But he treasured in his heart the idea that one day he would meet with some congenial soul whom he could take into his confidence, and petition for a description of what his little lass was really like. Unless, indeed, when she grew older, she was able to tell him what her image in a mirror resembled better than she had done when once or twice he had tried that way of eliciting information. For on those occasions Lizarann had at first shown symptoms of becoming what her aunt called a little giggling, affected chit, and had only been able to report that she looked "like Loyzarann in the glast," and then had grown uneasy, betrayed a tendency towards panic, and hid her face on her father when he became earnest, and begged her for his sake to tell him what she really looked like. She couldn't understand it at all, and may have had misgivings that she was being entrapped into some sort of ritual of a Masonic nature. So Jim had to wait for enlightenment from herself, and looked forward to the day when she should become more old and serious. Meanwhile what would he not have given for one little glimmer to help his imperfect image of what his little lass was like, now--now that her childhood was there?
But the darkness was upon him for all time. And the world that once was his to see had vanished--vanished with the last image his eyes had known; the quay at Cape Town in the blazing sun, the Dutch-built houses on the hot hill-side, and Table Mountain dark against the sky; and all the wide sea, a blaze of white beneath the blue, whose strongest glare might never reach his cancelled sight again. And there--so Jim believed, on the strength of a legend his informant may have invented on the spot--when the winds were at their worst round the Cape of Storms, might still be seen the source of all his evil, the Phantom Ship that had blasted his eyesight and made him what he had become. So fixed was this article of Jim's faith that it is not exaggeration to say that he drew comfort from the unending doom of her shadowy crew. Come what might to him, he always had this consolation, that as long as the sea should last, there was no hope of rest for the soul of the Flying Dutchman. It was something, if it wasn't much; and he told and retold the tale to his little lass, who was grieved on his behalf; but had somewhere, in the unrevengeful background of her mind, a chance thought of pity now and again for the unhappy seaman who was the cause of his misfortune.