I became their daily guest, as you know. I think
that Mrs. Hermann from the first looked upon me
as a romantic person. I did not, of course, tear my
hair coram populo over my loss, and she took it for
lordly indifference. Afterwards, I daresay, I did
tell them some of my adventures--such as they were
--and they marvelled greatly at the extent of my
experience. Hermann would translate what he
thought the most striking passages. Getting up on
his legs, and as if delivering a lecture on a phenom-
enon, he addressed himself, with gestures, to the
two women, who would let their sewing sink slowly
on their laps. Meantime I sat before a glass of
Hermann's beer, trying to look modest. Mrs. Her-
mann would glance at me quickly, emit slight
"Ach's!" The girl never made a sound. Never.
But she too would sometimes raise her pale eyes to
look at me in her unseeing gentle way. Her glance
was by no means stupid; it beamed out soft and dif-
fuse as the moon beams upon a landscape--quite
differently from the scrutinising inspection of the
stars. You were drowned in it, and imagined your-
self to appear blurred. And yet this same glance
when turned upon Christian Falk must have been
as efficient as the searchlight of a battle-ship.
Falk was the other assiduous visitor on board,
but from his behaviour he might have been coming
to see the quarter-deck capstan. He certainly used
to stare at it a good deal when keeping us company
outside the cabin door, with one muscular arm
thrown over the back of the chair, and his big
shapely legs, in very tight white trousers, extended
far out and ending in a pair of black shoes as
roomy as punts. On arrival he would shake Her-
mann's hand with a mutter, bow to the women, and
take up his careless and misanthropic attitude by
our side. He departed abruptly, with a jump, go-
ing through the performance of grunts, hand-
shakes, bow, as if in a panic. Sometimes, with a
sort of discreet and convulsive effort, he approached
the women and exchanged a few low words with
them, half a dozen at most. On these occasions Her-
mann's usual stare became positively glassy and
Mrs. Hermann's kind countenance would colour up.
The girl herself never turned a hair.
Falk was a Dane or perhaps a Norwegian, I
can't tell now. At all events he was a Scandinavian
of some sort, and a bloated monopolist to boot. It
is possible he was unacquainted with the word, but
he had a clear perception of the thing itself. His
tariff of charges for towing ships in and out was
the most brutally inconsiderate document of the sort
I had ever seen. He was the commander and owner
of the only tug-boat on the river, a very trim white
craft of 150 tons or more, as elegantly neat as a
yacht, with a round wheel-house rising like a glazed
turret high above her sharp bows, and with one slen-
der varnished pole mast forward. I daresay there
are yet a few shipmasters afloat who remember Falk
and his tug very well. He extracted his pound and
a half of flesh from each of us merchant-skippers
with an inflexible sort of indifference which made
him detested and even feared. Schomberg used to
remark: "I won't talk about the fellow. I don't
think he has six drinks from year's end to year's end
in my place. But my advice is, gentlemen, don't
you have anything to do with him, if you can help
it."
This advice, apart from unavoidable business re-
lations, was easy to follow because Falk intruded
upon no one. It seems absurd to compare a tug-
boat skipper to a centaur: but he reminded me some-
how of an engraving in a little book I had as a boy,
which represented centaurs at a stream, and there
was one, especially in the foreground, prancing bow
and arrows in hand, with regular severe features
and an immense curled wavy beard, flowing down
his breast. Falk's face reminded me of that cen-
taur. Besides, he was a composite creature. Not
a man-horse, it is true, but a man-boat. He lived
on board his tug, which was always dashing up and
down the river from early morn till dewy eve.
In the last rays of the setting sun, you could pick
out far away down the reach his beard borne high
up on the white structure, foaming up stream to
anchor for the night. There was the white-clad
man's body, and the rich brown patch of the hair,
and nothing below the waist but the 'thwart-ship
white lines of the bridge-screens, that lead the eye
to the sharp white lines of the bows cleaving the
muddy water of the river.
Separated from his boat to me at least he seemed
incomplete. The tug herself without his head and
torso on the bridge looked mutilated as it were.
But he left her very seldom. All the time I re-
mained in harbour I saw him only twice on shore.
On the first occasion it was at my charterers, where
he came in misanthropically to get paid for towing
out a French barque the day before. The second
time I could hardly believe my eyes, for I beheld
him reclining under his beard in a cane-bottomed
chair in the billiard-room of Schomberg's hotel.
