Vanderdecken talked of the fair wind; a sort of satisfaction illuminated his sombre austerity; though his dignity was prodigious and his commanding manner full of an haughty and forbidding sternness, he was nevertheless politer to me than he had ever yet been, going to the length of talking about the food on the table, the excellent quality of the African Guinea fowl and bustard, recommending me to taste of a dish of marmalade, and relating a story of a privateer having left behind him, in a ship he had clapt aboard of, a number of boxes which seemed to be full of marmalade, but which in reality were loaded with virgin silver. But it was the fair wind that produced this civility, though after last night's business 'twas welcome enough let the cause be what it would. No sooner had Imogene and I a chance of speaking alone than she asked me what was the matter. I told her how Van Vogelaar had entered my cabin and stabbed at my bed. She turned white; her beautiful eyes grew large and bright with terror; she clasped her hands and for some moments could not speak. Her agitation diminished, however, when she understood that Van Vogelaar walked in his sleep, though she was still very white when she cried: "If you had been sleeping when he entered you would now be dead!" I answered: "What he does in his sleep he may do awake. This action is like the whispers of a dreamer, babbling out his conscience. It is in his soul to kill me, and long thinking upon it has moved him to the deed in his sleep." "Oh, Geoffrey, did I not beg you to secure your door?" "Ay--that shall be looked to in future, I warrant you. But why should this man, of all the others, especially thirst for my life? How have I wronged him?" She replied by pointing out that the crew of my ship had fired upon him; also that in the days of his natural life he was no doubt a villain at heart and that all the features of his devilish nature attended him through his doom; that being more jealous, rapacious and avaricious than the others, he might regard my presence as a menace to his share of the treasure, and hunger after my destruction; so that, come what might, I should never be able to report the wealth that lay in the ship's hold.