I went to the foremost end of the poop and there stayed, leaning against the bulwark, my mind very full of thought. Though I had been in this vessel a week, yet now, as on many occasions, I found myself conceiving it to be a thing incredible that this craft should be the famous Death Ship of tradition, the talk and terror of the mariner's forecastle; and such a feeling of mystification thickened my brains that a sudden horror stung me from head to foot with the sensation the nervous are possessed with, when, in a sudden panic, they fear they are going out of their minds. But, by keeping my eyes fixed on Imogene, I succeeded ere long in mastering this terrible emotion, even to the extent of taking a cheerful view of my situation; first, by considering that, for all I knew, I had been led by the Divine hand to this ship for the purpose of rescuing the lovely girl from a fate more dismal and shocking than tongue could utter or imagination invent; and next, by reflecting that if God spared my life so that I could relate what I had seen, I should be famous among sailors as the only seaman that had ever been on board the Phantom Ship, as she is foolishly styled, eaten with her commander, mixed with her crew, beheld the discipline of her, and looked narrowly into all circumstances of her inner or hidden life. It seemed to me incredible that any vessel could encounter her and not guess what she was, though, of course, I believed what Imogene had said, that now and again an unsuspicious ship would traffic with Vanderdecken in such commodities as the one wanted or the other had. If her character was expressed at night by the fiery crawlings like red-hot wire upon her, in the daytime she discovered her nature by signs not indeed so wild and terrifying, but to the full as significant in a sailor's eyes. Supposing her to have been built at Hoorn, in 1648--that date, I believe, would represent her birth--there would be nothing in the mere antiquity of her hull, or even in the shape of it, to convict her as Vanderdecken's ship; because the difference between the bodies and forms of ships of the time in which she was built and those of many vessels yet afloat and actively employed, would not be so great as to let the mariner know what she was. For instance, there was a vessel trading in my time between Strangford and Whitehaven that was an hundred and thirty years old. She was called the Three Sisters, and the master was one Donnan; she was also known by the name of the Port-a-Ferry Frigate. Her burthen was thirty-six tons, and 'twas positively known she was employed at the siege of Londonderry, in 1689. Now, here was a craft once beheld by me, who am writing this, that was nearly as ancient as the Flying Dutchman. She was often to be met coasting, and, in consequence of her having been the first vessel that ever entered the Old Dock at Liverpool, was ever after made free of all port charges. Yet, no sailor shrank affrighted from her, no grave-yard