Her superiority of sight she asserted, too, with a tyranny to which he made no resistance, although it might have tried a temper many degrees more patient than his was.
One day, however, she was at a loss.

They made out a crescent on the flag, and this caused even the old man a moment's astonishment.

But he declared then, for her information, shortly and decisively, that it was a "barbarian." This satisfied her for a moment.

But then she asked-- "What is a barbarian, grandfather ?" "It is a Turk." "Yes, but a Turk ?" "Oh! it's--it's--a Mohammedan--" "A what!--a Moham--" "A Mohammedan--a robber on board ship." "On board ship!" He was not going to give up his ascendancy in the matter, hard as she pushed him; so he bethought him of a pack of old tales there-anent, and went on to explain drily-- "They go to the Baltic--to Russia--to salt human flesh." "Human flesh!" "Yes, and sometimes, too, they seize vessels in the open sea and do their salting there." She fixed a pair of large, terrified eyes on him, which made the old man continue-- "And it is especially for little girls they look.

That meat is the finest, and goes by tons down to the Grand Turk." Having played this last trump, he was going in again, but was stopped by her eager question-- "Do they use a glass there on board ?" And when he said they did, she slipped quickly by him through the door, and kept cautiously within as long as the vessel was to be seen through the window-pane on the horizon.
The moods of the two were for once reversed.