The three managed to get down to tell the unfortunate inmates of the cabin what was the state of things, and to carry them some food, though at the expense of many falls and severe blows; and almost all of them were too faint or nauseated to be able to swallow such food as could survive the transport under such circumstances.  Yet high-spirited little Estelle entreated to be carried on deck, to see what a storm was like.  She had read of them so often, and wanted to see as well as to feel.  She was almost ready to cry when Arthur assured her it was quite impossible, and her mother added a grave order not to trouble him.

Madame de Bourke looked so exhausted by the continual buffeting and the closeness of the cabin, and her voice was so weak, that Arthur grieved over the impossibility of giving her any air.  Julienne tried to make her swallow some eau de vie; but the effort of steadying her hand seemed too much for her, and after a terrible lurch of the ship, which lodged the poor bonne in the opposite corner of the cabin, the lady shook her head and gave up the attempt.  Indeed, she seemed so worn out that Arthur—­little used to the sight of fainting—­began to fear that her forebodings of dying before she could rejoin her husband were on the point of being realised.

However, the gale abated towards evening, and the youth himself was so much worn out that the first respite was spent in sleep.  When he awoke, the sea was much calmer, and the eastern sun was rising in glory over it; the Turks, with their prayer carpets in a line, were simultaneously kneeling and bowing in prayer, with their faces turned towards it.  Lanty uttered an only too emphatic curse upon the misbelievers, and Arthur vainly tried to make him believe that their ‘Allah il Allah’ was neither addressed to Mohammed nor the sun.

’Sure and if not, why did they make their obeisance to it all one as the Persians in the big history-book Master Phelim had at school?’

‘It’s to the east they turn Lanty, not to the sun.’

’And what right have the haythen spalpeens to turn to the east like good Christians?’

‘’Tis to their Prophet’s tomb they look, at Mecca.’

‘There, an’ I tould you they were no better than haythens,’ returned Lanty, ’to be praying and knocking their heads on the bare boards—­that have as much sense as they have—­to a dead man’s tomb.’

Arthur’s Scotch mind thought the Moors might have had the best of it in argument when he recollected Lanty’s trust in his scapulary.

They tried to hold a conversation with the Reis, between lingua Franca and the Provencal of the renegade; and they came to the conclusion that no one had the least idea where they were, or where they were going; the ship’s compass had been broken in the boarding, and there was no chart more available than the little map in the beginning of Estelle’s precious copy of Telemaque.  The Turkish Reis did not trouble himself about it, but squatted himself down with his chibouque, abandoning all guidance of the ship, and letting her drift at the will of wind and wave, or, as he said, the will of Allah.  When asked where he thought she was going, he replied with solemn indifference, ‘Kismet;’ and all the survivors of the crew—­for one had been washed overboard—­seemed to share his resignation.