"If I could converse with ease, mynheer," said I, "I should speak in no other language aboard this vessel. As it is, I fear you do not catch half my meaning." "Oh, yes! you are intelligible, sir," he answered, "though you sometimes use words which sound like Dutch but signify nothing." "Nothing to you, my friend," thought I; "but I warrant them of good currency in the Amsterdam of to-day." In short, his language was to mine, or at least to the smattering I had of the Batavian tongue, what the speech of a man of the time of Charles II. would be to one of this century--not very wide asunder; only that one would now and again introduce an obsolete expression, whilst the other would occasionally employ a term created years after his colloquist's day. "But it pleases me, captain, to speak in my own tongue," said Imogene. "I should not like to forget my language." "It will be strange if you forget your language in a few months, my child!" he answered, with a slight surprise. A sudden roll of the ship causing the great mainsail to flap, he started, looked around him, and cried out with a sudden anger in his deep voice, to the steersman, "How is the ship's head?" "North-by-east," was the answer. "We want no easting," he cried out again, with the same passion in his voice, and strode with vehemence to the binnacle where stood Antony Arents, who had charge of the deck, and who had gone to view the compass on hearing the skipper call. "This will not do!" I heard the captain say, his deep tones rumbling into the ear as though you passed at a distance a church in which an organ was played. "By the bones of my father, I'll not have her break off! Sweat your braces, man! Take them to the capstan! If we spring our masts and yards for it she'll have to head nothing east of north!" There was a fierce impetuosity in his speech that made the delivery of it sound like a sustained execration. Arents went forward and raised some cries. I could see the figure of Vanderdecken black against the stars, up and down which he slided with the heave of the ship. He was motionless, close to the binnacle, and I could imagine the stormy rise and fall of his broad and powerful chest under his folded arms.