I wondered how the young lady contrived to pass her time. Had she books? If so, they would doubtless be dull performances in old Dutch, fat and wormy volumes bound in hard leather—as sluggish in their matter as a canal, and very little calculated to amuse a spirited girl. Evidently, in the five years she had been sailing with Vanderdecken, she had learnt what she knew of Dutch; she spoke fluently, and with a good accent, though, to be sure, it was the Dutch of 1650. I constantly directed my eyes towards her cabin, in the hope of seeing her emerge, for I felt mighty dull and sad, and longed for the sight of her fair and golden beauty; and all the while I was wondering how she had endured, without losing her mind, the dreadful imprisonment she had undergone and was yet undergoing, and the still more fearful association of the captain and his men.
I also employed myself in turning over several schemes for escaping with her, but nothing that was really practicable offered. Suppose we met with an unsuspecting ship—I mean a vessel that did not know we were the craft that has been called the Flying Dutchman—Vanderdecken, being willing to get rid of me, sends me to her in a boat. I cry out that there is a young lady left behind breaking her heart for home, whereupon explanations would follow to prove the vessel the Death Ship! What would happen? In all probability, if I had managed to board the vessel we met, her crew, to preserve her from the Curse, would fling me overboard. In any case, away they would run directly the truth was known. Indeed, acquainted as I was with the terror with which Vanderdecken was viewed by all classes of mariners, 'twas positive that, though he had no suspicion himself of the dread he inspired, the story that would have to be told concerning Miss Dudley to account for her detention in the Phantom Ship would end in resolving those we encountered to have nothing to do with either her or me, but to bear a hand and "up sticks!"
As to getting away with her in one of the Dutchman's boats, first, how was I to hoist the boat over the side unperceived? Next, suppose that was to be managed, then on his missing us would not Vanderdecken, a man of fierce resolution, hunt after and perhaps find us, when I should be at the mercy of one in whom there was a great deal of the devil, and who, Heaven knows, could not revenge himself more awfully than by keeping me in his ship. Several projects I thought of, and then a strange idea came into my head. Here was a girl without mother or father, and, as I gathered, entirely friendless and penniless, as indeed in this latter article she could hardly help being as the child of a sailor. Suppose I should succeed in escaping with her? How could an association such as ours end but in a wedding? And did that consideration agitate me? Faith, though I had only known her since this morning, I reckoned, being young and in an especial degree an admirer and lover of the kind of beauty and sweetness this girl had in perfection, it would not need many days to pass before my heart would be hers.
Forthwith my imagination grew sunny. Many bright and delightful ideas occurred to me. Would not my tremendous experience find a glorious crowning in the hand of this girl and her endowment by Vanderdecken, who loved her, out of those chests of treasure and coin which he had in his hold? Would it be impossible for me to persuade him, say after the next gale which blew him back from Agulhas, to put us aboard some vessel homeward bound along with a chest of treasure for his wife as an earnest of what was coming, and so enable me to convey Miss Dudley straight to Amsterdam there to await his arrival? It was but a young man's fancy, pretentious and inconsistent with my opinion of the captain's temper and his ignorance of the Curse that lay on him; and it was not perhaps strictly honest. Though if you come to consider that his doom would never suffer him to use the riches he had in his ship, nor to know whether I had faithfully carried Miss Dudley to his house on the Buitenkant—where I afterwards heard he was living when he sailed—you will not judge me harshly for thus idly and merrily dreaming.
I was in the midst of this castle-building when the hour of noon was struck by the clock. I watched the figure of Death hewing with his lance, but with an abstracted eye, my mind being full of gay and hopeful fancies. But the moment the last stroke had rung, the parrot cried out:—
"Wy Zyn al Verdomd!"
with so fierce an energy that it broke up my thoughts as you destroy a spider's web by passing your finger through it, and I dropped my chin on to my breast with my spirits dashed.
END OF VOLUME I.
PRINTED BY
TILLOTSON AND SON, MAWDSLEY STREET
BOLTON