‘Fidler!’ he ejaculated, staring with all his might at the boat; ‘there’s twenty Fidlers in that man, your honour. Why Fidler’s a mere rib, lean enough to shelter himself under the lee of a rope-yarn.’
The boat came fizzing alongside handsomely, and the fat man, watching his opportunity, planted himself upon the steps and rose like a whale to our deck, upon which he stepped. In a very phlegmatic, leisurely way he stood staring around him for a little out of a pair of small, greenish, expressionless eyes, and with a countenance that discovered no signs of any sort of emotion; then in the deepest voice I ever heard in a man, a tone that literally vibrated upon the ear like the low note of a church organ, he said in Dutch, ‘Who speaks my language?’
I knew a few sentences in German, enough to enable me to understand his question, but by no means enough to converse with, even if the man spoke that tongue, so I said bluntly in English, ‘No one, sir.’
He wheezed a bit, looking stolidly at me, and exclaimed ‘You are captain?’
I motioned to Finn.
‘Vy you vire ot me?’ he demanded, turning his fat, emotionless face upon the skipper.
Finn touched his cap. ‘Heartily sorry, sir: ’twas all a blunder happening through our mistaking you for another craft. I’m very willing to ’pologise and do whatever’s right.’
The Dutchman listened apathetically, then slowly bringing his fist of the shape, if not the hue, of a leg of beef to his vast spread of breast, he exclaimed in a voice even deeper than his former utterance, ‘Vot I ask is, vy you vire at me?’
Finn substantially repeated his former apology. The Dutchman gazed at him dully, with an expression of glassiness coming into his eyes.
‘Vot schip dis?’