I instantly saw him. The wheel was in front of the break of the poop, where the cuddy or round-house windows were; and erect at it stood a man, on the starboard side, one hand down clutching a spoke at his waist, and his left arm straight out to a spoke to larboard, which he gripped. Methought he wrestled with the helm, for he swerved as a steersman will who struggles to keep a ship's head steady in a seaway. "Is he mad?" cried I. "Ay, it must be so! Famine, thirst, mental anguish, may have driven him distracted. Yet, even then, why does not he look towards us? Why, were he actually raving, surely his sight would be courted by our presence." "Pray God he be not mad," whispered Imogene; "he is certain to be a sailor and an Englishman; and if he be mad, and brought here, how will these men deal with him?" "Yes; and I say, too, pray God he be not mad!" I cried; "for back me with a hearty English sailor and I believe--yes, I believe I could so match these fellows as to carry the ship, without their having the power to resist me, to any port I chose to steer for to the eastward;" for with her cry of, "He is sure to be a sailor and an Englishman," there swept into my brain the fancy of securing the crew under hatches, and imprisoning Vanderdecken and his mates in their cabins--the least idle, in sober truth, of all the schemes that had presented themselves to me. "Hush!" she exclaimed, breathlessly, and as she closed her lips to the whisper, Vanderdecken came to us. But not to speak. He stood for some minutes looking at the wreck, with the posture and air of one deeply considering. The seamen forward gazed with a heavy steadfastness, too, some under the sharp of their hands, some with folded arms. I heard no speech among them. Yet though their stillness was that of a swoon, their eyes shone with an eager light, and expectation shaped their pallid, death-like faces into a high and straining look. There were no signs of life aboard the wreck, saving the figure of the man that swayed at the wheel. I was amazed that he should never glance towards us. Indeed, I am not sure that the whole embodied ghastliness of our Death Ship matched in terror what you found in the sight of that lone creature grasping the wheel, first bringing it a little to right, then heaving it over a little to left, fixedly staring ahead, as though such another Curse as had fallen upon this Dutch ship had come like a blast of lightning upon him, compelling him to go on standing at yonder helm, and vainly striving to steer the wreck--as terribly corpse-like as any man among us, and as shockingly vital too!