"My mother is alive," I answered.
"Ah!" said he, speaking as one in a reverie, "A sailor should not marry. What is more uncertain than the sea? The mariner's wife can never make sure of her husband's return. What will mine be thinking if we continue to be blown back as we are now by these westerly gales? It seems longer than months, yea, it appears to me to be years, since I last beheld her and my daughters standing near the Schreyerstoren, weeping and waving their farewells to me. My eldest girl, Geertruida, will be grown sick at heart with her long yearning for the parcel of silk I have for her. And Margaretha——" he sighed, softly. Then turning to Imogene, he said, "My dear, show this gentleman the toy I am taking home for my little Margaretha."
She rose with a look of pain in her face, and stepped to the cabin that was next the captain's. I now understood why he had desired me to speak in subdued tones last night, for that was the room in which she slept. The ease with which she moved upon that heaving deck was wonderful, and this verse of a ballad came into my head as I watched her go from the table to her cabin—
"No form he saw of mortal mould,
It shone like ocean's snowy foam;
Her ringlets waved in living gold,
Her mirror crystal, pearl her comb."
Ay, the ocean might have owned her for a child, with such dainty, elegant ease did she accommodate her form to the sweep and heave of its billows, as denoted by the motions of the ship; as some lovely gull with breast of snowy down and wings of ermine airily expresses the swing and charge of the surge by its manner of falling in each hollow and lifting above each head on outstretched pinion. Her costume too, that was so strange a thing, giving to this interior so romantic an appearance that, had the ship been still and you had looked in at the cabin door, then, with this lady's beauty and dress, the majestic figure of Vanderdecken smoking in his high-backed chair, the second mate at his food, Prins standing like one that dreams, all the faces but the girl's and mine ghastly, the strange beauty of the lamp that swung over the table, the oval frames holding paintings so bleared and dusky that it was difficult to make out the subjects, the dim and wasted colour of the cabin walls, and the bald tawdriness of what had been rich giltwork, the clock of ancient pattern, the parrot cage—I say, had you been brought on a sudden to view this interior from the door, you might have easily deemed it some large astonishing picture painted to the very height of the greatest master's perfection.
In a moment or two Miss Imogene returned, and coming to the table placed upon it a little figure about five inches tall. It was of some metal and had been gaily coloured as I supposed from what was left of the old tints. Its style was a red cloak falling down its back, a small cap with a feather, shoes almost hidden with great rosettes, hose as high as the thigh, and then a sort of blouse with a girdle. Both arms hung before in a very easy and natural posture and the hands grasped a flute.
Vanderdecken, putting down his pipe, took a key from under the cloak of the figure and wound the automaton up as a clock, when it instantly lifted the flute to its mouth, in the exact manner of life, and played a tune. The sound was very pure though piercing, the melody simple and flowing. In all, the figure played six tunes without any sound of the clock-work within, and it was undoubtedly a very curious and costly toy.
The second mate stalked out in the middle of this performance, having finished his meal, and showing no more sensibility to what was doing than did the table the figure played on. The eyes of the man Prins had a sickly, faraway look, to be imagined only, for no one could describe it. Vanderdecken lighted his pipe when the automaton struck up, and nodded gravely to the fluting with as much pleasure in his face as so fierce and haughty a countenance could express. The girl stood leaning upon the table, with a listlessness in her manner and constantly regarding me.
Scarce had the sixth tune been played, when the parrot called out from his cage, "Wy zyn al Verdomd!" clearly showing that she knew when the entertainment was over. Her pronouncing these words in Dutch robbed them somewhat, to my ear, of their tremendous import, but still it was a terrible sentence for the creature to have lighted on, and I wondered what her age was, for she could not have been newly-hatched when Vanderdecken bought her, as—he had told me—she then spoke the same words. However, the captain was full of his flute-player, and neither he nor Imogene noticed the parrot.