A quick jerk of the ship causing Imogene to lose her balance, she grasped my arm to steady herself by, and I took care she should not release me. Indeed, from almost the first hour of our meeting there had been a yearning towards me, a wistfulness of a mute sort underlying her demeanour, and this night I found assurance of it by her manner, that was not indeed clinging, having more of nestling in it, as if I was her refuge, her one hope. She may have guessed I loved her. I cannot tell. My eyes may have said much, though I had not spoken. But there was that in her, as she stood by my side, with her hand under my arm, that persuaded me her heart was coming to mine, and haply more quickly because of our sole mortality amid the substantial shadows of the Death Ship's crew. You felt what that bond meant when you looked around you and saw the dimly-looming figure of Vanderdecken beside the compass, the ghostly darkness of the second mate's form, the corpse-like swaying of the helmsman, as of an hanging body moved by the wind, and thought of the amazing human mysteries lost in the darkness forward, or slumbering in the hammocks, if, indeed, sleep was ever permitted to visit eyes which death was forbidden to approach. 'Twas as if Imogene stood on one side a grave, I on the other, and clasped hands for the courage we found in warm and circulating blood, over a pit filled with a heart-freezing sight. "We shall escape yet--fear not!" said I, speaking out of the heat of my own thoughts as though we were conversing on that subject. "May our Saviour grant it!" she exclaimed. "See how black the white water around the ship makes her in spite of the strange fires which glow everywhere!" I felt her shiver as she cried, "The vessel seems to grow more terrible to my fancy. It may be because we have talked so much of her, and your views of Vanderdecken and the crew have raised terrifying speculations in me."