“No; it's not nearly done yet. It's only beginning.”
“I'm so glad! Do go on.”
She was eager as any child. Coleridge could not have desired a better listener.
“I know! I know!” she said presently. “We were caught in a calm as we came home! My father is fond of the sea, and brought us round the Cape in a sailing-vessel. It was horrid. It lasted only three days, but I felt as if I should die. It wasn't long enough, I suppose, to draw out the creeping things.”
“Perhaps it wasn't near enough to the equator for them,” answered Richard, and went on:—
“Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young;
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.”
“Poor man! And in such weather!” exclaimed Barbara. “And such a huge creature! I see! They thought now the killing of the bird had brought the calm, and they would have their revenge! A bad set, those sailors! People that deserve punishment always want to punish. Do go on.”
When the skeleton-ship came, her eyes grew with listening like those of one in a trance.
“What a horrid, live dead woman!” she said. “Her whiteness is worse than any blackness. But I wish he had told us what Death was like!”
“In the first edition,” returned Richard, much delighted that she missed what constructive symmetry required, “there is a description of Death. I doubt if you would like it, though. You don't like horrid things?”