"It was your intention," said I, "that I should go with them?"
"Certainly," he answered, confronting me slowly and eyeing me haughtily; "you are an Englishman, but you are not my prisoner."
"We may be more fortunate next time," I said, coldly.
"'Tis to be hoped!" said Van Vogelaar, who had followed last, speaking in his harshest and sourest tone.
I turned to eye him; but at the moment the parrot, probably animated by our voices, croaked out, hoarsely, "Wy Zyn al Verdomd!" on which the fellow broke into a coarse, raw "ha! ha!" yet never stirring a muscle of his storm-hammered face. 'Twould have been like fighting with phantoms and fiends to war in words with these men. I am here, thought I, and there is yonder sweetheart to rescue before I am done with this Death Ship; and with a smile at her earnest, half-startled eyes I seated myself.
CHAPTER IX.
CAPTAIN VANDERDECKEN WALKS IN HIS SLEEP.
This incident of the English frigate satisfied me that it was Vanderdecken's intention to get rid of me at the first opportunity that offered. There could be no doubt that Van Vogelaar had poisoned his mind against me, for, certainly, at the start of this experience of mine, the skipper had treated me with humanity and a sort of heated, lofty courtesy; and since he deemed himself homeward bound, and regarded his vessel as a good sailer, he would not think it necessary to tranship me if his mind had not been acidulated.
I remember when the evening came on that same day we had been chased and abandoned by the Centaur, walking up and down the lee-side of the short poop alone, Arents, who had charge, standing silent near the helmsman. I had worked myself up into great confusion and distress of mind. Dejection had been followed by a fit of nervousness, and when I looked around me at the unmeasurable waste of ocean darkling in the east to the growing shadows there, at the ancient heights of canvas above me, with the dingy rusty red of the western light slipping from the hollow breasts and off the sallow spars, till the edges of the sails melted into a spectral faintness upon the gradual gloom, at the desolate, grassy appearance of the decks, the dull motions, the death-like posture of the three or four men standing here and there forward—I felt as if the curse of the ship had fallen upon my heart and life too—that it was my doom to languish in her till my death—to love and yet be denied fruition—to yearn for our release with the same impotency of desire that governed the navigation of this Death Ship towards the home it was the Will of God she was never to approach.