“Your teaching does not seem to make the lad see the difference between meats,” said I. “I have hopes of him,” he answered, “and Galloon’s face is good on these occasions.” He then talked of the schooner, of his dream, and his discourse ran in such a strain that I discovered that secretly he was not only of a serious and religious cast of mind, but superstitious beyond any man I had ever sailed with. Thought has the speed of the lightning stroke, and I remember as I sat listening to him, saying very little myself--for I had but the shallowest understanding of the subject he had got upon; I say that I remember thinking: Suppose this voyage should be the consequence of a dream? Suppose this Pacific quest for hard Spanish milled dollars should be an effect of superstitious fancy? Suppose the whole scheme should be as unsubstantial in fact as the actors in the revels in the ‘Tempest’? But the image of Mynheer Tulp swept as an inspiration of support into my mind. I had entertained myself by figuring that man. In thinking over this voyage I had depicted its promoter, and my fancy gave me the likeness of a little withered Dutchman in a velvet cap, with a nose of Hebraic proportions, a keen black eye, a wary, sarcastic smile, and a mind whose horizon was the circumference of a guilder. I seemed to see the little creature looking over Greaves’ shoulder at me as I mused upon my companion’s somewhat foggy talk, and I said unto myself, “Tulp believing, all’s well.” When we went on deck the schooner was within musket shot. She had seemingly been in collision with another vessel, though her hull looked perfectly sound; nor did she sit upon the sea, nor rise with the slope of the swell, as if she had more water in her than was good for buoyancy. Nothing alive was visible aboard.