'Dat manchineel.

Dat poison.

Throw dat overboard.' R-----, who knew it was not manchineel, whispered to a bystander, 'Ce n'est pas vrai.' But the brown lady was a linguist.

'Ah! mais c'est vrai,' cried she, with flashing teeth; and retired, muttering her contempt of English ignorance and impertinence.
And, as it befell, she was, if not quite right, at least not quite wrong.

For when we went into the cabin, we and our unlucky yellow flower were flown at by another brown lady, in another gorgeous turban, who had become on the voyage a friend and an intimate; for she was the nurse of the baby who had been the light of the eyes of the whole quarter-deck ever since we left Southampton--God bless it, and its mother, and beautiful Mon Nid, where she dwells beneath the rock, as exquisite as one of her own humming-birds.