'Read'st thou not something in my face that speaks
Wonderful change and horror from within me?'"
She put a tragic note into her voice as she recited; the starlight was in her eyes, and they were fixed on me; her face whitened out to the astral gleaming till you saw her hair throbbing on her forehead to the blowing of the wind. She continued—
"I could quote a score of passages marvellously true of the captain and his fellows, serving indeed as revelations to me, so keen are the eyes of poets. And little wonder," says she, with a sigh, "for what else have I had to read but that book of poetry!"
"Just now," said I, "he asked if you thought it likely you should lose your language in a few months. This plainly shows that he supposes he met with you in his passage from Batavia—that is his last passage. Now, since his finding you dates nearly five years back, and you tell me that he has only memory for what happened within the past few months, how does it fall out that he recollects your story, which he certainly does, for he asked me if you had related it to me?"
"It must be," she answered, "because he is constantly alluding to it in speaking of the reception his wife and daughters will give me. It is also impressed upon him by my presence, by my frequent asking him to put me on board a homeward-going ship, and so it is kept in his mind as a thing constantly happening—continually fresh."
"Suppose I should stay in this ship say for six months, never speaking of the Saracen nor recalling the circumstance of my coming on board, you believe his memory would drop the fact, and that he would view me as one who happened to be in the ship, and that's all, his mind stopping at that?"
"How he would view you I cannot say; but I am certain he would forget how you came here, unless there was incessant reference to the Saracen and to her men shooting at Van Vogelaar. But time would bear no part in this sort of recollection: he would still be living in the year of God 1653, and sailing home from Batavia; and if he thought at all he'd imagine it was in that year that you came on board his ship."
Well, here was a piece of metaphysics a touch above my intelligence and above this sweet creature's too, for she could only speak as she believed, without being able to account for the miraculous conditions of this ship's life and of that of her crew. And indeed I should not have teased her with such questions but for a great craving to obtain a just conception of the amazing character who has been, and must ever remain, the terror of all mariners; whilst beyond this again was a secret dread lest this fair enchanting woman should have been chosen to play a part in the marine tragedy; which I would have a right to fear if I found Vanderdecken's relations with her, as regards his memory for instance, different from what they were in all other directions. Plainly I mean this: that if she were being used as a Divine instrument, then it was certain that I should not be suffered to deliver her from the Death Ship—an insupportable reflection at any time, but a mortal blow now that I had come to love her.
Meanwhile, the giant figure of the Dutch captain stood motionless near the binnacle; close to him was the second mate, himself like a statue. The tiller-tackles, grasped by the helmsman, swayed him with every blow of the sea upon the rudder, yet even his movements had a lifelessness in them that was as apparent as though the man had been stricken dead at his post, and swung there against the dancing stars.