Bainbridge took his seat he said a few words concerning the old sailor,
who, to the surprise, I think, of both physicians, appeared to be
recovering. They hoped for scarcely more than a temporary improvement,
but a little longer life for the poor old man seemed now assured.

Doctor Bainbridge glanced at the map of Hili-li, which I had spread out
on the table, and began:

"In the ducal palace," said he, "in which through the kindness of the
younger members of the household, Pym and Peters were permitted to
reside--at first only in the servants' quarters--the servants, however,
being, at least in social manners, equal to the strangers--there were,
besides the immediate family of the duke, many more or less close family
connections. Among these was a young woman, corresponding in her period
of life to New England women in their twentieth or twenty-first year,
but really in her sixteenth year. Now I should imagine from the actions
of that old sea-dog, Peters, lying there in his seventy-eighth or
seventy-ninth year, and forty-nine years after he last set eyes on the
young woman, that she must have been the loveliest being in a land of
exceeding loveliness. Her eyes, the old man says, were in general like a
tropical sky in a dead calm, but on occasions they resembled a tropical
sky in a thunder-storm. She had one of those broad faces in which the
cheeks stand out roundly, supporting in merriment a hundred changing
forms, and laughing dimples enough to steal a heart of adamant--the
loveliest face, when it is lovely, in all the world. Her hair was
golden, but of the very lightest of pure gold--a golden white; and when
in the extreme warmth of her island home she sat amid the trees, and it
was allowed to fall away in rippling waves--to what then am I to liken
it? It was transcendently beautiful. I think that I can feel its
appearance. It must have looked like the sun's shimmer on the sea-foam