“'What is it?' she said sullenly.
“'That you'll never try to see me, or harass me again. If you do, by God! I'll kill you.'
“I promise you that much,” she replied. In half an hour she had left the house, and I never saw or heard of her again.
“That evening I made special preparations. First of all I wrote to my poor father, and told him everything, and bade Muller and his wife goodbye, telling them I was going on board my ship. They, pitying me deeply, bade me farewell with tears.
“But I had no such intention. I wanted to settle scores with the man who had wronged me. At a marine store dealer's that night I bought two common cutlasses, and waited for my chance. I had learnt that Decker went to the service club on certain evenings, and stayed very late.
“My time came the following night. I saw my man come out of the club, and followed him closely till he entered a quiet street. Then I called him by name. He turned and faced me and asked me angrily what I wanted.
“'I am Theodor Brandt,' I said, and handed him one of the two cutlasses I was carrying under my overcoat.
“The man was no coward, and fought well, but in less than a minute I ran him clean through the body. He fell in the muddy street, and by the time I had dragged him away into the shadow of a high wooden fence enclosing a timber yard, was dead. Half an hour later I was on board a fishing-smack, bound for Wangeroog, one of the Frisian Islands, off the coast. At that place I remained in safety for a month, then got away to Amsterdam, and from there to Java. Then for the next eight-and-twenty years, down to this very moment, I have been a wanderer on the face of the earth. Six years after I escaped I joined an American man-of-war—the Iroquois—at Canton, and when we were paid off in the States I took out my naturalisation papers. This served me well, when, two years afterwards, I was recognised at San Francisco by some German bluejackets as 'Brandt, the murderer of Captain Decker,' and arrested. Fortunately, I had money, and while the German Consul was trying hard to get me handed over to the German naval authorities on the Pacific Coast, my lawyers managed to get me out on bail. I got away down to the Hawaiian Islands in a lumber ship, and—well, since then I've been knocking around anywhere and everywhere.... Come, let us turn in.”