Prins prepared the table for supper, and then set a bowl of steaming punch before the captain. Shortly afterwards arrived Van Vogelaar and Arents. Our party was now complete, and we fell to. I said: "Gentlemen, you will forgive the curiosity of an English mariner who is unused to the discipline of the Batavian ships. How, Mynheer Vanderdecken, are the watches among you arranged when in harbour, as in a sense we may take ourselves now to be?"
Imogene observing my drift came to my help and said in Dutch: "The practice is as with our countrymen, Herr Fenton."
"Then the commandant stands the watch till midnight, and the mates together till sunrise," said I, speaking inaccurately that I might draw them into speech.
"No," exclaimed Arents. "With us the commander keeps no watch. The mates take the deck as at sea, I till midnight, Van Vogelaar till four, then I again."
"That is as it should be," said I, smiling into Arents' large, fat, white face.
"And it is very proper," said Van Vogelaar, in his coarse sarcastic voice, "that English sailors should apply to the Dutch for correct ideas on true marine discipline."
"Gentlemen," said I, suavely, "I have learnt much since I have been with you."
The mate darted one of his ugliest looks at me. And it was made infernal by the twist of leering triumph in his heavy lips, though he could not suppose I exactly understood what it meant.
We fell silent. Vanderdecken served out the punch with a small silver goblet. I drank but a mouthful or two, dreading the fumes. The others quaffed great draughts, making nothing of the potency of the liquor, nor of the steaming heat of it. Had they been as I was or Imogene—human and real—I should have rejoiced in their intemperance; but 'twas impossible to suppose that the fumes of spirits could affect the brains of men immortal in misery.