My own curiosity satisfied with respect to the brigantine, Samoa himself turned inquisitor.  He desired to know who we were; and whence we came in our marvelous boat.  But on these heads I thought best to withhold from him the truth; among other things, fancying that if disclosed, it would lessen his deference for us, as men superior to himself.  I therefore spoke vaguely of our adventures, and assumed the decided air of a master; which I perceived was not lost upon the rude Islander.  As for Jarl, and what he might reveal, I embraced the first opportunity to impress upon him the importance of never divulging our flight from the Arcturion; nor in any way to commit himself on that head:  injunctions which he faithfully promised to observe.

If not wholly displeased with the fine form of Samoa, despite his savage lineaments, and mutilated member, I was much less conciliated by the person of Annatoo; who, being sinewy of limb, and neither young, comely, nor amiable, was exceedingly distasteful in my eyes.  Besides, she was a tigress.  Yet how avoid admiring those Penthesilian qualities which so signally had aided Samoa, in wresting the Parki from its treacherous captors.  Nevertheless, it was indispensable that she should at once be brought under prudent subjection; and made to know, once for all, that though conjugally a rebel, she must be nautically submissive.  For to keep the sea with a Calmuc on board, seemed next to impossible.  In most military marines, they are prohibited by law; no officer may take his Pandora and her bandbox off soundings.

By the way, this self-same appellative, Pandora, has been bestowed upon vessels.  There was a British ship by that name, dispatched in quest of the mutineers of the Bounty.  But any old tar might have prophesied her fate.  Bound home she was wrecked on a reef off New South Wales.  Pandora, indeed!  A pretty name for a ship:  fairly smiting Fate in the face.  But in this matter of christening ships of war, Christian nations are but too apt to be dare-devils.  Witness the following:  British names all—­The Conqueror, the Defiance, the Revenge, the Spitfire, the Dreadnaught, the Thunderer, and the Tremendous; not omitting the Etna, which, in the Roads of Corfu, was struck by lightning, coming nigh being consumed by fire from above.  But almost potent as Moses’ rod, Franklin’s proved her salvation.

With the above catalogue, compare we the Frenchman’s; quite characteristic of the aspirations of Monsieur:—­The Destiny, the Glorious, the Magnanimous, the Magnificent, the Conqueror, the Triumphant, the Indomitable, the Intrepid, the Mont-Blanc.  Lastly, the Dons; who have ransacked the theology of the religion of peace for fine names for their fighting ships; stopping not at designating one of their three-deckers, The Most Holy Trinity.  But though, at Trafalgar, the Santissima Trinidada thundered like Sinai, her thunders were silenced by the victorious cannonade of the Victory.