"Ay," said the youngest-looking of the seamen, named Abraham Bothma—I took down their names afterwards from Imogene's dictation, conceiving that the mentioning of them would prove of interest to any descendants of theirs in Holland into whose hands this narrative might chance to fall—"but we keep a lamp always burning."
"But should you run short of oil!" said I, timorously, for I had made up my mind to pretend to one and all that I believed they had sailed from Batavia in the preceding year, and the question was a departure from that resolution.
"Oil is easily got," exclaimed Jans, roughly. "What use do you English make of the porpoise and the grampus? Is not the seabird full of it? And fish you in any bay along the coast 'twixt Natal and Cape Town, and I'll warrant you livers enough to keep your lamps burning for a voyage round the world. And what ship with coppers aboard can be wanting in slush?"
"Heer Jans," said I, "I am a sailor and love to hear the opinions of persons of my own calling. Therefore I would ask you, do not you consider your ship greatly hampered forward by yonder sprit-topmast and the heavy yards there?" And to render myself perfectly intelligible, I pointed to the mast that I have already described as being fixed upright at the end of the bowsprit, rising, so to speak, out of a round top there, and having a smaller top on the upper end of it.
"How would you have her rigged?" asked he, in a sneering manner.
"Why," said I, cautiously, "as most of the ships you meet are rigged—with a jibboom upon which you can set more useful canvas than spritsails."
On this, Bothma said, "Let your country rig its ships as it chooses, they will find the Dutch know more about the sea and the art of navigating and commanding it than your nation has stomach for."
I could have smiled at this, but the voice of the man, the deadness of his face, the terrifying life in his eyes, the sombre gravity of the others, standing about me like people in their sleep, were such a corrective of humour as might have made a braver man than I am tremble. I dared not go on talking with them, indeed, their looks caused me to fear for my senses, so without further ado I walked aft and entered the cabin hoping to find warmth and recovery for my mind in the beauty and conversation of Imogene.
The cabin was deserted. The darkness of the sky made it very gloomy, and what with its meagre furniture, the unhealthy colouring of its walls, trappings of gilt and handwork, once I daresay very brilliant and delightful, but now as rueful as a harlequin's faded dress seen by the sun, it was a most depressing interior, particularly in such weather as was then storming, when the ceaseless thunder of bursting surges drove shock after shock of tempestuous sound through the resonant fabric, and when the shrieking of the wind, not only in the rigging but along the floor of the stormy sky itself, was like the frantic tally-hoing of demons to the million hounds of the blast.
Not knowing how to pass the time, I went to the old, framed pictures upon the sides, and found them to be panels fitted to the ship's plank, and framed so as to form as much a part of the structure as the carving on her stern would be. But time, neglect, dirt or damp—one or all—had so befouled or darkened the surfaces that most of them were more like the heads of tar barrels than paintings. Yet here and there I managed to witness a glimmering survival of the artist's work; one representing the fish market at Amsterdam, such of the figures as were plain exhibiting plenty of humour; another a Dutch East Indiaman, of Vanderdecken's period, sailing along with canvas full, streamers blowing, and the Batavian colours standing out large from the ensign staff; a third was a portrait, but nothing was left of it save a nose whose ruddy tip time had evidently fallen in love with, for there it still glowed, a mouth widely distended with laughter, and one merry little eye, the other having sunk like a star in the dark cloud that overspread most of this panel. This, I supposed, had been the portrait of a sailor, for so much of the remainder as was determinable all related to Amsterdam and things nautical. Having made this dismal round, I sat me down at the table, sternly and closely watched by the parrot, whose distressing, croaking assurance I had no wish to hear, she being my only company if I except the clock, whose hoarse ticking was audible above the gale, and the skeleton skulking inside, whose hourly resurrection I was now in the temper to as greatly dislike as the bird's iterative denunciation.