Now Arents left the table, never having given us, nor our talk, nor the pictures, the smallest imaginable heed. His going brought Vanderdecken back to life, so to speak; and he handed the picture of his child to Prins. I looked at him, expecting, though God knows why, to see a tear. But whatever sensibility Heaven had permitted this man to retain did not appear in his face. Had it been cast in brass it could not have been harder and more impenetrable. His eyes were full of their former passionate scornful life and light. They made me think, supposing him to show now as he would have appeared at the time of his death, that he was one who would have met his end full of impatience, imperious rage, and savage decrial of the holy ordinances of Nature. But oh, the sadness, the sadness of the spectacle I had contemplated! This tender perusal by a husband and father of the beloved lineaments of those whom he deemed living, ay! and still looking as they looked at him from the canvas, but who had been dead so many years that time had perhaps erased the name from the stone that marked the burial-place of the youngest of them all--the little Margaretha! And how much longer would these portraits last, I asked myself? 'Twas certain by the evidences of decay in them that they had not the vitality of the ship and of those who sailed her. What then? The years would blot them out. Yet mercy he would surely deserve who loved his wife and children as this man did. And I still sometimes fondly hope that memory may be permitted to serve him in lieu of his eyes, so that in gazing upon the time-blackened canvas he may as truly see with intellectual sight the faces of his dear ones as though they stood out bright, fresh and life-like, as at the hour in which they were painted. All the time I looked at these pictures I would notice Miss Dudley watching me, quickly averting her gaze when mine met hers. I put down this scrutiny to her wish to gather my character, though I need not at this distance expect to be reproached for my vanity if I say that I thought that was not her only reason for following me with her eyes. I pray you consider the life she had led since the destruction of her father's ship and the loss of her parents; how that she was now grown to be a woman; and how that I was not only a young, but bright, fair, merry-eyed sailor, her own countryman, of the calling she loved for her father's sake, and the sweeter to her sight for breaking in upon her mournful life and offering to snatch her from the frightful companionship of the Death Ship's crew. But more of this anon. Whilst Prins was in the captain's cabin hanging up the pictures, she exclaimed, "It is a dull and dreary day. How are we to kill the time?" As she spoke the clock struck, and the parrot, instead of using her customary expression, laughed out loudly, "Ha! ha! ha!"