“Peste! I shall be obliged to own, hereafter, that there is some generosity in an Englishman.  I cannot deny their treatment, and yet I had rather it had been more ferocious.”

“This is an unkind feeling; you should strive to tear it from your heart.”

“It’s a great deal to allow to an Englishman, Captain Rule, to allow him gineros’ty,” interrupted Ithuel.  “They’re a fierce race, and fatten on mortal misery.”

“Mais, bon Etooelle, your back has escaped this time; you ought to be thankful.”

“They’re short-handed, and didn’t like to cripple a top-man,” answered he of the Granite State, unwilling to concede anything to liberal or just sentiments.  “Had the ship’s complement been full, they wouldn’t have left as much skin on my back as would cover the smallest-sized pincushion.  I owe ’em no thanks, therefore.”

“Bien; quant a moi, I shall speak well of the bridge which carries me over,” said Raoul.  “Monsieur Cuffe has given me good food, good wine, good words, a good stateroom, a good bed, and a most timely reprieve.”

“Is not your heart grateful to God for the last, dear Raoul?” asked Ghita, in a voice so gentle and tender that the young man could have bowed down and worshipped her.

After a pause, however, he answered, as if intentionally to avoid the question by levity.

“I forgot the philosophy, too,” he said. “That was no small part of the good cheer. Ciel! it was worth some risk to have the advantage of attending such a school.  Did you understand the matter in dispute between the two Italians, brave Etooelle?”

“I heerd their Eye-talian jabber,” answered Ithuel; “but supposed it was all about saints’ days and eating fish.  No reasonable man makes so much noise when he is talking sense.”

“Pardie—­it was philosophy! They laugh at us French for living by the rules of reason rather than those of prejudice; and then to hear what they call philosophy!  You would scarce think it, Ghita,” continued Raoul, who was now light of heart, and full of the scene he had so lately witnessed—­“you would hardly think it, Ghita, but Signor Andrea, sensible and learned as he is, maintained that it was not folly to believe in a philosophy which teaches that nothing we see or do actually exists, but that everything was mere seeming.  In short, that we live in an imaginary world, with imaginary people in it; float on an imaginary sea, and cruise in imaginary ships.”

“And was all that noise about an idee, Captain Rule?”

“Si—­but men will quarrel about an idea—­an imaginary thing, Etooelle as stoutly as about substantials.  Hist!  They will chase imaginary things, too, as are the boats ahead of us at this moment.”

“There are others following us,” observed Carlo Giuntotardi, who was more alive to surrounding objects than common; and who, from his habitual silence, often heard that which escaped the senses of others.  “I have noticed the sound of their oars some time.”