The captain, a short, square-built man, looked up at me.
"Oh, you will do," he said.
"I think so."
"Can you go on board at once?"
"There is nothing to detain me here."
CHAPTER XVIII.
A gray foggy morning succeeded to the cold windy night. It was six o'clock when the Elizabeth left the wharf, and I had been busy with the fires since three. I soon fell into the work, and scarcely needed the instructions of the lumpish, growling engineer. I had to laugh once or twice involuntarily when the man, seeing me attend to this or the other matter about the engine without directions, stared at me with a look half of surprise and half of vexation. I had told him that I was an entire novice at this work, and this was the literal truth; but I had not told him, nor was there any necessity that I should, that I had thoroughly studied marine steam-engines with the best of teachers, and had familiarized myself with even the minutest parts on an excellent model. And if in a few hours I had mastered the work of a regular fireman, in even a less time I had acquired the appearance of one. To save my own clothes I had laid them in part aside, and put on a working blouse of my unlucky predecessor, which fitted me perfectly; and what with handling the coal and the effects of a stream of smoke which drove into my face for quite ten minutes from the refractory furnace while I was making up the fires, even my friend Doctor Snellius, who piqued himself so greatly upon his physiognomical memory, would not have recognized me. But I cared little for this, for happily I had other things to occupy my attention.
I say happily, for it was ill with me in both head and heart. The death of my father, who had died without my being able even once to press his stern honorable hand, the meeting with my sister who put her children out of my way as if they were endangered by my presence, the prospect of the future which looked all the darker the more I thought over it--all this would have completely overwhelmed me had not the honest furnace been there in which the coals glowed so splendidly and the flames danced so merrily, while the sturdy engine worked on manfully and unresting. Only free work can make us free, my teacher had said to me. I had believed him at his word, but to-day for the first time I comprehended it, as I felt how the hard work which I had here to perform lightened more and more the load upon my heart, and the clouds passed away from my brow.
A kind of joyful pride took hold of me as I felt myself at home here; and I thought of that day eight years' before when I took that fateful trip on the Penguin and visited my friend Klaus in the engine-room, and to my wine-heated brain the engine appeared a machine only fit to crush the life out of me. The good Klaus! He had trouble enough with me that day, and care enough about me; and I should give him both trouble and care now if I should go to him to learn with his help to be a good workman. Some care I should give him, not much; I had found out this morning that I could stand more firmly on my own feet than I had supposed.
Far more firmly than my present superior, the bearded engineer, stood upon his. He stood by no means firmly, the honest fellow, and his watery eyes as well as the sleepy expression of his far from handsome face, and the vulgar perfume of alcohol which he diffused about him, made it obvious that his unsteady gait was not altogether due to the rolling of the boat. The worthy man was not exactly drunk--a regular engineer is never drunk, even though he sits up to two or three in the morning in a tavern drinking Swedish punch with his colleagues from the Swedish mailboat--but neither was he sober; so far from it that I on my side began to look at my superior with suspicious looks when, standing by his lever, he sank into deep meditation, which often bore a striking resemblance to a peaceful slumber.