"I will shut this door to keep the damp out," he said. I motioned with my hand as though bidding him shut it, which he did, and I was left alone. I wrapped Vanderdecken's large rich cloak about me, and stretched myself along the bench, using my arm as a pillow. I resolved to lie thus for at least half-an-hour, conceiving that this would be long enough to weary any one who should take it into his head to watch me through the cabin window. As to Vanderdecken, I did not fear his seeing me whilst he kept his door closed. The bulkhead of his berth was thick and apparently seamless, and his door fitted into overlaps of the jambs, for the exclusion of draughts of air after the fashion in old shipbuilding. I lay very quiet hearkening to the dulled beating of the pump and watching the clock, the great hand of which was just visible. When it came round so as to lie upon the quarter before the hour, I rose with the utmost stealth, arranging the cloak in such a fashion as to make the dark shape of it resemble a recumbent form, and holding my breath, stole on tiptoe to Imogene's cabin and pushed the door. It opened; I entered and pushed the door to again, and it jammed noiselessly upon the soft substance that had kept it closed before. Imogene sat on the side of her bed, that exactly resembled the bed in Vanderdecken's room which I have described. She was fully dressed, and had on a fur or sealskin cap, with flaps for the ears. A small silver lamp of a very ancient pattern hung from a hook in the great beam that traversed the ceiling of her cabin, but she had trimmed or depressed the mesh into a feeble gleam. The little door that led to the quarter-gallery stood open. I kissed her cold forehead, and whispered, "Are you ready?" "Yes!" I held her hand whilst I could have counted ten, but found it steadier than mine. "Come, dearest!" said I, and I stepped into the gallery. The fog put an intolerable blackness into the air, and the chill of it was like frost upon the flesh. But for the phosphorescence of the sea, which I had before lamented, I should not have been able to see the boat under the counter. As it was, the tweaking of the line to the rise and fall of the Death Ship kept a small stir of water about the boat; the greenish-yellow shining showed through the fog and threw out the figure of the structure. The railing of the gallery rose to the height of my breast. I leaned over it, waving my hand in the blackness for the rope, and not catching it, bade Imogene seize my coat to steady me, and jumped on to the rail, and in a moment felt the line and grasped it; then dismounted, holding the rope. In a few seconds I had the boat's head--that was square and horned, as you will remember--fair under the gallery, and in that posture I secured her by hitching the slack of the line to the rail.