"What have you in the boat, good folks?" greeted an old fisherman after he had said "Good evening," which the wind swept away.
"It should be a fish instructor!" whispered the surveyor as he pulled the boat upon the beach.
"So it is such a one who comes to spy out the nets! Well, he shall be treated as he seeks to be," said fisherman Oman, who seemed to be head man for the few poor population of the island.
The custom house surveyor waited for the instructor to go on shore, but he saw no sign of movement in that little bundle which lay in the stern so he climbed uneasily into the boat and clasped both arms round the prostrate body and carried it to the beach.
"Is he gone?" asked Oman, not without a certain tremor of hope.
"There isn't much of him left," answered the surveyor as he carried his wet load up to the cottage.
The sight reminded of a giant and a lilliputian when the imposing surveyor entered his brother's kitchen where his sister-in-law stood at the fire, and as he laid down the little body on the sofa an expression of compassion for the weaker man gleamed from the low-browed, dark-whiskered visage.
"Here we have the fish inspector, Mary," he greeted his sister-in-law, placing his arm round her waist. "Help us now to get something dry upon him and something wet into him and then let him go to his room."
The commissioner made a wretched and ridiculous figure as he lay on the hard wooden sofa. The white standing collar twisted around his neck like a dirty rag, all of the fingers of the right hand peeped out of the cracked glove over which the softened cuffs hung sticking with the dissolved starch. The small crocodile shoes had lost all shine and shape, and it was with the greatest effort that the surveyor and his sister-in-law could pull them off the feet.
When he was finally deprived of most of his clothing and covered with quilts, they carried him boiled milk and schnapps, each shaking an arm, after which the surveyor raised the little body and slowly poured the milk into it. Beneath the closed eyes the mouth gaped, but when the sister-in-law would give him a dram, the smell seemed to act like a quick poison; with a gesture of the hand he pushed the glass back, and opening his eyes wide awake as though just finishing a refreshing sleep, he asked for his room.