Vanderdecken took the glass and levelled it, and after a brief inspection handed me the tube. The atmosphere was so bright that the lenses could do little in the way of clarification. However, I took a view for courtesy's sake, and seemed to make out the square canvas and long-headed gaff-topsail of a schooner as the sails slided like the wings of a sea-bird along the swell. "How doth she steer, mynheer?" said Vanderdecken, as I passed the telescope to Arents. "Why," I answered, "unless the cut of her canvas be a mere imagination of mine, she is close-hauled on the larboard tack and looking up for us as only a schooner knows how." "What do you call her?" he exclaimed, imperiously. "A schooner, sir." Whether he had seen vessels of that rig since their invention I could not know, but it was certain the word schooner conveyed no idea. It was amazing beyond language that hints of this kind should not have made his ignorance significant to him. The sight of the amber shadow on the lee quarter put an expression of anxiety into Imogene's face. She stood looking at it in silence, with parted lips and shortened breathing, her fragile, her too fragile profile like a cameo of surpassing workmanship, against the soft western splendour, the gilding of which made a trembling flame of one side of the hair that streamed upon her back. Presently turning and catching me watching she smiled faintly, and said in our tongue, "The time was, dear, when I welcomed a strange sail for the relief--the break--it promised. But you have taught me to dread the sight now." I answered, speaking lightly and easily, and looking towards the distant sail as though we talked of her as an object of slender interest, "If our friend here attempts to transfer me without you, I shall hail the stranger's people and tell them what ship this is, and warrant them destruction if they offer to receive me." The time passed. Imogene and I continued watching, now and again taking a turn for the warmth of the exercise. As on the occasion of our pursuit by the Centaur, so now Vanderdecken stood to windward, rigid and staring, at long intervals addressing Arents who, from time to time, pointed the glass as mechanically as ever Vanderdecken's piping shepherd lifted his oaten reed to his mouth. Shortly after six, arrived Van Vogelaar, who was followed by the boatswain, Jans; and there they hung, a grisly group, whilst the crew got upon the booms, or overhung the rail, or stood upon the lower ratlines, with their backs to the shrouds, suggesting interest and excitement by their posture alone, for, as to their faces, 'twas mere expressionless glimmer and too far off for the wild light in their eyes to show.