either vivid characteristics or idiocy, seldom strong or healthy ones; and I do not value race.”

“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.

“Oh, if you’re going to make fun of me, I’ll tell you nothing more!”

As she spoke, Capua, who had considered himself, during the many years of wandering, both guiding and folding star to his master, came up, with his eyes rolling fearfully in a lively expansion of countenance, and muttered a few words in Mr. Raleigh’s ear, lifting both hands in comical consternation the while.