We were alone, and I took her in my arms. I saw how it was with her, how the fear of the tempest, how sleeplessness, had wrought in her delicate health and depressed her powers, and I comforted and cherished her as my heart's love best knew how; yet her foreboding concerning her time in this world struck a chill into my blood, for it just then found solemn accentuation in her unusual pallor, her languid eyelids, the sadness of her smile, her low voice and tears.
However, I borrowed comfort from the reflection that the health of the heartiest maiden might well fail in such an existence as this girl passed, spite of the wine-like invigoration of the salt winds; that she had survived hard upon five years of experiences so wild and amazing that a few weeks had tended not a little to pale my own face and even rob me of something of my manhood; that it was inevitable she should break down from time to time, but that her sweetness would soon bloom and be coloured into a loveliness of health when this Death Ship had become a thing of the past, and when I had safely lodged her as my bride in my mother's pretty home, with flower-gardens and fields to wander in, upon floors unrocked by billows, in rooms irradiated at night by fires never more mystical than the soft flame of oil or the silver of star and moonshine.
The weather brightened as the day advanced. By noon the sky had broken into lagoons of blue, with fine large clouds that rained here and there upon the horizon and filled the air down there with broken shafts of rainbow, like to windgalls, only that the colours were very sharp and even glorious. There was now plenty of sunshine to give life and splendour to the ocean, whose dye of azure looked the purer and more sparkling for its cleansing by the great wind and rain and fire-bolts of the past night. The swell of the sea was from the southward, no longer a turbulent movement, but a regular respiratory action, with weight and volume yet that made you think of the deep as a sentient thing, with something of the violence of its hellish conflict yet lurking in its rhythmic breathing.
About this hour a number of whales showed their black, wet backs at the distance of a mile. The sunshine turned their spoutings into very beautiful fountains, which fell in showers of diamonds and rubies and emeralds; and their great shapes and solemn movements, with now and again the dive of one with a breathless lingering of tail that showed like a gigantic fan of ebony, or the rise of another, floating its sparkling blackness above the violet fold of a brimming swell, as though a little island had been hove to the surface by some deep-sea convulsion, afforded Imogene and me some twenty minutes of very agreeable diversion. The wind was a trifle to the southward of west, a brisk breeze, and the ship swarmed and swirled and rolled along at a speed of some five or six marine miles in the hour, every cloth abroad and already dried into its usual dingy staring tones. But the pump was worked without intermission. The clanging of the brake upon its pin, the gushing of the bright water flowing to the scuppers and flooding the deck thereabouts with every roll, the hissing of the slender cascades over the side, grew into sounds as familiar as the creaking of the bulkheads, or the cries of the rudder upon its ancient rusty pintles.
Those pumping gangs made a strange, mysterious sight. They toiled, but their labour was not that of living seamen who change their posture again and again, who let go an instant with one hand to smear the sweat from their brows or to bite an end of tobacco, who break into choruses as they ply their arms or growl out curses upon this hardest of marine tasks, or raise a cheerful call of encouragement one to another. There was the same soullessness in this as in all else they did. No dew was distilled from their death-like faces. Once at the pump they never shifted their attitudes. A seaman of seventy, and perhaps older yet, would work side by side with one of twenty years, and at the end of the hour's labour—for each gang was relieved every hour—the aged sailor would exhibit no more fatigue than the younger one. Their aspects came out startlingly as they stood close together, their countenances bearing expressions as undeterminable as the faint smile or the dim frown of horror or the slumberous placidity on the features of the dead; and never was the sense of the wild conjecture of the Saracen's mad captain so borne into me as when I viewed one group after another coming to this pumping business, and contrasted their faces and perceived how every man—young, middle-aged and old—showed in dreadful vitality the appearance he would have offered at the hour of his death, no matter his years, had the Curse not stood between him and the grave.
That afternoon, happening to be alone on the poop—I mean, without Imogene—for when she was absent I was more alone, though the whole of that ship's grisly company had gathered around me, than ever I could have been if marooned on some mid-ocean rock—and listening a little to the monotonous beat of the pump-gear, a thought came into my head and I stepped over to Vanderdecken, who leaned upon the weather-rail, his chin upon his hand.
"Mynheer," said I, "I ask your pardon for breaking in upon you. The labour of pumping is severe—I know it from several stern experiences." He lifted his head and slowly looked round to me. "This ship," I continued, "has rescued me from death and proved an asylum to me. 'Tis but right I should share in the general toil. Suffer me then, mynheer, to take my turn at the pump with the others."
He eyed me a little with his wonderful fiery gaze, and answered: "It is not necessary. Our company is numerous, there are hands enough. Besides, sir, there is no urgency, the water doth not gain if it do not decrease."
I bowed, and was leaving him, but he added: "I fear you have but an imperfect knowledge of the character of the Dutch. Yet you tell me you have often visited Rotterdam."
"It is true, mynheer, but only as a sailor liberated o' nights and forced therefore to form his judgment on such company as the ale-house supplies."