It was very funny to see Schomberg ignoring
him pointedly. The artificiality of it contrasted
strongly with Falk's natural unconcern. The big
Alsatian talked loudly with his other customers, go-
ing from one little table to the other, and passing
Falk's place of repose with his eyes fixed straight
ahead. Falk sat there with an untouched glass at
his elbow. He must have known by sight and name
every white man in the room, but he never addressed
a word to anybody. He acknowledged my presence
by a drop of his eyelids, and that was all. Sprawl-
ing there in the chair, he would, now and again,
draw the palms of both his hands down his face,
giving at the same time a slight, almost impercepti-
ble, shudder.
It was a habit he had, and of course I was per-
fectly familiar with it, since you could not remain
an hour in his company without being made to won-
der at such a movement breaking some long period
of stillness. it was a passionate and inexplicable
gesture. He used to make it at all sorts of times;
as likely as not after he had been listening to little
Lena's chatter about the suffering doll, for instance.
The Hermann children always besieged him about
his legs closely, though, in a gentle way, he shrank
from them a little. He seemed, however, to feel a
great affection for the whole family. For Hermann
himself especially. He sought his company. In
this case, for instance, he must have been waiting
for him, because as soon as he appeared Falk rose
hastily, and they went out together. Then Schom-
berg expounded in my hearing to three or four
people his theory that Falk was after Captain Her-
mann's niece, and asserted confidently that nothing
would come of it. It was the same last year when
Captain Hermann was loading here, he said.
Naturally, I did not believe Schomberg, but I
own that for a time I observed closely what went
on. All I discovered was some impatience on Her-
mann's part. At the sight of Falk, stepping over
the gangway, the excellent man would begin to
mumble and chew between his teeth something that
sounded like German swear-words. However, as
I've said, I'm not familiar with the language, and
Hermann's soft, round-eyed countenance remained
unchanged. Staring stolidly ahead he greeted
him with, "Wie gehts," or in English, "How are
you?" with a throaty enunciation. The girl would
look up for an instant and move her lips slightly:
Mrs. Hermann let her hands rest on her lap to talk
volubly to him for a minute or so in her pleasant
voice before she went on with her sewing again.
Falk would throw himself into a chair, stretch his
big legs, as like as not draw his hands down his face
passionately. As to myself, he was not pointedly
impertinent: it was rather as though he could not
be bothered with such trifles as my existence; and
the truth is that being a monopolist he was under
no necessity to be amiable. He was sure to get his
own extortionate terms out of me for towage
whether he frowned or smiled. As a matter of fact,
he did neither: but before many days elapsed he
managed to astonish me not a little and to set
Schomberg's tongue clacking more than ever.
It came about in this way. There was a shallow
bar at the mouth of the river which ought to have
been kept down, but the authorities of the State
were piously busy gilding afresh the great Buddhist
Pagoda just then, and I suppose had no money to
spare for dredging operations. I don't know how
it may be now, but at the time I speak of that sand-
bank was a great nuisance to the shipping. One of
its consequences was that vessels of a certain
draught of water, like Hermann's or mine, could not
complete their loading in the river. After taking
in as much as possible of their cargo, they had to
go outside to fill up. The whole procedure was an
unmitigated bore. When you thought you had as
much on board as your ship could carry safely over
the bar, you went and gave notice to your agents.
They, in their turn, notified Falk that so-and-so
was ready to go out. Then Falk (ostensibly when it
fitted in with his other work, but, if the truth were
known, simply when his arbitrary spirit moved
him), after ascertaining carefully in the office that
there was enough money to meet his bill, would
come along unsympathetically, glaring at you with
his yellow eyes from the bridge, and would drag you
out dishevelled as to rigging, lumbered as to the
decks, with unfeeling haste, as if to execution. And
he would force you too to take the end of his own
wire hawser, for the use of which there was of course
an extra charge. To your shouted remonstrances
against that extortion this towering trunk with one
hand on the engine-room telegraph only shook its
bearded head above the splash, the racket, and the
clouds of smoke in which the tug, backing and fill-
ing in the smother of churning paddle-wheels be-
haved like a ferocious and impatient creature. He
had her manned by the cheekiest gang of lascars I
ever did see, whom he allowed to bawl at you inso-
lently, and, once fast, he plucked you out of your
berth as if he did not care what he smashed. Eigh-
teen miles down the river you had to go behind him,
and then three more along the coast to where a
group of uninhabited rocky islets enclosed a shel-
tered anchorage. There you would have to lie at
single anchor with your naked spars showing to
seaward over these barren fragments of land scat-
tered upon a very intensely blue sea. There was
nothing to look at besides but a bare coast, the mud-
dy edge of the brown plain with the sinuosities of
the river you had left, traced in dull green, and the
Great Pagoda uprising lonely and massive with
shining curves and pinnacles like the gorgeous and
stony efflorescence of tropical rocks. You had
nothing to do but to wait fretfully for the balance
of your cargo, which was sent out of the river with
the greatest irregularity. And it was open to you
to console yourself with the thought that, after all,
this stage of bother meant that your departure from
these shores was indeed approaching at last.
