He came round to his high-backed chair, and seated himself, and, putting his arm along the table, gently took Imogene's wrist, and softly pulled her hand away from her face, wet with her tears, saying, "My dear, your fellow-countryman is right; it is the sorrow of every creature here that this gale should blow us backwards, and so delay our return; but what is more capricious than the wind? This storm will presently pass, and it will be strange," he added, with a sudden scowl darkening his brow, and letting go Miss Dudley's hand as he spoke, "if next time we do not thrust the Braave into an ocean where these north-westers make way for the strong trade wind that blows from the south-east." She dried her eyes and forced a smile, acting a part as I did; that is to say, she did not wish he should suspect her grief went deeper than I had explained; though I could not help observing that in directing her wet, sweet, violet eyes, with her mouth shaped to a smile, upon him, a plaintive gratitude underlay her manner, an admixture of pity and affection, the exhibition of which made me very sure of the quality of her heart. To carry Vanderdecken's thoughts away from the subject he supposed Miss Dudley and I had been speaking about, I asked her in Dutch what she had been doing with herself since breakfast. She answered in the same language that she had been lying down. "Have you books?" said I. "A few that belong to the captain. Some are in French and I cannot read them. The others are in Dutch. There is also a collection of English poetry, some of which is beautiful, and I know many verses by heart." "Are these works pretty new?" said I. She answered, "Of various years; the newest, I think, is dated 1647." "Ay," said Vanderdecken, "that will be my friend Bloys Van Treslong's book upon the tulip-madness." Finding him willing to converse, I was extremely fretted to discover that, owing to my ignorance of the literature and art of his time, I could not "bring him out" as the phrase runs, for looking into the Batavian story since, I find scores of matters he could have told me about, such as the building of ships at Hoorn, the customs of the people, the tulip-madness he had mentioned, the great men such as Jan Six, Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Van Campen who designed the Stadhuis and others, some of whom--as happened in the case of the great Willem Schouten--he may have known and haply smoked pipes of tobacco with.