"When, sir, did Vanderdecken sail from Batavia?" I asked.
"I have always understood about the year 1650," he replied.
"Then," said I, calculating, "suppose the average age of the crew to have been thirty when the Curse was uttered—we'll name that figure for the sake of argument—in the present year of our Lord they will have attained the age of hard upon one hundred and eighty."
"Well?" said he, inquiringly, as though there was yet food for argument.
I shook my head.
"Then," he cried, with heat, "they are endevilled, for it must be one of two things. They can't be dead men as the corpse in the grave is dead."
"One could only judge by seeing with one's eyes," said I.
"I hope that won't happen," he exclaimed, taking a hasty turn; "though I don't know—I don't know! A something here," pressing his brow, "weighs down upon me like a warning. I have struggled to get rid of the fancy; but our being chased by the Dutchman shows that we did not meet that Plymouth snow for nothing; and, by the thunder of Heaven, Fenton, I fear—I fear our next bout will be with the Spectre."
His manner, his words, a gleam in his eye, to which the lantern lent no sparkle, sent a tremor through me. He caused me to fear him for a minute as one that talked with certainty of futurity through stress of prophetic craze. The yellow beams of the lantern dispersed a narrow circle of lustre, and in it our figures showed black, each with two shadows swaying at his feet from the commingling of the lamplight and the moonshine. The soft air stirred in the rigging like the rustle of the pinions of invisible night-birds on the wing; all was silent and in darkness along the decks, save where stood the figure of the helmsman just before the little round-house, outlined by the flames of the binnacle lamp; the stillness, unbroken to the farthest corners of the mighty plain of ocean, seemed as though it were some mysterious spell wrought by the stars, so high it went, even—so one might say—as a sensible presence to the busy, trembling faces of those silver worlds.