"Ah! France, she is victorious, or will be very soon. Ravi de vous voir."
He fairly bubbled over with delight when we offered him a bottle of champagne. Being homeward bound, he was in a frolicsome mood. A generous taste of the champagne, and he was ready to embrace us. He thought our supposed joke, which certainly would have been somewhat cruel, was the result of our being tipsy. He slapped me on the back, as one cheery skipper to another.
"Captain, what a terrible fellow you are to have fooled me like that. But now I feel as though a stone had dropped from my heart."
"Beware," I thought, "that your stone does not come back twice as heavy."
He was such a cheery, convivial soul that I hated to break the bad news to him. I left the progress of events to do that. He wanted to have a look over our ship. So I ushered him aft to my cabin, and threw open the door. He took a step forward and recoiled. On the walls were pictures of the Kaiser, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and Von Tirpitz, and a large German flag.
"Des allemands!" he groaned.
"Yes," I said, "we are Germans."
"Then we are lost, per Dieu!"
"Yes, per Dieu, you are lost."
He stood with his forehead in one hand. His despair was both tragic and comic to behold. I tried as best I could to say a few words of cheer.