"Amsterdam."
"Where are you from?"
"Batavia."
I said, "When did you sail?"
"On the twenty-second of July in last year! By the glory of the Holy Trinity, but it is dreary work; see how the wind heads us even yet!" He sighed deeply and glanced aloft in a manner that suggested grievous weariness.
"Last year!" I thought, a sudden elation expanding my soul and calming me as an opiate might, "if that be so why, then, though this ship had made a prodigiously long voyage of it from Java to these parallels, there is nothing wildly out of nature in such tardiness." Last year! Had I caught the true signification of the words he used?
"Pray, sir," said I, speaking in as firm a voice as the shivers which chased me permitted, "what might last year be?"
The mate, Van Vogelaar, growled out some exclamation I could not catch, the captain made a gesture with his hands, whilst their burly companion said in thick, Dutch accents, "It needs not salt water, but good, strong liquor to take away a Hollander's brain."
"Last year!" exclaimed Vanderdecken, unbending his haughty, imperious manner, "why, mynheer, what should be last year but 1653?"