"If I may not see Pegasus," I asked, "is there any chance of my being taken to the Castle of the Sleeping Beauty?"
"I have never seen it myself," he replied, "and so I cannot show it to you. Rarely indeed may I leave the deck of my ship to go ashore; and this castle that you ask about is very far inland. I am told that it is in a country which the French travellers call La Scribie, a curious land, wherein the scene is laid of many a play, because its laws and its customs are exactly what every playwright has need of; but no poet has visited it for many years. Yet the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, whose domains lie partly within the boundaries of Scribia, is still a subscriber to the Gazette de Hollande—the only newspaper I take himself, by the way."
This last remark of the Captain's explained how it was that he had been able to keep up with the news of the day, despite his constant wanderings over the waste of waters; and what more natural in fact than that the Flying Dutchman should be a regular reader of the Holland Gazette?
Vanderdecken went forward into the prow of the vessel, calling to me to follow.
"Do you see those peaks afar in the distance?" he asked, pointing over the starboard bow.
I could just make out a saw-like outline in the direction indicated.
"Those are the Delectable Mountains," he informed me; "and down on a hollow between the two ranges is the Happy Valley."
"Where Rasselas lived?"
"Yes," he replied, "and beyond the Delectable Mountains, on the far slope, lies Prester John's Kingdom, and there dwell anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. At least, so they say. For my part, I have never seen any such. And I have now no desire to go to Prester John's Kingdom, since I have been told that he has lately married Pope Joan. Do you see that grove of trees there at the base of the mountains?"
I answered that I thought I could distinguish weirdly contorted branches and strangely shivering foliage.