We both had to go through that stage, Hermann
and I, and there was a sort of tacit emulation be-
tween the ships as to which should be ready first.
We kept on neck and neck almost to the finish, when
I won the race by going personally to give notice in
the forenoon; whereas Hermann, who was very slow
in making up his mind to go ashore, did not get to
the agents' office till late in the day. They told him
there that my ship was first on turn for next morn-
ing, and I believe he told them he was in no hurry.
It suited him better to go the day after.
That evening, on board the Diana, he sat with
his plump knees well apart, staring and puffing at
the curved mouthpiece of his pipe. Presently he
spoke with some impatience to his niece about put-
ting the children to bed. Mrs. Hermann, who was
talking to Falk, stopped short and looked at her
husband uneasily, but the girl got up at once and
drove the children before her into the cabin. In a
little while Mrs. Hermann had to leave us to quell
what, from the sounds inside, must have been a dan-
gerous mutiny. At this Hermann grumbled to him-
self. For half an hour longer Falk left alone with
us fidgeted on his chair, sighed lightly, then at last,
after drawing his hands down his face, got up, and
as if renouncing the hope of making himself under-
stood (he hadn't opened his mouth once) he said in
English: "Well. . . . Good night, Captain Her-
mann." He stopped for a moment before my chair
and looked down fixedly; I may even say he glared:
and he went so far as to make a deep noise in his
throat. There was in all this something so marked
that for the first time in our limited intercourse of
nods and grunts he excited in me something like
interest. But next moment he disappointed me--
for he strode away hastily without a nod even.
His manner was usually odd it is true, and I cer-
tainly did not pay much attention to it; but that
sort of obscure intention, which seemed to lurk in
his nonchalance like a wary old carp in a pond, had
never before come so near the surface. He had dis-
tinctly aroused my expectations. I would have been
unable to say what it was I expected, but at all
events I did not expect the absurd developments he
sprung upon me no later than the break of the very
next day.
I remember only that there was, on that evening,
enough point in his behaviour to make me, after he
had fled, wonder audibly what he might mean. To
this Hermann, crossing his legs with a swing and
settling himself viciously away from me in his chair,
said: "That fellow don't know himself what he
means."
There might have been some insight in such a
remark. I said nothing, and, still averted, he
added: "When I was here last year he was just
the same." An eruption of tobacco smoke envel-
oped his head as if his temper had exploded like
gunpowder.
I had half a mind to ask him point blank whether
he, at least, didn't know why Falk, a notoriously
unsociable man, had taken to visiting his ship with
such assiduity. After all, I reflected suddenly, it
was a most remarkable thing. I wonder now what
Hermann would have said. As it turned out he
didn't let me ask. Forgetting all about Falk ap-
parently, he started a monologue on his plans for
the future: the selling of the ship, the going home;
and falling into a reflective and calculating mood
he mumbled between regular jets of smoke about
the expense. The necessity of disbursing passage
money for all his tribe seemed to disturb him in a
manner that was the more striking because other-
wise he gave no signs of a miserly disposition. And
yet he fussed over the prospect of that voyage home
in a mail boat like a sedentary grocer who has made
up his mind to see the world. He was racially thrifty
I suppose, and for him there must have been a great
novelty in finding himself obliged to pay for travel-
ling--for sea travelling which was the normal state
of life for the family--from the very cradle for
most of them. I could see he grudged prospectively
every single shilling which must be spent so absurd-
ly. It was rather funny. He would become doleful
over it, and then again, with a fretful sigh, he would
suppose there was nothing for it now but to take
three second-class tickets--and there were the four
children to pay for besides. A lot of money that
to spend at once. A big lot of money.
I sat with him listening (not for the first time)
to these heart-searchings till I grew thoroughly
sleepy, and then I left him and turned in on board
my ship. At daylight I was awakened by a yelping
of shrill voices, accompanied by a great commotion
in the water, and the short, bullying blasts of a
steam-whistle. Falk with his tug had come for me.
