A colour flashed into Imogene's face, and she cried, "Oh, Herr Van Vogelaar, your pardon, if you please. English seamen are as humane as they are brave."
"Yes," said the mate, with a sneer that rendered his ugliness quite horrible with the distortion of it, "because English sailors are brave they fire upon an inoffensive boat, and because they are humane they leave their comrade to perish!"
"Madam," said I, softly, "the character of this ship was known to us."
She slightly raised her eyes, and such a sadness came into them that I feared to see her shed tears. Meanwhile, Vanderdecken had his gaze fixed upon me. He seemed to be musing upon what the mate had said.
"It was your Commodore Young," said he, in his resonant voice, that, to be sure, sounded grandly after the harsh pipes of the mate, "who provoked us. Why should your nation exact the honour of the flag? Has it bred greater seamen than Holland? There is my friend Willem Schouten—many a pipe, when I was a young man, have I smoked with him in his summer-house at Hoorn. Does even your Drake surpass Schouten? No, no! It was not for England to be mistress of the seas!" he exclaimed, with a solemn shake of the head, not wanting in a grave kind of urbanity.
I caught a glance from the girl, but I needed no hint to keep my tongue still. 'Twas maddening and terrifying enough to hear this man speak of Schouten as a friend—Schouten, who greatly headed the grand procession of mariners such as Dampier, Byron, Anson, and many others who, since his day, have sailed round that Cape Horn—which the stout Hollander was the first to pass and to name—into the great South Sea.
And yet, spite of the effect produced upon me by this man's speech and references, I was sensible of a distinct pricking of my conscience by my patriotism. To hear England sneered at by the natives of a country which has been described by a poet that flourished in the days of Blake and Tromp as the "off-scouring of the British sand," and as the "undigested vomit of the sea," was by no means to my liking. But to remonstrate would have been but a mere warring with the dead.
The captain appeared to delight to talk of the war between the Dutch and the English. I remember that he praised our Commodore Bodley, and said that if the States' ambassador, Adrian Paaw, had been a person of understanding, the treaty might have stood. This I recollect, but very little more, for, to be plain, it was not only a frightful thing to listen to him, but my thoughts were thrown into the utmost confusion by the loveliness of the lady who confronted me—by the assurance of the sweet eyes, warm colour, and her maidenly youth, which lived in every movement, word, smile, or sad look of hers, that she was no true member of the unholy and fearful company she lived amongst; by my wondering how she came to be in this Death Ship, and how it happened that she was finely dressed; not to speak of other speculations, such as how the food upon the table was provided, and by what means this ship, which I knew had been struggling against the will of the Omnipotent for hard upon one hundred and fifty years, should be supplied with a liberal stock of the conveniences of life.
But we had now done eating. The mate rose and quitted the table, but his place was shortly afterwards taken by another man whom I had not before seen, the second mate as I afterwards discovered, named Antony Arents. This person looked to be about fifty years of age. He wore high boots and a cloak and a soft flapping hat, which he threw down on entering. His left eye had a cast and the bridge of his nose was broken, but his countenance was of the true Dutch character, and in some points he was like the boatswain, Antony Jans, whom I had seen on deck when waking into consciousness, only that he had less flesh to his belly. But in him was the same ghastly hue of skin you saw in the others; 'twas in his hands as in his face; had you come across him in his sleep you would have said he had been dead some days. And, indeed, never did I view a corpse made ready for casting overboard that had the aspect of the dead so strong upon it as these men. He helped himself to food, taking not the least notice of me.