d send after us.'

'Never fear, Maitre Hubert,' said Estelle; 'you know Telemaque was a
prisoner and tamed the wild peasants in Egypt.'

'Ah! the poor demoiselle, she always seems as if she were acting a
comedy.'

This was happily true. Estelle seemed to be in a curious manner borne
through the dangers and discomforts of her surroundings by a strange
dreamy sense of living up to her part, sometimes as a possible martyr,
sometimes as a figure in the mythological or Arcadian romance that had
filtered into her nursery.

CHAPTER VI--A MOORISH VILLAGE

'Our laws and our worship on thee thou shalt take,
And this shalt thou first do for Zulema's sake.'

SCOTT.

When Arthur Hope dashed back from the party on the prow of the wrecked
tartane in search of little Ulysse, he succeeded in grasping the child,
but at the same moment a huge breaker washed him off the
slipperily-sloping deck, and after a scarce conscious struggle he found
himself, still retaining his clutch of the boy, in the trough between it
and another. He was happily an expert swimmer, and holding the little
fellow's clothes in his teeth, he was able to avoid the dash, and to rise
on another wave. Then he perceived that he was no longer near the
vessel, but had been carried out to some little distance, and his efforts
only succeeded in keeping afloat, not in approaching the shore. Happily
a plank drifted so near him that he was able to seize it and throw
himself across it, thus obtaining some support, and being able to raise
the child farther above the water.

At the same time he became convinced that a strong current, probably from
a river or stream, was carrying him out to sea, away from the bay. He
saw the black heads of two or three of the Moorish crew likewise floating
on spars, and yielding themselves to the stream, and this made him better
satisfied to follow their example. It was a sort of rest, and gave him
time to recover from the first exhaustion to convince himself that the
little boy was not dead, and to lash him to the plank with a
handkerchief.

By and by--he knew not how soon--calls and shouts passed between the
Moors; only two seemed to survive, and they no longer obeyed the
direction of the current, but turned resolutely towards the land, where
Arthur dimly saw a green valley opening towards the sea. This was a much
severer effort, but by this time immediate self-preservation had become
the only thought, and happi