"Whence come you?" asked Daland, "and whither are you going?"
The Dutchman replied but little. "Holland," he said, "and a wanderer seeking shelter for his vessel from the storm." Home he had none, nor wife, nor child, and gladly would he pay of his treasures for one night at somebody's hospitable hearth.
And while Daland was marveling at this strange tale, and had begun to tell of his own home so near and yet so far away, the stranger, at a sign, had received a huge chest from his ship and was opening it before Daland's eyes.
If "all the wild flowers of the forest, all the lilies of the prairie," all the glorious colors of sunrise and sunset, if the rainbow itself, had been packed away in a chest to be suddenly opened before you, perhaps you would have been surprised, too. Gold was there, and silver was there, and the white sheen of pearls, and the bright sparkle of diamonds, and the deep glow of rubies, all there dancing, glittering, in Daland's astonished eyes. Was this some marvelous dream? When he found that the treasure was real, he remembered Senta, and offered the Dutchman his home for the night, telling him that his daughter ...
The Dutchman caught the word "daughter." Had Daland a daughter? Would he give her to him for a wife? And Daland, who had been thinking what a fine husband such a man, with a ship full of treasures, would be for his daughter, lost no time, and said yes.
Then hope came again to the heart of the Dutchman. He was impatient to see this maiden who, he silently prayed, might be the one to deliver him from his fate. And while he prayed, the wind changed, the clouds broke, a ray of sunshine peeped through, the sea became smooth as glass.
"You'll see her this day," said Daland.
And so, bidding the sailors raise anchor, Daland went aboard his boat, the Dutchman aboard his, and with a heigho, heigho, they sailed out of the bay.
III