"Well," he exclaimed, "an hour or two can make but very little difference," and he sent his impatient, imperious gaze into the blue to windward, and fell to marching the deck athwartships, opposite the tiller-head, becoming suddenly as heedless of my presence as if I had been a brass swivel on his bulwarks. But I was less likely to be chagrined by his discourtesy than by his attention. It had, indeed, come to my never feeling so easy in my mind as when he perfectly neglected me.
Our bringing of that hull within sight from the deck ran into more than an hour or two. Close-hauled, and the breeze light, the Braave scarce seemed able to push her bows through the water at all. The bubbles and foam-bells slided past as languidly as the tide of ebb in its last quarter wrinkles against the stem of an anchored vessel.
At breakfast nothing else was talked of, and little enough was said about it too. We were, in truth, a silent party. Every look of Imogene caused me to see how the memory of last night worked in her—a night of sweetness and terror—of kisses and caresses, and entrancing revelations—and of an horrific spectacle of enormous and speechless anguish, humanly devilish! On deck, in the early sparkling breeziness of the morning, I had been sensible of no recoil on meeting Vanderdecken; but at table I sat close to him; to his presence the recollection of the foam upon his lip, his fallen jaw, the soul-devouring, feverish restlessness of his enraged movements, his dreadful posture of imprecation, imparted insufferable emphasis; and when I quitted the cabin for the deck, not having spoken half-a-dozen syllables during the meal, the feeling of relief in me was like the removal of a cold hand from my heart.
It was two hours-and-a-half after sighting the hull from the masthead, that it lay visible upon the sea from the deck. Luckily, the breeze had stolen a point or two westerly, which enabled our ship to keep the wreck to leeward of our bowsprit; otherwise, we should never have fetched it by two miles, without a board, and that might have ended in a week's plying to windward. The crew had long got scent of this object ahead, and being as keen for tobacco as was ever a sharp-set stomach for victuals, they were collected in a body on the forecastle, where, in their dull, lifeless, mechanic way they stood staring and waiting. Although those who had the watch on deck had been at various sorts of work when the wreck hove into view over the forecastle rail—such as making spun-yarn, sawing wood, (as I supposed for the cook-room) sail-mending, splicing old running gear, and the like—yet, I remarked they dropped their several jobs just as it suited them, and I never observed that either of the mates reproved them, or that the captain noticed their behaviour; whence I concluded that the Curse had stricken the ship into a kind of little republic, wherein such discipline as was found was owing to a sort of general agreement among the men that such work as had to be done must be done.
I found myself watching the wreck with a keener interest than could ever possess the breasts of the wretched master, mates, or crew. Was any stratagem conceivable to enable me to use that half-sunk vessel as an instrument for escaping with Imogene from this Death Ship?
My dearest girl came to my side whilst my brain was thus busy, and in a soft undertone I told her of what I was thinking. She listened with eager eyes.
"Geoffrey," said she, "you are my captain. Command me, and I will do your bidding."
"My darling," I replied, "if you knew what a miserable, nervous creature this Death Ship has made of me you would guess I was the one to be led, you to direct. But yonder craft will not serve us. No! Better that little boat there than a hull which the crew, ay, and perhaps the very rats have abandoned."