Davies was just beginning, in his summary way, to tumble the things together for washing up, when there was a sound of a step on deck, two sea-boots appeared on the ladder, and, before we could wonder who the visitor was, a little man in oilskins and a sou’-wester was stooping towards us in the cabin door, smiling affectionately at Davies out of a round grizzled beard.
“Well met, captain,” he said, quietly, in German. “Where are you bound to this time?”
“Bartels!” exclaimed Davies, jumping up. The two stooping figures, young and old, beamed at one another like father and son.
“Where have you come from? Have some coffee. How’s the Johannes? Was that you that came in last night? I’m delighted to see you!” (I spare the reader his uncouth lingo.) The little man was dragged in and seated on the opposite sofa to me.
“I took my apples to Kappeln,” he said, sedately, “and now I sail to Kiel, and so to Hamburg, where my wife and children are. It is my last voyage of the year. You are no longer alone, captain, I see.” He had taken off his dripping sou’-wester and was bowing ceremoniously towards me.
“Oh, I quite forgot!” said Davies, who had been kneeling on one knee in the low doorway, absorbed in his visitor. “This is ‘meiner Freund,’ Herr Carruthers. Carruthers, this is my friend, Schiffer Bartels, of the galliot Johannes.”
Was I never to be at an end of the puzzles which Davies presented to me? All the impulsive heartiness died out of his voice and manner as he uttered the last few words, and there he was, nervously glancing from the visitor to me, like one who, against his will or from tactlessness, has introduced two persons who he knows will disagree.
There was a pause while he fumbled with the cups, poured some cold coffee out and pondered over it as though it were a chemical experiment. Then he muttered something about boiling some more water, and took refuge in the forecastle. I was ill at ease at this period with seafaring men, but this mild little person was easy ground for a beginner. Besides, when he took off his oilskin coat he reminded me less of a sailor than of a homely draper of some country town, with his clean turned-down collar and neatly fitting frieze jacket. We exchanged some polite platitudes about the fog and his voyage last night from Kappeln, which appeared to be a town some fifteen miles up the fiord.
Davies joined in from the forecastle with an excess of warmth which almost took the words out of my mouth. We exhausted the subject very soon, and then my vis-à-vis smiled paternally at me, as he had done at Davies, and said, confidentially:
“It is good that the captain is no more alone. He is a fine young man—Heaven, what a fine young man! I love him as my son—but he is too brave, too reckless. It is good for him to have a friend.”