Ugh! business ... banks ... the whole town!
He felt such a strong desire to take flight in his boat again that it hurt him. Alone! out into the storm and darkness!
At this moment a massive figure came walking out along the pier. There was something disarming even in his way of dodging between the holes in the rotten floor-boards of the pier. His little, round, wrinkled head hung on one side between his enormous shoulders—as if it were drooping from sheer compassion. He somehow looked like an enormous child. He stopped and looked at Herman, with two small watery eyes that threatened to overflow.
Herman jumped up when he caught sight of the newcomer, he drew himself to his full height, erect and rigid as a post:
“What do you want here?”
Peter stretched out his arms, which resembled thighs on which hands had happened to grow.
“Look here, old boy ... why should we go on like this, ... two old friends like ourselves.... You know I couldn’t help things....”
Herman suppressed his angry impulse and with a shrug of his shoulders sank back on the seat, staring once again out over the water where an old black-tarred fire-wood smack was just taking in her topsail and slowly turning into the wind with dark sails booming.
Peter seized the opportunity of sitting down on the seat without further ceremony:
“You mustn’t think I am on Laura’s side,” he assured Herman. “She is a handful, she is, without a heart in her breast!”