"That's my business, Admiral."
The Admiral stopped short. He was on the point of bringing out his own favourite retort: "Mind your own business," and here was this fellow taking the very words out of his mouth. He went out of the room without a word.
Several times after that the Admiral launched his attacks at the new clerk, but invariably got as good as he gave. More than that, Doffen would even take the offensive himself.
"What do you think you're doing with these two hulks of yours, Admiral, eh?"
"Hulks?"
"Yes, these two old wooden arks. The skippers go floundering about like hunted cockroaches at sea, and the ships themselves go pottering from pillar to post; it's high time you got some system into the business."
"You mind your own business, please," said the Admiral, rapping on the desk. But at that the other let himself go in his barbarous dialect, like a gramophone:
"It is my business, and as long as I'm stuck here on this spindle-shanked contrivance of a stool I'll say what I think. Take me for a dumb beast, do you? Not me! It'll take more than you know to stop me talking. We're used to rough weather where I come from."
And Doffen went on in the same strain long after the Admiral had got out of the room. The Admiral himself, however, listened with delight from the other side of the door, as Doffen thumped his desk again and again, still in the full torrent of speech. It was worth while going to the office now. No more sitting glowering at a servile, stooping-shouldered little scrap of a man, who scribbled away for dear life and shrank in terror every time he entered. Now he would generally find the room in a thick haze of tobacco smoke so that he himself could scarcely breathe. Doffen's pipe was rarely out of his mouth. Several times the Admiral had invited him, in well-chosen words, to take his beastly pipe to a hotter place, but only to be met with the retort that it might be as well, seeing there was never a box of matches here when a man wanted a light. The Admiral came more and more often to the office now. Here at least he could be sure of getting a fair go at any time, for Doffen was always open for a game.
After a while a tone of jovial roughness grew up between the two of them, and authority was relegated to the background, exactly as Doffen wished.