"Mr. Fenton," said she, with subdued energy in her soft voice, "I earnestly pray you, neither by word, look or sign to give Captain Vanderdecken the least reason to suspect that you mean to escape from his ship and rescue me whenever the chance shall offer. I will tell you why I say this: just now he spoke of you to me, and said if an opportunity offered he should put you on board any vessel that would receive you, no matter where she was bound to, and then he asked what you and I chiefly talked about. There was more sternness in his manner than ever I recollect in him when addressing me."
"If I thought him capable of human emotions," said I, "I should reckon him jealous."
"But he has human emotions—he loves his wife and children," she replied.
"Ay, but who is to know that that love is not left to linger in him as a part of his curse?" said I. "By which I mean, if he was not suffered to remember his wife and children and love them, he might not show himself very eager to get round the Cape. Possibly he wants to get rid of me, not because he is jealous, not because he dislikes me as a man, but because that malignant baboon, Van Vogelaar, may have been speaking against me, putting fears into his head touching his treasure, and working upon his duty as a Hollander—a compatriot of De Ruyter, God help him—to hate me as an Englishman."
"But he loves me too, Mr. Fenton," said she.
"As a father might," said I, not liking this, yet amused by her sweet tenaciousness.
"Yes, as a father; but it shows he has capacity for other emotions outside those which you deem necessary for the duration of the Sentence."
"I ought to believe so if he hates me," said I, looking his way and observing that he had turned his back upon us and was watching the sail astern. "But be all this as it will, you shall find me as careful as you can desire."
"If," said she, plaintively, "he should become even faintly suspicious of your intentions, he might set you ashore, should we not meet with a ship to receive you, and then what would become of you and what would become of me, Mr. Fenton?"