I began to dress. It was remarkable that the
answering noise on board my ship together with the
patter of feet above my head ceased suddenly. But
I heard more remote guttural cries which seemed to
express surprise and annoyance. Then the voice of
my mate reached me howling expostulations to
somebody at a distance. Other voices joined, ap-
parently indignant; a chorus of something that
sounded like abuse replied. Now and then the
steam-whistle screeched.
Altogether that unnecessary uproar was distract-
ing, but down there in my cabin I took it calmly.
In another moment, I thought, I should be going
down that wretched river, and in another week at
the most I should be totally quit of the odious place
and all the odious people in it.
Greatly cheered by the idea, I seized the hair-
brushes and looking at myself in the glass began to
use them. Suddenly a hush fell upon the noise out-
side, and I heard (the ports of my cabin were thrown
open)--I heard a deep calm voice, not on board my
ship, however, hailing resolutely in English, but
with a strong foreign twang, "Go ahead!"
There may be tides in the affairs of men which
taken at the flood . . . and so on. Personally I
am still on the look out for that important turn.
I am, however, afraid that most of us are fated to
flounder for ever in the dead water of a pool whose
shores are arid indeed. But I know that there are
often in men's affairs unexpectedly--even irration-
ally--illuminating moments when an otherwise in-
significant sound, perhaps only some perfectly com-
monplace gesture, suffices to reveal to us all the
unreason, all the fatuous unreason, of our compla-
cency. "Go ahead" are not particularly striking
words even when pronounced with a foreign accent;
yet they petrified me in the very act of smiling at
myself in the glass. And then, refusing to believe
my ears, but already boiling with indignation, I
ran out of the cabin and up on deck.
It was incredibly true. It was perfectly true. I
had no eyes for anything but the Diana. It was she,
then, was being taken away. She was already out
of her berth and shooting athwart the river. "The
way this loonatic plucked that ship out is a cau-
tion," said the awed voice of my mate close to my
ear. "Hey! Hallo! Falk! Hermann! What's this
infernal trick?" I yelled in a fury.
Nobody heard me. Falk certainly could not hear
me. His tug was turning at full speed away under
the other bank. The wire hawser between her and
the Diana, stretched as taut as a harpstring,
vibrated alarmingly.
The high black craft careened over to the awful
strain. A loud crack came out of her, followed by
the tearing and splintering of wood. "There!"
said the awed voice in my ear. "He's carried away
their towing chock." And then, with enthusiasm,
"Oh! Look! Look! sir, Look! at them Dutchmen
skipping out of the way on the forecastle. I hope
to goodness he'll break a few of their shins before
he's done with 'em."
I yelled my vain protests. The rays of the rising
sun coursing level along the plain warmed my back,
but I was hot enough with rage. I could not have
believed that a simple towing operation could sug-
gest so plainly the idea of abduction, of rape. Falk
was simply running off with the Diana.
The white tug careered out into the middle of the
river. The red floats of her paddle-wheels revolv-
ing with mad rapidity tore up the whole reach into
foam. The Diana in mid-stream waltzed round
with as much grace as an old barn, and flew after
her ravisher. Through the ragged fog of smoke
driving headlong upon the water I had a glimpse
of Falk's square motionless shoulders under a white
hat as big as a cart-wheel, of his red face, his yel-
low staring eyes, his great beard. Instead of keep-
ing a lookout ahead, he was deliberately turning his
back on the river to glare at his tow. The tall
heavy craft, never so used before in her life, seemed
to have lost her senses; she took a wild sheer against
her helm, and for a moment came straight at us,
menacing and clumsy, like a runaway mountain.
She piled up a streaming, hissing, boiling wave
half-way up her blunt stem, my crew let out one
great howl,--and then we held our breaths. It was
a near thing. But Falk had her! He had her in
his clutch. I fancied I could hear the steel hawser
ping as it surged across the Diana's forecastle, with
the hands on board of her bolting away from it in
all directions. It was a near thing. Hermann, with
his hair rumpled, in a snuffy flannel shirt and a pair
of mustard-coloured trousers, had rushed to help
with the wheel. I saw his terrified round face; I
saw his very teeth uncovered by a sort of ghastly
fixed grin; and in a great leaping tumult of water
between the two ships the Diana whisked past so
close that I could have flung a hair-brush at his
head, for, it seems, I had kept them in my hands
all the time. Meanwhile Mrs. Hermann sat placidly
on the skylight, with a woollen shawl on her shoul-
ders. The excellent woman in response to my in-
dignant gesticulations fluttered a handkerchief,
nodding and smiling in the kindest way imagina-
ble. The boys, only half-dressed, were jumping
about the poop in great glee, displaying their
gaudy braces; and Lena in a short scarlet petticoat,
with peaked elbows and thin bare arms, nursed the
rag-doll with devotion. The whole family passed
before my sight as if dragged across a scene of un-
paralleled violence. The last I saw was Hermann's
niece with the baby Hermann in her arms standing
apart from the others. Magnificent in her close-
fitting print frock she displayed something so com-
manding in the manifest perfection of her figure
that the sun seemed to be rising for her alone. The
flood of light brought out the opulence of her form
and the vigour of her youth in a glorifying way.
