"Very good," cried the commerzienrath, without even giving a look at the presentee. "Aha! there the villain is!" and he made a dart at his servant, who was just coming up the companion-way with a tray of glasses.
The steuerrath and his lady exchanged a look, in which "the old brute," or some similarly flattering expression, was plainly legible. Arthur had joined the young ladies and said something at which they burst out laughing and rapped him with their parasols; I, whom nobody seemed to notice, turned away and went on the more quiet forward deck, where I found a seat upon a coil of rope, and leaning my back against the capstan, looked out upon the bright sky and the bright sea.
In the meantime the boat had left the harbor, and was moving down with the coast on our larboard, where the red roofs of the fishermen's cottages shone through the trees and bushes; while on the narrow strip of level beach here and there figures were seen, seafaring folks probably, or sea-bathers, who were watching the steamer go by. To our right the shore receded, so that it was only just possible to distinguish it from the water; before us, but at a still more remote distance, gleamed the chalk-coast of the neighboring island over the blue expanse of sea, which now began to roughen a little under a fresher breeze, while countless flocks of seabirds now flew up from the approach of the puffing steamer, and now, with their cunning heads turned towards us, sported on the waves and filled the air with their monotonous cries.
It was a bright and lovely morning; but though I saw its beauty, it gave me no pleasure. I felt singularly dejected. Had the Penguin that, with a sluggishness altogether at variance with her name, was slowly toiling through the water, been a beautiful swift clipper, bound for China or Buenos Ayres, or somewhere thousands of miles away, and I a passenger with a great purse of gold, or even a sailor before the mast, with the assurance that I should never again set eyes on the hateful steeples of my native town, I should have been light-hearted enough. But now! what was it then that made me so low-spirited? The consciousness of my disobedience? Dread of the disagreeable consequences, now, to all human foresight, inevitable? Nothing of the sort. The worst could only be that my stern father would drive me from his house, as he had already often enough threatened to do; and this possibility I regarded as a deliverance from a yoke which seemed to grow more intolerable every day; and as the idea arose in my mind, I welcomed it with a smile of grim satisfaction. No, it was not that. What then?
Well, to have run away from school with an ardor as if some glorious prize was to be won, and then, in a merry company, on the deck of a steamboat, to sit away by myself on a coil of rope, not one of the gentlemen or ladies taking the slightest notice of me, and with not even the prospect that the waiter, with the caviar-rolls and port wine, would at last come round to me! This last neglect, to tell the honest truth, for the moment afflicted me most sorely of all. My appetite, as was natural for a robust youth of nineteen, was always of the best, and now by the brisk run from school to the harbor and the fresh sea-breeze, it was sharpened to a distressing keenness.
I stood up in a paroxysm of impatience, but quickly sat down again. No, Arthur certainly would come and take me to the company; it was the least that he owed me, after I had been so obliging as to run away with him. As if he had ever yet paid me what he owed me! How many fishing-rods, canary birds, shells, fifes, pocket-knives, had he not already bought of me, that is, coaxed and worried me out of, without ever paying me for them. Ay, how often had he not borrowed my slender stock of pocket-money, whenever the amount made it worth his while; for which sometimes even a couple of silbergroschen sufficed.
Curious, that just now, on this bright sunny morning, I should take to reckoning up this black account! It was certainly the first time since the beginning of our friendship, which dated at least from our sixth year. For I had always loved the handsome slender boy, who had such sunny hair and gentle brown eyes, and whose velvet Sunday jacket felt so soft to the touch. I had loved him as a great rough mastiff might love a delicate greyhound that he could crush with one snap of his jaws; and so I loved him even now, while he was flirting with the girls, and chattering and laughing with the company like the petit maître he was.
I grew very melancholy as I watched all this from my place, where nobody could see me--very melancholy and altogether disspirited. I must have been very hungry.
We were now just rounding a long headland, which ran out from the western coast. At its farthest low extremity, in a spot entirely surrounded by water, separated by a wide interval from the row of houses on the dune, and shadowed by a half-decayed oak, stood a cottage, the sight of which called into my mind a flood of pleasant memories. The old blacksmith, Pinnow, lived there, the father of my friend Klaus Pinnow. Smith Pinnow was by far the most remarkable personage of all my acquaintance. He possessed four old double-barreled percussion guns, and a long single-barreled fowling-piece with a flint lock, which he used to hire to the bathers when they took a fancy to have a little shooting, and sometimes to us youngsters when we were in funds, for Smith Pinnow was not in the habit of conferring gratuitous favors. He had, besides, a great sail-boat, also kept for the bathing company, at least of late years, since he had grown half blind and could not venture longer trips. The rumor ran that formerly he used to make very different voyages, of by no means so innocent a character; and the excise officers, my father's colleagues (my father had lately been promoted to an accountantship) shook their heads when Smith Pinnow's by-gone doings happened to be referred to. But what was that to us youngsters? Especially, what was it to me, who owed the happiest hours of my life to the four rusty guns, and the fowling-piece, and Smith Pinnow's old boat, and who had had the best comrade in the world in Klaus Pinnow? Had had, I say, for during the last four years, while Klaus was an apprentice to the locksmith Wangerow, and afterwards when he became a journeyman, I had seen him but seldom, and, indeed, for the last half year not at all.
He came at once into my mind as we steamed past his father's cottage, and I perceived a figure standing on the sands by the side of the boat which was drawn up on the beach. The distance was great, but my keen eyes recognized Christel Möwe, Klaus's adopted sister, whom sixteen years before, old Pinnow's wife--long since dead--had found the morning after a storm, lying on the beach among the boxes and planks driven ashore from a wreck, and whom the old blacksmith, in an unwonted impulse of generosity, as some said, or to raise his credit with the neighbors, according to others, had taken into his house. The wreck was a Dutch ship from Java, as they made out from some of the things cast ashore; but her name and owners were never discovered--probably from the negligence of the officials charged with the investigations--and they named the little foundling Christina, or Christel, Möwe [Gull], because the screams of a flock of gulls in the air had attracted Goodwife Pinnow to the spot where the child was lying.