She was heading about north west by north, on the larboard tack, the yards as hard fore and aft as they would lie; and though she was making more leeway than headway, 'twas certain her bowsprit--for the first time during the days I had spent in her--was pointing fair for the Cape passage. It was this that had softened Vanderdecken's fierceness. As bit by bit the Death Ship stole up to this heading, so had his temper improved; insomuch that throughout the afternoon he had exhibited towards me a manner marked in no small degree by the haughty courtesy and solemn and stately urbanity which I had observed in his treatment of me in the first day or two of my being with him. This, I promise you, singularly rejoiced me, as exhibiting precisely the influence necessary to neutralise the hideous malignity of the mate. It also showed that he was still so much a sea-captain in soul as to be rendered bland and obliging, or savage and dangerous, by the turn of the weather, or rather by the direction and strength of the wind. Indeed, had his character contained more strokes of the humanity that is familiar to us, I should have heartily sympathised with the rage which contrary gales aroused in him. But the Curse had made a _lusus naturæ_ of him. Much of what had, in 1653, been sailorly had been eaten out by time, and he flourished chiefly on those instincts which had miserably won him his doom. Hence, however greatly you wished to feel pity, you found you could not compassionate him as you would a living and real person. And of this, indeed, I was especially sensible that afternoon, whilst watching him and reflecting that though to be sure he could speak to me now without striving to blast me with his eyes and to damn me with his frown, yet let the wind suddenly head us and blow hard, and 'twas odds but that I should be hiding away from him, in the full conviction that it might need but a single indiscreet word to procure my being thrown overboard. It was half-past five o'clock in the afternoon. I had come up from supper, leaving Vanderdecken smoking at the head of the table. Imogene had gone to her cabin for her hat. Van Vogelaar was off duty, and very likely lying down. Arents had the watch. There was a fine sailing wind blowing, and but for the choking grip of the trim of the yards on the creaking, high, old fabric, I believe the ship would have got some life out of it.