“I want to accompany you,” I said. “In my profession, Herr Captain, it is necessary sometimes to make journeys by other than the common route. That is now my desire. I have the right to call upon some other branch of our country’s service to help me. Hence my request.”
Very plainly he did not like it.
“I must telegraph about it. My instructions are to let no one aboard, not even a man like you. I am sorry, Sir, but I must get authority first before I can fall in with your desire. Besides, my boat is ill-found. You had better wait for the next batch and ask Dreyser to take you. I lost Walter today. He was ill when he came aboard—a disease of the heart—but he would not be persuaded. And last night he died.”
“Was that him you have been burying?” I asked.
“Even so. He was a good man and my wife’s cousin, and now I have no engineer. Only a fool of a boy from Hamburg. I have just come from wiring to my owners for a fresh man, but even if he comes by the quickest train he will scarcely overtake us before Vienna or even Buda.”
I saw light at last.
“We will go together,” I said, “and cancel that wire. For behold, Herr Captain, I am an engineer, and will gladly keep an eye on your boilers till we get to Rustchuk.”
He looked at me doubtfully.
“I am speaking truth,” I said. “Before the war I was an engineer in Damaraland. Mining was my branch, but I had a good general training, and I know enough to run a river-boat. Have no fear. I promise you I will earn my passage.”
His face cleared, and he looked what he was, an honest, good-humoured North German seaman.