It was as if he could not speak for rage. And swiftly was he understood. In a breath Jans was rolling forward, calling to the men, Arents was hastening to his station on the quarter-deck, and Van Vogelaar was slinking to the foremost end of the poop. The crew, to the several cries that broke from the mates and boatswain, dropped from rail and ratline, where they had been standing staring at the pursuing craft, and in ghastly silence, without exhibition of concern or impatience, fell to hauling upon the clew-garnets and backing the yards on the main. So weak was the ship's progress that the bringing of the canvas to the mast immediately stopped her way, and she lay as dead as a buoy upon the heave of the sea. This done, the crew went to the weather side, whence, as they rightly supposed, they would best view the approaching vessel. Jans held to the forecastle, Arents to the quarter-deck, and the mate hung sullen in the shadows cast by the mizzen-shrouds upon the planks. My heart beat as quickly as a baby's. I could not imagine what was to happen. Would yonder man-of-war, supposing her British, take possession of the Braave?--that is, could she? English powder, with earthquake power, has thrown up a mighty mountain of wonders; but could it, with its crimson glare, thunder down the Curse by and in which, this ship continued to sail and these miserable men continued to live? I shuddered at the impiety of the thought, yet what ending of this chase was to be conjectured if it were not capture? Vanderdecken, on the weather quarter, watched the ship in his trance-like fashion. How majestic, how unearthly, too, he looked against the blue beyond, his beard stirring and waving like smoke in a faintly moving atmosphere to the blowing of the wind! He wore the aspect of a fallen god, with the fires of hell glittering in his eyes and the passions of the damned surging dark from his soul to his face. Imogene and I had insensibly gained the lee-quarter, and our whispers were driven seawards from him by the breeze. "How will this end?" I asked my sweet companion. "If there be potency in the Curse this ship cannot be captured." She answered: "I cannot guess; I have not known such a thing as this to happen before." "Suppose they send a prize crew on board--the Sentence will not permit of her navigation beyond Agulhas--there is not a hawser in all the world stout enough to tow this ship round the Cape. As it is, is not yonder vessel doomed by her chasing us, by her resolution to speak us?"