He smiled and scratched his head. “There was a woman, sir, as done me into doing it—leaving the navy, I mean. O’ course she wasn’t the first woman I ever see, but when I saw her I thort she was.”
“Well, you’re a funny one!” I exclaimed heartily, feeling a sudden kinship with the lanky red-crowned scarecrow before me—a kinship which would have been impossible without our common language. “Is this Queen of Sheba still travelling with you?”
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Is your wife on board?”
“Yes, indeed, sir, and here are two of my little shavers.” He pointed with extraordinary pride at the half-naked youngsters clinging to their precarious seats on the sloping deck. “Fine little fellers, aren’t they, sir? I’ve got three children, and there is going to be a fourth. These is twins—both boys,” he said.
“So I see,” I retorted. The jest was lost on him. “Well, open up hatches and let’s look at your cargo.”
He bent to the fastenings and slipped off the round lead seals. “Funny thing about these Germans, sir, ’ow careful they are. That Johnny standing sentry-go over there”—he pointed to the lonely watch in the distance—, “’e always comes up and asks me for them little bits of lead. I gives ’em to ’im, sir. ’E gets paid for ’em and they don’t do me no good, so I gives ’em to him.” He lifted the first hatch, still chatting affably. “It’s a good lot o’ flour, sir, as I sees it. Only up at Rotterdam sometimes they has to unload too fast, and they piles it into the lighters in all kinds o’ weather. I’ve got forty-eight bags of bad flour in ’ere myself—spoilt by the rain in Rotterdam.”
“We can use it here for making dog bread.”
“They uses ’ooks on the bags, too, sir, and that ain’t right. Ortn’t to use no ’ooks. They always break the bags. Still, they’re a good sort up there, and they treat me right so far.... Now this flour, sir, it’s first rate—better than the Belgians is used to, if I do say it, and well stowed, ain’t it?” He dusted the white meal from his hands and replaced the hatches. “It ain’t bad, is it, sir?”
“Pretty good,” I answered.