I raised my hands half-mockingly, and said, "Do I not look my calling?" but recollecting my apparel, I burst into a laugh and exclaimed, touching the faded finery upon the cuff of my coat, "You will have thought me a beadle or a footman."
She shook her head smiling, but instantly grew grave, and now spoke in a most earnest voice. "I will tell you all I know about this ship and about myself. My father was Captain Dudley, of Portsmouth, and nearly five years ago, as closely as I can reckon time where time has ceased to all the others, he commanded a ship named the Flying Fish, and took me and my mother with him on a voyage to China. We called at Table Bay, but when we were off the coast where Algoa Bay is situated, the ship was set on fire by one of the crew entering the hold with a lighted candle and attempting to steal some rum. The flames quickly raged, the ship was not to be saved, the boats were lowered and my mother and I and a seaman entered one of them, but suddenly the ship blew up, destroying the boats that were against its side, and when the smoke cleared off nothing was to be seen on the water but a few pieces of blackened timber. Our boat had been saved by my father ordering the man to keep her at a good distance lest a panic arose and she should be entered by too great a number. The shock so affected my mother that she lost her mind." Here Imogene hid her face. When she looked at me again her face was wet, nevertheless she continued: "She died on the night following the loss of the ship, and I was left alone with the sailor. We were many leagues from the land, we had no sail, the oars were heavy. I was too weak and ill to help him with them, and the fierce heat soon melted the strength out of him, so that he left off rowing. He was good to me, gentle and very sorrowful about me. I cried so much over losing my father and mother, and at our dreadful situation, that I thought my heart would break, and I prayed that it might, for indeed I wanted to die." She drew a deep hysteric breath, tremulous as a long bitter sob. "We drifted here and there for five days, after which thirst and hunger bereft me of my senses, and I remember no more till I awoke in this ship. I then learnt that they had passed our boat close, and had stopped the vessel to inspect her. The seaman was dead, and they supposed me dead too, but Captain Vanderdecken, fancying a likeness in me to his daughter Alida, called to his men to bring me on board. They did so and found life in me."
"And you have been in this vessel ever since!" cried I.
"Ever since!" she responded.
"That is to say," I exclaimed, scarcely realising the truth, "for hard upon five years!"
She hid her eyes and shook her sweet face in the cover of her hands, as if she could not bear to think of it. I waited a little, partly that she might have time to recover her tranquillity, and partly that Prins might make an end of his business and go, though, let me declare, he gave us no more heed than had he been the clock; much less, indeed, than did the parrot that, having rounded her head, after the manner of those birds, till her beak was uppermost, watched us with the broadside of her face, and therefore with one eye, with horrid pertinacity and gravity.
"But can it be, Miss Dudley," said I, "that Captain Vanderdecken never intends to part with you?"
She looked up quickly, and said, "My position is incredibly strange. He has a father's fondness for me, and declares that, as I have no relations, I shall be one of his children, and live with his wife and daughters at Amsterdam. But he has no sense of time. Neither he nor the miserable crew can compute. To him and the others this is the year 1654, and he supposes that he sailed from Batavia in July of last year, that is, as he conceives, in 1653. At first I tried to make him understand what century this was, but he patted my cheek, and said my senses had not returned, and, when I persisted, he grew angry, and his temper so terrified me that I feigned to agree with him, and have ever since done so."
I reflected, and said, "It must be as you say, and as I have already noted; for, did the Almighty grant him and his crew any perception of the passage of time, is it conceivable that he would talk of his wife and children as still living, and be eager to return to them? When did you discover that this was the Phantom Ship?"
"I had heard that there was such a vessel from my father, and when Captain Vanderdecken talked to me and I marked the colour of his face and the appearance of the crew, and the glow that shone upon the vessel in the dark, with other strange things, such as her ancient appearance, I soon satisfied myself."