She went by perfectly motionless and as if lost in
meditation; only the hem of her skirt stirred in the
draught; the sun rays broke on her sleek tawny
hair; that bald-headed ruffian, Nicholas, was whack-
ing her on the shoulder. I saw his tiny fat arm
rise and fall in a workmanlike manner. And then
the four cottage windows of the Diana came into
view retreating swiftly down the river. The sashes
were up, and one of the white calico curtains was
fluttered straight out like a streamer above the agi-
tated water of the wake.
To be thus tricked out of one's turn was an un-
heard of occurrence. In my agent's office, where I
went to complain at once, they protested with apol-
ogies they couldn't understand how the mistake
arose: but Schomberg when I dropped in later to get
some tiffin, though surprised to see me, was perfect-
ly ready with an explanation. I found him seated at
the end of a long narrow table, facing his wife--a
scraggy little woman, with long ringlets and a blue
tooth, who smiled abroad stupidly and looked
frightened when you spoke to her. Between them a
waggling punkah fanned twenty cane-bottomed
chairs and two rows of shiny plates. Three China-
men in white jackets loafed with napkins in their
hands around that desolation. Schomberg's pet
table d'hote was not much of a success that day.
He was feeding himself ferociously and seemed to
overflow with bitterness.
He began by ordering in a brutal voice the chops
to be brought back for me, and turning in his chair:
"Mistake they told you? Not a bit of it! Don't
you believe it for a moment, captain! Falk isn't a
man to make mistakes unless on purpose." His
firm conviction was that Falk had been trying all
along to curry favour on the cheap with Hermann.
"On the cheap--mind you! It doesn't cost him a
cent to put that insult upon you, and Captain Her-
mann gets in a day ahead of your ship. Time's
money! Eh? You are very friendly with Captain
Hermann I believe, but a man is bound to be pleased
at any little advantage he may get. Captain Her-
mann is a good business man, and there's no such
thing as a friend in business. Is there?" He
leaned forward and began to cast stealthy glances
as usual. "But Falk is, and always was, a misera-
ble fellow. I would despise him."
I muttered, grumpily, that I had no particular
respect for Falk.
"I would despise him," he insisted, with an ap-
pearance of anxiety which would have amused me
if I had not been fathoms deep in discontent. To
a young man fairly conscientious and as well-mean-
ing as only the young man can be, the current ill-
usage of life comes with a peculiar cruelty. Youth
that is fresh enough to believe in guilt, in innocence,
and in itself, will always doubt whether it have not
perchance deserved its fate. Sombre of mind and
without appetite, I struggled with the chop while
Mrs. Schomberg sat with her everlasting stupid
grin and Schomberg's talk gathered way like a slide
of rubbish.
"Let me tell you. It's all about that girl. I
don't know what Captain Hermann expects, but if
he asked me I could tell him something about Falk.
He's a miserable fellow. That man is a perfect
slave. That's what I call him. A slave. Last
year I started this table d'hote, and sent cards out
--you know. You think he had one meal in the
house? Give the thing a trial? Not once. He has
got hold now of a Madras cook--a blamed fraud
that I hunted out of my cookhouse with a rattan.
He was not fit to cook for white men. No, not for
the white men's dogs either; but, see, any damned
native that can boil a pot of rice is good enough for
Mr. Falk. Rice and a little fish he buys for a few
cents from the fishing boats outside is what he lives
on. You would hardly credit it--eh? A white
man, too. . . ."
He wiped his lips, using the napkin with indig-
nation, and looking at me. It flashed through my
mind in the midst of my depression that if all the
meat in the town was like these table d'hote chops,
Falk wasn't so far wrong. I was on the point of
saying this, but Schomberg's stare was intimidat-
ing. "He's a vegetarian, perhaps," I murmured
instead.
