Yet, hideous as was the prospect of that shore when I thought of myself marooned upon it, its horrors shrunk into mere perils, such as courage, patience and resolution might overcome, when my imagination put my darling by my side, and with her hand in mine, I looked round me upon the vast scene of solitude. In her weakness I found my strength; in her devotion my armour. Great God! How precious to man is Thy gift of woman's love! But for Imogene where would have been my purpose and determination? I have but to recall the condition of my spirits when I looked at the shore and thought of myself as alone there to know. The sun had been sunk an hour, the twilight had melted into darkness, and the sky was full of stars, when the Death Ship floated in a breathless manner to abreast of the eastern bluff or foreland of the bay, and with an air as faint as the sigh of a spirit expiring upon the black drapery of her higher canvas, she slided the blotting head of coast on to her quarter, and came to a dead stand within half-a-mile of the beach. I heard Vanderdecken tell Arents to drop the lead over the side. This was done. The captain exclaimed: "What trend hath she?" "None, sir. The line is up and down like an iron bar." "Clew up the topsails and topgallant-sails. Up with the courses. See all ready to let go the anchors, Van Vogelaar." These orders were re-echoed. In a moment the decks were alive with dusky shapes of moving men; one after another the sails dissolved against the stars like clouds, amid the hoarse rumbling of blocks, the whistling of running ropes, the rattle of descending yards. "Are you all ready forward?" cried Vanderdecken, his rich voice going in notes of deep-throated music up into the gloom. "All ready!" answered Van Vogelaar from the forecastle. "Then let go the anchor!" The heavy splash of a great weight of iron was followed by a hot seething sound of cable torn through the hawse-pipe; the water boiled to the launching blow from the bow and spread out in a surface of dim green fire. I watched to see if the vessel would swing: but there was no air, neither was there tide or current to slue her, and she hung in a shadow like that of a thunder-cloud over her own anchor, her mastheads very softly beating time to the slow lift and fall of the light swell. "Keep all fast with the larboard anchor!" exclaimed Vanderdecken. "Overhaul the cable to the fifty fathom scope. Aloft men and stow the canvas. Carpenter!" A hoarse voice answered, "Sir?" "Sound the well and let me know what water there is."