uoso's collection. An American reporter came
on a voyage with me fifty or sixty years ago, and I took him over
there. His name was Hawthorne. He interviewed the Jew, and wrote up the
collection in the American papers, so I've been told."

"I remember reading the interview," I said, "and it was indeed a most
remarkable collection."

"It's all the more curious now for the odds and ends I've been able to
pick up here and there for my old friend," Vanderdecken declared; "I
got him the horn of Hernani, the harpoon with which Long Tom Coffin
pinned the British officer to the mast, the long rifle of Natty Bumppo,
the letter A in scarlet cloth embroidered in gold by Hester Prynne, the
banner with the strange device 'Excelsior,' the gold bug which was once
used as a plummet, Maud Muller's rake, and the jack-knives of Hosea
Biglow and Sam Lawson."

"You must have seen extraordinary things yourself," I ventured to
suggest.

"No man has seen stranger," he answered, promptly. "No man has ever
been witness to more marvellous deeds than I--not even Ahasuerus, I
verily believe, for he has only the land, and I have the boundless sea.
I survey mankind from China to Peru. I have heard the horns of elfland
blowing, and I could tell you the song the sirens sang. I have dropped
anchor at the No Man's Land, and off Lyonesse, and in Xanadu, where
Alph the sacred river ran. I have sailed from the still-vexed
Bermoothes to the New Atlantis, of which there is no mention even until
the year 1629."

"In which year there was published an account of it written in the
Latin tongue, but by an Englishman," I said, desirous to reveal my
acquirements.

"I have seen every strange coast," continued the Flying Dutchman. "The
Island of Bells and Robinson Crusoe's Island and the Kingdoms of
Brobdingnag and Lilliput. But it is not for me to vaunt myself for my
voyages. And of a truth there are men I should like to have met and
talked with whom I have yet failed to see. Especially is there one
Ulysses, a sailor-man of antiquity who called himself Outis, whence I
have sometimes suspected that he came from the town of Weissnichtwo."

Just to discover what Vanderdecken would say, I inquired innocently
whether this was the same person as one Captain Nemo of whose submarine
exploits I had read.

"Captain Nemo?" the Flying Dutchman repeated scornfully. "I never heard
of him. Are you sure there is such a fellow?"

I tried to turn the conversation by asking