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Book, page 51 / 152 ''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. The only thing he did seem to care for was that if the infidel woman chose to persist in coming on deck, the canvas screen--which had been washed overboard--should be restored. This was done, and Madame de Bourke was assisted to a couch that had been prepared for her with cloaks, where the air revived her a little; but she listened with a faint smile to the assurances of Arthur, backed by Hebert, that this abandonment to fate gave the best chance. They might either be picked up by a Christian vessel or go ashore on a Christian coast; but Madame de Bourke did not build much on these hopes. She knew too well what were the habits of wreckers of all nations, to think that it would make much difference whether they were driven on the coast of Sicily or of Africa--'barring,' as Lanty said, 'that they should get Christian burial in the former case.' 'We are in the hands of a good God. That at least we know,' said the Countess. 'And He can hear us through, whether for life in Paradise, or trial a little longer here below.'
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