It was a lovely night.  The moonlight was dancing on the waves, the ship glided smoothly on before a gentle breeze.  Miss Lydia was not sleepy, and nothing but the presence of an unpoetical person had prevented her from enjoying those emotions which every human being possessing a touch of poetry must experience at sea by moonlight.  When she felt sure the young lieutenant must be sound asleep, like the prosaic creature he was, she got up, took her cloak, woke her maid, and went on deck.  Nobody was to be seen except the sailor at the helm, who was singing a sort of dirge in the Corsican dialect, to some wild and monotonous tune.  In the silence of the night this strange music had its charm.  Unluckily Miss Lydia did not understand perfectly what the sailor was singing.  Amid a good deal that was commonplace, a passionate line would occasionally excite her liveliest curiosity.  But just at the most important moment some words of patois would occur, the sense of which utterly escaped her.  Yet she did make out that the subject was connected with a murder.  Curses against the assassin, threats of vengeance, praise of the dead were all mingled confusedly.  She remembered some of the lines.  I will endeavour to translate them here.

. . .  “Neither cannon nor bayonets . . .  Brought pallor to his brow. . .  As serene on the battlefield . . . as a summer sky.  He was the falcon—­the eagle’s friend . . .  Honey of the sand to his friends . . .  To his enemies, a tempestuous sea. . . . . . .  Prouder than the sun . . . gentler than the moon . . .  He for whom the enemies of France . . . never waited . . .  Murderers in his own land . . . struck him from behind . . .  As Vittolo slew Sampiero Corso . . .  Never would they have dared to look him in The face . . .  Set up on the wall Before my bed . . . my well-earned cross of honour . . . red is its ribbon . . . redder is my shirt! . . .  For my son, my son in a far country . . . keep my cross and my blood-stained shirt! . . .

“. . .  He will see two holes in it . . .  For each hole a hole in another shirt! . . .  But will that accomplish the vengeance? . . .  I must have the hand that fired, the eye that aimed . . . the heart that planned!” . . .

Suddenly the sailor stopped short.

“Why don’t you go on, my good man?” inquired Miss Nevil.

The sailor, with a jerk of his head, pointed to a figure appearing through the main hatchway of the schooner:  it was Orso, coming up to enjoy the moonlight.  “Pray finish your song,” said Miss Lydia.  “It interests me greatly!”

The sailor leaned toward her, and said, in a very low tone, “I don’t give the rimbecco to anybody!”

“The what?”

The sailor, without replying, began to whistle.

“I have caught you admiring our Mediterranean, Miss Nevil,” said Orso, coming toward her.  “You must allow you never see a moon like this anywhere else!”

“I was not looking at it, I was altogether occupied in studying Corsican.  That sailor, who has been singing a most tragic dirge, stopped short at the most interesting point.”