The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860

"Voici ma capote!" said she, before he was aware of her approach. "Ciel! qu'il fait frais!"

"We have changed our skies," said Mr. Raleigh, looking up.

"It is not necessary that you should tell me that!" she replied. "I shiver all the time. I shall become a little iceberg, for the sake of floating down to melt off Martinique!"

"Warm yourself now in the sunset; such a blaze was kindled for the purpose."

"Whenever I see a sunset, I find it to be a splendid fact, une jouissance vraie, Monsieur, to think that men can paint,–that these shades, which are spontaneous in the heavens, and fleeting, can be rivalled by us and made permanent,–that man is more potent than light."

"But you are all wrong in your jouissance."

She pouted her lip, and hung over the side in an attitude that it seemed he had seen a hundred times before.

"That sunset, with all its breadth and splendor, is contained in every pencil of light."

She glanced up and laughed.

"Oh, yes! a part of its possibilities. Which proves?"–

"That color is an attribute of light and an achievement of man."

"Cà et là,
Toute la journée,
Le vent vain va
En sa tournée,"

hummed the girl, with a careless dismissal of the subject.

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.

"Excuse me a moment," said Mr. Raleigh, following him, and, meeting Captain Tarbell at the companion-way, the three descended together.

Mr. Raleigh was absent some fifteen minutes, at the end of that time rejoining Mademoiselle Le Blanc.

"I did not mean to make fun of you," said he, resuming the conversation as if there had been no interruption. "I was watching the foam the Osprey makes in her speed, which certainly burns blue. See the flashing sparks! now that all the red fades from the west, they glow in the moon like broken amethysts."

"What did you mean, then?" she asked, pettishly.

"Oh, I wished to see if the idea of a burning ship was so terrifying."

"Terrifying? No; I have no fear; I never was afraid. But it must, in reality, be dreadful. I cannot think of anything else so appalling."

"Not at all timid?"

"Mamma used to say, those that know nothing fear nothing."

"Eminently your case. Then you cannot imagine a situation in which you would lose self-possession?"

"Scarcely. Isn't it people of the finest organization, comprehensive, large-souled, that are capable of the extremes either of courage or fear? Now I am limited, so that, without rash daring or pale panic, I can generally preserve equilibrium."

"How do you know all this of yourself?" he asked, with an amused air.

"Il se présentait des occasions," she replied, briefly.

"So I presumed," said he. "Ah? They have thrown out the log. See, we make progress. If this breeze holds!"

"You are impatient, Mr. Raleigh. You have dear friends at home, whom you wish to see, who wish to see you?"

"No," he replied, with a certain bitterness in his tone. "There is no one to whom I hasten, no one who waits to receive me."

"No one? But that is terrible! Then why should you wish to hasten? For me, I would always be willing to loiter along, to postpone home indefinitely."

"That is very generous, Mademoiselle."