Van Vogelaar did not arrive, maybe he was sleeping, with Arents' leave, well into his watch on deck. Imogene had a wan and drooping look. She answered my concerned gaze by saying she had not slept, and she smiled as she spoke, but never more sadly to my knowledge; it seemed but as a light playing over and revealing her melancholy. Lovely she appeared, but too fragile for my peace, and with too much of the sorrowful sweetness of the moon-lily when it hangs down its white beauty and contracts its milky petals into leanness with the waning of the silver orb it takes its name from. Suddenly she pricked her ears. "What is that sound?" she exclaimed, in English. "It is the seamen pumping the water out of the ship," I replied. "Strange!" she said. "Long before dawn I heard it indistinctly and have ever since been listening to it with a languid, drowsy wonder, not imagining its nature. It has been working continuously. Is there water in the ship?" "I have not dared inquire," I answered, with a side-long look at Vanderdecken, who ate mechanically without heeding us. "Captain," she said, softly, touching him on the arm with her hand, which glittered with his jewels, "the men have been pumping for some hours--why? Will you tell me?" He brought his eyes slowly to hers with a blank look that caused her to repeat her question. Whereupon he answered: "The heavy working of the ship in the small hours has caused her to start a butt or hidden end." "She is leaking?" He answered: "Yes, my child." "Can the leak be stopped?" she asked, encouraged to these questions by my glances. "No, 'tis below her water-line. But it does not gain. Continuous pumping keeps the water level. We shall have to careen to get at the leak." "Are we sailing to the coast?" she asked. "Yes," he answered. CHAPTER VII. IMOGENE FEARS FOR ME. On hearing that we were sailing to the coast my delight was so keen that I came near to suffocating myself by the sudden checking of the shout of joy that rose to my throat like an hysteric throttling thickness in the windpipe. To be sure, had anyone asked what there was in the news to fill me with this transport I should not have been able to offer a sufficient reason, for it was not as though Vanderdecken meant to steer for a port. I was sensible that he would head for some desolate bay upon a hot shore of sand, backed by great mountains, and leagues distant from any settlement, whether Dutch or British. Yet so great had been the depression excited by the tempest and the barrenness of our chances, that the mere circumstance of a change having come about, the mere happening of a departure from our rueful business of beating to the windward, raised my spirits to a very great height; nor must it be forgotten that though I conjectured in darkness, I had for a long time felt persuaded that if ever we were to remove ourselves from the Death Ship, the only opportunity that could offer would attend our dropping anchor off the African Coast.